A Stitch in Haste

The Vatican has reiterated its willingness to join the U.S. and other mypoic nations in thumbing its nose at democratic Taiwan and embracing the Communist dictatorship of the mainland:

"I have said many times that if we had contacts with Beijing, our charge d'affaires who is in Taiwan would go to Beijing, not tomorrow morning, but tonight," [Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State] told reporters on the sidelines of a university event.

China has had no diplomatic ties with the Vatican since 1951, two years after the Communist takeover.

The Vatican's sole reason for not having embraced the Communists previously is the mainland's refusing to allow the Vatican to control the Church within China:

China refuses to allow the Vatican to appoint bishops and it refuses to allow Catholics to recognize the authority of the Pope.

Instead, Chinese Catholics must belong to a state-backed church known as the Catholic Patriotic Association.

"Clash of the Authoritarian Titans." How quaint.

Meanwhile, this is all a polite, "diplomatic" way (both literally and figuratively) of saying that the Vatican couldn't care less about Tibet, its persecuted and slaughtered Buddhists, and the one man on earth who is most analogous to the Pope -- the Dalai Lama. Ditto for the victims of China's oppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

No, as long as the Catholics are okay, then why should the Pope care about anybody else?

Then again, the Vatican has a history of collaborating with dictatorships. Go figure.