The most prominent Christian in China has been arrested and threatened with prison. As Lifesitenews reports, 90-old Cardinal Joseph Zen

has reportedly been released on bail, after he was arrested by Hong Kong police under the terms of the 2020 national security law. Hong Kong journalist Kris Cheng, who reported on Zen’s arrest, noted that the cardinal will be released on bail, along with the other three trustees of the 612 Fund arrested with him.

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The Hong Kong security police have allegedly arrested the four for their role as trustees of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund. The fifth trustee, Cyd Ho Sau-lan, is already in jail for “illegal assemblies” and has not been re-arrested, according to the South China Morning Post.

The Fund was established to offer “legal, medical, psychological and emergency financial assistance” to those involved in the 2019 protests against the government’s Extradition Law Amendment Bill, which would allow prisoners to be transferred to China for trial.

A Compromised Vatican Emits Little Squeaks

The Vatican has offered only tepid comments on this shocking arrest of the leader of the Catholic Church in China. Perhaps Pope Francis is embarrassed. His pro-China policy has come back to bite him.

As Stream readers might have read, several years ago the Vatican crafted a secret alliance with the Chinese Communist party. The crack negotiator who hammered out its terms? Since-defrocked child molester, the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. What’s in the deal?

Nobody knows. Like the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, its key terms are classified. We have heard that the Vatican gets some $2 billion per year, according to a whistleblower. China gets gala visits by top Vatican officials like Bishop Marcelo Sorondo. The highest authority on Catholic social teaching, he followed his Potemkin village, shepherded tour of China by praising the Communist regime. He said that it lived out Catholic social teaching much better than Trump’s America.

Pope Francis’ Right Hand Man Flatters CCP Organ Thieves

Sorondo went back to China to praise the regime again in 2019. He attended a ghoulish meeting of the regime’s official organ thieves, who steal the livers and kidneys from living political prisoners and Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps. Then they sell the organs on the international black market, according to Forbes magazine.

What has the Vatican gotten out of the deal? Not much beyond the money. Perhaps Pope Francis hoped that the regime would give the Vatican input into the choice of bishops for China. No deal. The CCP keeps picking compliant servants of the Party, who teach a bastardized creed corrupted with Chinese national socialism — the ideology now in power. Meanwhile, persecution of genuine, independent Christians has viciously increased, while three million Uyghur Muslims endure brainwashing, torture, and forced abortions. And China is arming faster than Hitler’s Germany in the 30s.

The U.S. Bishops’ Deal with the Democrats

Those thirty pieces of silver didn’t go very far, did they, Pope Francis? But then how much did the Church get for quashing principled objections to mandate vaccines tainted by abortion? How much are U.S. bishops benefiting from their coddling of pro-abort Catholics like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi? Rabid pro-choicers are still defacing American churches, stealing tabernacles full of the Eucharist, and terrorizing Supreme Court justices at their homes.

When you cynically abandon the most vulnerable and make deals with tyrants who don’t respect human life or freedom, you’ve no right to be surprised when they betray you.

Selling Your Soul for Pennies on the Dollar

Pope Francis was quick to denounce the Trump administration’s every effort to enforce America’s immigration laws, and stop human trafficking. But it has remained eerily silent over the outright genocide aimed at religious believers in China, such as Uyghurs and other Muslims in East Turkistan. Likewise Pope Francis made not a peep when the Chinese regime bulldozed Protestant churches, and arrested other Catholic bishops. Nor will the Church’s leadership offer strong support to overturning Roe v. Wade. They’ve made their deal, and are eating their mess of pottage hoping no one will notice.

Once you’ve sold out your principles, you have no right to complain. American corporations such as Nike, Apple, and Disney pour money into Woke causes on U.S. soil — but make billions more using slave labor in China. Or censoring their products to match the Communist party line.

Top Gun Mocks American Heroes

How much can we enjoy the patriotic pretenses of a movie such as Top Gun, knowing that its makers caved to CCP pressure, and falsified U.S. military history? That’s right. One of the patches on Tom Cruise’s jacket from the first movie came from the U.S. Flying Tigers, who fought on behalf of the anti-Communist Republic of China. To make millions selling tickets in China, the filmmakers obeyed the CCP and airbrushed that history out. But hey, let’s go see this craven movie and reward obedience to President Xi. It will be in the spirit of sending our team to Beijing’s genocide Olympics.

When the Catholic Church and the United States government are both led by people compromised in secret deals with China, that nation’s evil regime has a virtually free hand. And now we see precisely how it plans to go on acting: as the most inhuman, totalitarian government in human history, with the largest population on earth.

But hey, the arc of history leads toward justice, right?

Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, author, activist and human rights worker. Subscribe to his podcast, The Jason Jones Show.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. Together, Jones and Zmirak wrote The Race to Save Our Century, and “God, Guns, and the Government.”