THE VATICAN SEEMS TO HAVE A LOT OF ILLUSIONS LATELY: The Vatican’s Illusions About Chinese Communism: Cardinal Joseph Zen says that the Holy See misunderstands how repressive China is.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most senior Chinese cleric in the Catholic Church, believes the Vatican is fast approaching a tragic mistake in China.

Within days church leaders could conclude a landmark agreement with the Chinese government after 65 years of acrimony and persecution. Pope Francis isn’t known to have signed off, and before he does Cardinal Zen prays to be heard.

The former bishop of Hong Kong speaks with passion that belies his age (84) and recent hospitalization for a lung virus. As we meet at the church complex where he has lived since 2009—and where he first moved as a novitiate from Shanghai in 1948—he warns of “surrender”: that Chinese leaders are demanding it and Vatican officials appear willing to give it “in the hopes of achieving an agreement.”

Proponents say the deal would help millions of “underground” Catholics and open the world’s most populous country for evangelization. Cardinal Zen says it would sacrifice church principles, abandon the faithful, undermine evangelization and invite further repression.

The deal concerns who gets to select Catholic bishops in China—as vital a power as there is. Beijing has claimed it since the 1950s, when Mao Zedong banished Vatican officials and established the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in their place. That organ now oversees the “official church” of some 70 bishops and five million adherents who answer to Beijing and toe its line. The underground church, by contrast, follows the pope, for which its 30 bishops and estimated seven million adherents face harassment, imprisonment and worse.

To promote unity the Vatican has lately accepted most Beijing-backed bishops. But it has always held that the state-run Patriotic Association is “incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2007, adding: “The authority of the Pope to appoint bishops is given to the church by its founder Jesus Christ. It is not the property of the Pope, neither can the Pope give it to others.”

Yet now the Vatican seems willing to give it to Beijing, which is what Cardinal Zen calls “absolutely unacceptable.”

Sigh.