Jimmy Lai’s Show Trial Reveals Beijing’s War on Christ the King
The EWTN News portal (February 9, 2026) reports on the sentencing of Catholic entrepreneur Jimmy Lai to 20 years imprisonment by Hong Kong authorities under China’s national security laws. The article details condemnations from U.S. officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Rep. Chris Smith, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, who decry the verdict as politically motivated and call for Lai’s release on humanitarian grounds. Lai’s legal team asserts the trial destroyed Hong Kong’s rule of law, while politicians demand diplomatic consequences against China.
Naturalism Masquerading as Justice
The article’s narrative operates within a purely naturalistic framework, framing Lai’s persecution solely as a “human rights” issue rather than spiritual warfare (militia est vita hominis super terram – Job 7:1). While accurately reporting the tyrannical nature of China’s actions, it reduces Lai’s Catholic identity to a biographical footnote rather than the central cause of communist persecution. This omission exposes modernism’s eradication of the supernatural from political analysis.
Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Redemptoris (1937) explicitly condemned communism’s “satanic scourge” which “strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse.” The article’s failure to cite this infallible condemnation renders its criticism of China incomplete and doctrinally compromised.
False Equivalence in Defending Liberty
Secretary Rubio’s statement that Lai’s sentence “casts aside the international commitments Beijing made” reveals the bankruptcy of secular diplomacy. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration rests on the heresy that nations may negotiate rights without reference to Christ the King. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas (1925):
“When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”
The article’s emphasis on “fundamental freedoms” divorced from submission to divine law constitutes the very religious indifferentism condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejected the notion that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15).
Humanitarian Parole vs. Redemptive Suffering
Rep. Smith’s call for Lai’s release on “humanitarian grounds” ignores the Catholic theology of redemptive suffering. While the Church rightly demands justice for prisoners, the appeal to mere physical wellbeing (“his poor health…underscores the necessity of prompt release”) reflects modernism’s materialist worldview. The martyrs’ example teaches that imprisonment becomes supernatural victory when united to Christ’s Passion – a truth absent from the article’s narrative.
St. Thomas Aquinas states: “The precepts of the divine law are about the acts of all virtues: and acts of virtue may be either acts of justice…or acts of other virtues, which are commanded insofar as they are directed to justice” (STh I-II, 100, 2). Lai’s imprisonment constitutes an act not merely against human justice but against divine sovereignty – a distinction erased in the politicians’ statements.
Silence on Ecclesiastical Complicity
The article omits the conciliar sect’s betrayal of Chinese Catholics through the 2018 Vatican-Beijing agreement, which recognized communist-appointed “bishops.” This apostasy enabled Beijing’s persecution of underground Catholics like Lai. As the Holy Office decreed under Pius XII (1958):
“Catholics cannot adhere to communist parties…because their doctrine contains principles irreconcilable with Catholic faith and morality.”
Modernist “popes” have abandoned this clear teaching, with Bergoglio praising Xi Jinping’s “great humanity” (2019). The article’s failure to expose this ecclesial treason makes it complicit in the neo-church’s appeasement of tyranny.
The True Crime: Witnessing Christ the King
Lai’s real “crime” is embodying the Catholic resistance to state idolatry. His newspaper Apple Daily defended religious liberty when the Vatican surrendered it. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili Sane (1907), modernists reduce faith to “man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20) – precisely the anthropocentric religion China enforces through its “patriotic” Catholic association.
The 20-year sentence constitutes martyrdom deferred – a test of Lai’s fidelity to the extra Ecclesiam nulla salus principle abandoned by the conciliar sect. While politicians demand his earthly freedom, the article ignores the Church’s duty to pray for his perseverance unto death, should God permit martyrdom.
Source:
Secretary Rubio, other leaders denounce Jimmy Lai’s ‘tragic’ 20-year sentence (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 09.02.2026