The National Catholic Register reports that U.S. President Donald Trump, ahead of his May 13–15 Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, pledged to raise the cases of imprisoned Catholic media figure Jimmy Lai and detained Protestant pastor Ezra Jin Mingri. Families and advocates rallied outside the White House, urging Trump to prioritize religious freedom. While the suffering of the faithful under communist persecution is real and demands prayer, the article’s framing—rooted in secular political advocacy, ecumenical relativism, and silence on supernatural truth—exposes the profound spiritual blindness of modernist Catholicism’s engagement with the world.
The Idol of Political Advocacy Over Supernatural Witness
The article presents the rally outside the White House as a legitimate and even praiseworthy act of intercession for the persecuted. Yet from the standpoint of integral Catholic faith, this spectacle reveals a fatal confusion between temporal political action and the supernatural mission of the Church. The families and advocates appeal not to the authority of Christ the King, nor to the sacramental life of the true Church, but to the whims of a secular president whose moral compass is dictated by geopolitical trade interests and personal vendettas.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, unequivocally declared: “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… He is indeed the source of salvation for individuals and for the whole: And there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The article, however, reduces the plight of persecuted Christians to a bargaining chip in U.S.-China diplomacy—a transactional plea stripped of any reference to divine justice, the necessity of baptism, or the eternal destiny of souls. This is not advocacy; it is the abdication of supernatural faith before the altar of political pragmatism.
Ecumenical Syncretism: Equating Catholic and Protestant “Faith”
The article lumps together Jimmy Lai (a Catholic) and Ezra Jin Mingri (a Protestant pastor) under the banner of “religious freedom,” as if their confessions were equally valid paths to salvation. Frances Hui of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation declares: “There are so many hundreds and thousands of Christians in China being imprisoned for their faith,” deliberately erasing the distinction between the one true Church and heretical sects.
This is the heresy of indifferentism, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” (Proposition 18). The Church has always taught that only those in communion with the Roman Pontiff and professing the fullness of Catholic doctrine can be saved—though invincible ignorance may excuse some, it does not sanctify error. By treating Protestant “pastors” as equivalent to Catholic martyrs, the article participates in the very ecumenism that the conciliar sect has weaponized against the Faith.
Silence on the True Nature of Persecution and Martyrdom
The article recounts the detention of Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife on charges of “fraud” and “using superstition to undermine the law,” yet it fails to articulate the theological reality: these souls suffer not for “religion” in the abstract, but for their refusal to submit to a totalitarian state that demands idolatrous obedience. True martyrdom, as defined by the Church, is death in odium fidei—suffered specifically for the Catholic faith. The article’s language is deliberately secularized, reducing sacred witness to “human rights” and “political imprisonment.”
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57). Here, the enemy is not science but the state itself—and the Church’s response, as presented, is not supernatural resistance but lobbying. Where is the call to prayer? Where is the exhortation to repentance? Where is the recognition that only grace, not diplomacy, can free souls from bondage?
The Scandal of Jimmy Lai: A Catholic in the Service of Revolution
Jimmy Lai is described as a “Catholic media tycoon and democracy advocate,” yet his public life has been defined not by fidelity to the Church’s social teaching but by alignment with liberal democratic revolution—a movement historically hostile to the Church. The article notes he “caused lots of turmoil for China,” echoing Trump’s own words. But the Church does not bless “turmoil” or “bedlam” in the name of democracy; she calls for order under Christ the King.
Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei, warned: “The right to rule is not necessarily bound up with any special mode of government… but it must be understood that the source of all power is God, not the people.” Lai’s activism, framed as heroic by the article, aligns with the very liberalism condemned by Pius IX: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State” (Proposition 77). To champion Lai without scrutinizing his ideological commitments is to confuse worldly rebellion with Catholic witness.
The Absence of the True Church: A Vacuum Filled by Secular Idols
Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the true Church’s authority, the necessity of the sacraments, or the role of the Magisterium in guiding the faithful through persecution. Instead, the rally is co-hosted by organizations like the International Campaign for Tibet and the Uyghur Human Rights Project—groups whose agendas are rooted in secular human rights discourse, not Catholic doctrine.
This silence is deafening. The Church has always taught that “the Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself… full freedom and independence from secular authority” (Quas Primas). Yet here, the faithful appeal not to the Church but to the White House—a symbol of the very laicism that Pius XI identified as “the plague that poisons human society.” The article does not merely omit the Church; it replaces her with the state as the arbiter of justice.
Conclusion: The Illusion of “Religious Freedom” Without Christ the King
The article’s fundamental error is its acceptance of the modernist framework: that “religious freedom” is a secular right granted by states, rather than a supernatural gift ordered toward the worship of the true God in the true Church. Pius IX condemned this error in the Syllabus: “The civil liberty of every form of worship… [does not] conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people” (Proposition 79). The rally, the lobbying, the presidential pledges—all are built on the sand of human power, not the Rock of Peter.
Until the faithful return to the unchanging teaching of the Church—that Christ the King must reign over all nations, that only the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of truth, and that no temporal power can substitute for divine justice—their cries for “freedom” will remain hollow. The true liberation of the persecuted lies not in the hands of Donald Trump or Xi Jinping, but in the mercy of God, obtained through prayer, penance, and fidelity to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Source:
Trump Vows to Discuss Freedom of Jimmy Lai, Christian Leaders Detained in China (ncregister.com)
Date: 11.05.2026