BEIJING (LifeSiteNews) — China’s Communist Party-controlled Catholic clergy are instructing the faithful that “national law takes precedence” over Church teaching and norms as part of a sweeping campaign to subordinate Catholic doctrine to Xi Jinping’s new “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress.”

On June 2, 2026, Chinese religious liberty and human rights magazine Bitter Winter reported that Catholic parishes in China had organized educational activities focused on the aggressive Sinicization legislation, distributing explanatory materials, presenting government policies on ethnic affairs, and encouraging believers to adopt principles associated with the law. The campaign forms part of a broader effort involving all five officially recognized religions in China to support the state’s ethnic integration policies.

“The clergy was instructed to emphasize that national law takes precedence over religious norms,’” Bitter Winter reported.

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The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the state-approved Catholic body operating under government oversight in the People’s Republic of China, has intensified its promotion of the Law on Ethnic Unity and Progress during recent months, according to the report.

One of the most notable initiatives took place in southern Mongolia, where local state-approved Catholic churches held an event under the slogan, “Three Consciousnesses in the Heart, Ethnic Unity for Harmony.” During the gathering, clergy members distributed literature explaining the new ethnic unity law and outlined government policies concerning ethnic affairs. Participants were encouraged to strengthen what officials describe as national, civic, and legal consciousness.

The event also promoted adherence to the “Five Recognitions,” a concept frequently associated with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s policies regarding ethnic and religious affairs. According to the report, believers were encouraged to demonstrate loyalty to the state through acceptance of these principles.

The first “recognition” concerns attachment to the People’s Republic of China as the national homeland. As the report says, “this requires religious believers … to affirm emotional and political attachment to the PRC as the only legitimate national home.”

The second involves acceptance of the concept of a unified Chinese nation encompassing the country’s various ethnic groups. “All ethnic groups … are expected to see themselves as branches of one overarching national identity,” the article reads.

The third promotes identification with Chinese culture as defined by the Chinese Communist Party. This means that Confucian values have to be considered superior to every other religious value, and Catholics are expected to prefer these values to their own whenever a conflict between them arises.

An emblematic example of a Confucian value incompatible with Catholic doctrine is the principle of absolute filial obedience, known in Chinese as xiào. This Confucian value implies total submission to family and state authority, even when such authority is unjust or acts contrary to personal conscience. According to Confucian doctrine, moral order coincides with political order, and goodness is defined by what preserves social harmony. Consequently, man is defined by his social role and his duties toward power.

Catholicism, on the other hand, recognizes the primacy of conscience rightly formed by God and the Church, and disobedience to political – even religious – authority becomes a duty when that authority explicitly contradicts divine and natural laws.

The fourth “recognition” requires acknowledgement of the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership role in society and religious affairs. The fifth calls for support of socialism with Chinese characteristics as “the only correct path for China.”

Organizers reportedly encouraged the incorporation of the ethnic unity law into parish life, routine activities, and the formation of Catholic faithful.

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Across China, the five state‑approved religions have been mobilized to promote the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress. Their websites, publications, and training programs echo the same message: to strengthen identification with the Chinese nation, to uphold the communists’ vision of cultural integration, and to reinterpret religious doctrine through a political lens. Among them, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association has become one of the most active participants in this propaganda campaign.

The report concludes by asking whether the Holy See is aware of the fact that the Sino-Vatican secret agreements played a significant role in this scenario.

“The Vatican China Deal of 2018 was intended to heal divisions and create space for pastoral life. Eight years later, the results look different. The official Catholic Church has been absorbed into the machinery of Sinicization, and its clergy is being trained to disseminate political ideology rather than Catholic teaching. As the Ethnic Unity Law becomes a central tool of cultural assimilation, the Church’s role in promoting it raises a question that cannot be avoided,” the report reads.

“Will the Holy See reconsider the consequences of an agreement that has allowed the state to present a government agency as the voice of Catholicism in China, even as it ignores the Pope and amplifies the Party’s most intrusive policies?”