DIY Catholicism

DIY is an acronym for "do-it-yourself: the activity of decorating or repairing your home, or making things for your home yourself, rather than paying someone else to do it for you." [1]  That is the Cambridge Dictionary's definition.  This entry defines DIY more broadly as any activity (not just home improvement) one wishes to engage in regardless of any established rule, regulation [2] or custom.

In China, "Father Paul Dong Guanhua from Zhengding in northern Hebei province announced during Sunday Mass on May 22[, 2016,] that he had been secretly ordained as a bishop 11 years ago, using rules which may or may not be permitted to be invoked." [3]

Why not self-ordain oneself as a "DIY" Catholic bishop and get on with being one rather than waiting endlessly for the Vatican and the Chinese government to agree on who could be a bishop, and assuming that the Chinese government would not defrock Father Paul Dong Guanhua, why not take it one step further and appoint himself as cardinal and wear red and be excommunicated (as if he had not already been excommunicated), and while being excommunicated, why not go yet another step further and wear papal white since it is not foreseeable that there would be an Asian pope in the Vatican anytime soon?

If "[t]he Orthodox Church [can be] decentralised, having no central authority, earthly head or a single Bishop in a leadership role," [4] what is stopping Chinese Catholics from forming their own DIY decentralized "Holy Sees" with different names just as the Eastern Orthodox Catholics had formed their own governing organizations after their split from the Roman Catholics in 1054? [5]  Since the Catholic and Orthodox churches are the product of a political power struggle 962 years ago, it should not come as a surprise that another one or two new DIY "Catholic" branches could form during this century.

Incidentally, it would be fascinating to see if Saint Malachy's prophesy [6] would be fulfilled since Jorge Mario Bergoglio, upon his elevation to the papacy, chose to be named after "Francis of Assisi, an Italian, or Roman, priest whose original name was Francesco di Pietro (Peter) di Bernardone, 'literally, Peter the Roman.'" [7]

If, indeed, a separation between the DIY ultra-liberal and the traditional ultra-conservative blocs of the Catholic church takes place, this pope would be the last pope to have held power over a single Catholic Church, regardless of where he is placed sequentially, whether he is number 266, or number 268 under a different count. [8]  Furthermore, a country (China) with approximately 1.3 billion [9] potential DIY Catholics and their own DIY pope wielding political and economic power cannot be ignored since they would be about equal in size to the approximately 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide [10] currently under the Vatican (before the liberal-conservative split).



[1] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/diy
[2] http://keydifferences.com/difference-between-rules-and-regulations.html
[3] http://www.ucanews.com/news/new-bishops-in-china-a-problem-for-the-vatican/77385
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Church_organization
[5] http://www.dummies.com/religion/christianity/catholicism/the-split-that-created-roman-catholics-and-eastern-orthodox-catholics/
[6] http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/malachy.asp
[7] http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/pope-francis-historys-final-pontiff/
[8] http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/malachy.asp
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
[10] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-21443313