As widely reported, Catholic Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin has not been publicly seen since July 7, the day he was ordained auxiliary bishop of Shanghai and the day when he dissented from state religious policy. Catholic sources report that the 44-year-old Bishop Ma is now being detained under a form of house arrest, cynically described as a “retreat” by state religious authorities.
At his ordination mass two weeks ago, Bishop Ma avoided the imposition of hands by a bishop unapproved by the Vatican and publicly announced his resignation from the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPA), an oversight body established by the state to register and regulate all Catholic worship, teaching, and practice within the country. He quit the CPA, he declared, because it was an obstacle to his leadership within the Catholic Church. According to a transcript, toward the ceremony’s close, invoking the words of the Jesuit St. Ignatius, he said:
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