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This may belong in the off topic forum, but I was wondering - in China what mass is used the Communist sanctioned Church, the new or old mass? And what are masses like in the underground Church? And do any Russian Catholics there still exist?

If I'm not mistaken, the Chinese Patriotic Church kept the Old Latin Liturgy until the 1970's, like the Roman Catholic Church, but after Vatican II, even if they didn't attend the meetings, they adopted all the reforms and documents and now they have translations based on the liturgy followed in Taiwan (Novus Ordo Mass in Chinese). They did preserve some things (altar rails, and so on) in some places.

Regarding the Underground Church, some use the modern texts, but others use the Old Liturgy and reject the new one (Cardinal Kung celebrated only the Old Mass for example).

Regarding the Russian Catholics there were some in the Harbin region but there are no statistics about them, they must have switched to Orthodox or remained as cripto-christians.

In 1984, when I visited, the Latin Mass was still in exclusive use in the Chinese churches - the bishops I spoke with said that Chinese was certainly on the agenda, but they were determined to move slowly and carefully - the Church in China had already had more than enough turmoil.

As to the Greek-Catholic Exarchate, I'm aware of a few individuals still in China, including a young Deacon in Shanghai; perhaps it is time to provide some encouragement. The existing Orthodox translations are probably both illegible and unintelligible to those educated since 1949.

Fr. Serge

EWTN news reports that the "official" Chinese Church's use of the 1962 missal is one of the reasons Pope Benedict XVI instituted the new motu propio.

[qb]"Pope Benedict XVI�s Motu Propio allowing for the universal celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Missal takes effect, Bishop Juan Ignacio Gonzalez Errazuriz said more than �putting an end to the schism of Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers,� one of the most important objectives of the initiative would be the promotion of unity among Chinese Catholics."[/qb]

Full article is at:

http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=82040

On my last visit to Peking in December 2006, I found that the 1967 was in general use. Previously, in 2004, the early 5 a.m. low mass in most places was still the Tridentine form. This time, in 2006, my enquiry as to whether the 5 a.m. masses were still Tridentine was met with answer that the priests who knew the older rite were rare and that the masses were generally now of the 1967 missal.

There's good news regarding Orthodox translations - the Moscow Patriarchate has a new Chinese-Slavonic prayerbook with the entire text of the DL. The Chinese text is certainly vernacular Chinese, and not Classical Chinese! Fr Serge, we have a copy for you

For some bizarre reason, even though permission had long been given for the celebration of Mass in Mandarin - and I believe a Missal was even printed for that purpose - Mass continued in Latin in China (which presents problems, since one or two Latin sounds do not normally occur in Chinese, just as the German "ch" does not normally occur in English). To get around this artificial problem, the nineteenth and early twentieth century missioners concocted a set of prayers for the people to offer during Mass, which were at least reasonably related to the Mass itself.

All this is prefatory to the information that when I visited in 1984, the people in Nantang Cathedral in Peking were still dutifully praying for Pope Pius, even though he had been dead for nearly 30 years!

On the other hand, I noticed in the Altar Missal that nobody had deleted the commemoration of the Pope, and someone had written in the commeration of St. Joseph.

Take all that for whatever it's worth.

I shall gratefully accept the new Chinese prayer-book in parallel Slavonic and Chinese.

Fr. Serge