Publication Type
Blog Post
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
6-2016
Abstract
On June 30, 2016, the Italian news outlet La Stampa put out an article written by Gianni Valente with the provocative headline, ‘Zen to Chinese Catholics: If agreement with China is signed, do not follow the Pope.’ ‘Zen,’ of course, refers not to Buddhism, but to the retired Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-ken. While the article makes no mention of the word ‘schism’ in Zen’s call for Chinese Catholics to openly disagree with the Bishop of Rome, Cosmos the in Lost’s ever-energetic author Artur Rosman posted it on my Facebook timeline (as he is often wont to do) from a person who captioned it: ‘Retired Hong Kong Cardinal Calls for Schism.’ Rosman asked me if I wanted to comment, and I happily acquiesced, as this is a clear case where critical theorist Slavoj Žižek’s compliment that someone may be wrong but ‘not an idiot’ cannot be extended.
Keywords
Religion, China, Catholics
Discipline
Asian Studies | Religion
Research Areas
Humanities
Publisher
IEEE Computer Society
Citation
TSE, Justin Kh, "Only useful idiots would say that Cardinal Zen is calling for schism in China" (2016). Research Collection School of Social Sciences. Paper 3354.
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3354
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3354
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2016/07/07/only-useful-idiots-would-say-cardinal-zen-is-calling-for-schism-in-china