Fr. Araujo on China and religious freedom: "Render Unto Mao"

Following up on my re-posting, yesterday, on "China, Canossa, and Religious Freedom," check out this new paper (Download Araujo on China) by our own Fr. Araujo, "Render Unto Mao The Things That Are Mao's":

My examination investigates the matter of religious liberty in China, a country often in the news these days on many fronts that include its persecution, in different ways, of religious believers. While formally a communist state, the reality of China today in the early twenty-first century is quite different. The country presently has a robust economy that encourages aggressive capitalist development that is subject to state control but which is often arbitrarily exercised against its own citizens and foreign nationals. One of the rights claimed by persons around the world is religious freedom. However, in China, this right is often subject to the whimsical and sometimes brutal control of the state. This paper focuses on the particular status of the Catholic Church in China and the state’s positivist control of the fidelity of Catholic Christians.