ICC Note: The following article provides a good overview of the situation of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, a Chinese priest who publicly renounced his affiliation with the government run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association during his ordination as Bishop over the summer. He has since been placed under house arrest and other members of the diocese in Shanghai have been forced to attend socialist “re-education” classes. 
12/14/2012 China (WWM) – In a move characterised in Western media as a fresh challenge to Vatican authority, China’s state-run Catholic Church has revoked the title of the auxiliary Bishop of Shanghai.
Thaddeus Ma Daqin, who is in his mid-forties, was ordained in July. His appointment had the rare approval of both Pope Benedict XVI and the state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CCPA). Both lay claim to the leadership of China’s Catholics, who are said to number up to about 12 million. Both claim authority to appoint Bishops, and each denies the authority of the other.
The revoking of the Bishop’s title and reports of his house arrest have been condemned in the United Kingdom as “a shocking indignity” by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). UK spokesman John Pontifex condemned the move as “undue interference”, adding: “This situation will undoubtedly cause relations between the Vatican and China to be more strained. That the Bishop is reported to be under house arrest is a shocking indictment of the current situation.”
At his ordination, Ma Daqin publicly announced he no longer could remain a member of the state Catholic Church. He refused the laying on of hands and communion from a bishop who had not been recognised by the Pope. Ma Daqin has not been seen in public since, and has reportedly been placed under house arrest.
AFP said a spokesman for the CPCA confirmed that the Bishop had been dismissed from his post. As yet no official statement has come from the Vatican, but its press office referred to a recent statement in the Italian religious affairs magazine Tripod.
“The situation remains serious,” wrote Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. “Some bishops and priests are segregated or deprived of their liberty, as has recently happened in the case of the Bishop of Shanghai, Ma Daqin.”
Lord Alton, of the British Parliament’s House of Lords and a prominent spokesman for human rights and religious liberty, spoke to World Watch Monitor about Bishop Ma’s case. He’d been delighted when the Bishop had been appointed in July. “Since the Cultural Revolution, we’ve seen in Shanghai a wonderful period in which Church-State relations have much improved. But Bishop Ma’s resignation at his ordination was over the fact that it isn’t appropriate for the State to control a Bishop. It’s a big issue for China, one which has not gone away. This is an incredibly important case, which the world should not lose sight of”.
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