Maybe because things like having three priests arrested and then having the arrest denied by the Chinese officials doesn’t bother you that much.

The whereabouts of three “underground” priests in northern China, detained by police months ago, are still unknown while another has apparently been persuaded to join the “open” Church, say sources.

Fathers Liu Jianzhong, Zhang Cunhui and Zhong Mingchang of Xuanhua diocese were taken away by plainclothes police on June 8, June 14 and Sept. 16 respectively.

Local Church sources said that when the priests’ family members went to government departments to enquire about them, the authorities denied detaining them and refused family requests to help locate them.

Meanwhile, Father Simon Zhang Jianlin, who was taken by police in July, is under house arrest in a county government building. Sources say he has been “brainwashed” and has been persuaded to join the Catholic Patriotic Association, but he is allowed to receive visitors in the premises.

Their bishop is 80 and is in hiding.

I can understand that when some products like the lousy CFL lightbulbs that the government in its wisdom is forcing everyone to use are only made in China you don’t have a choice about your purchasing. But when options are available why would China even be on the list?

Source: Union of Catholic Asian News

This morning our Product Manager told me that our most recent newsletter on why we don’t carry Chinese products elicited more response than ANY newsletter we have ever sent. All comments were positive about our stance.

Today I found an article talking about how over 13 million Chinese babies are killed through abortion every year. That number does not include those killed in rural areas or those killed by the 10 million abortifacient drugs sold in China each year.

And those reports about China relaxing its one-child policy?

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has affirmed that its one child policy will continue. The official state news agency reported that despite media-generated rumors of a relaxation to the rules, the policy will “be strictly enforced as a means of controlling births for decades to come as overpopulation is still a major concern.”

…

Despite claims by the United Nations Population Fund that the Chinese program no longer employs coerced abortion, an investigation by Population Research Institute (PRI) found earlier this year that the government continues to employ “crippling fines,” intimidation, pressure for sterilization and even the seizure of “illegal children” to force local people to comply. PRI’s Colin Mason, who headed up the investigation, told LifeSiteNews.com that “any and all official action concerning reproductive health and/or population control was entirely coercive and administrative in nature.”

Again, why wouldn’t you avoid buying as much as you can from there, especially Catholic products?

Ironically, we found out this morning that Catholic Book Publishing, a huge supplier of kids books and children’s missals, is moving all of its children’s products to China for production. Would you be willing to pay an additional .50 for a book if it wasn’t produced in China? We are but not enough people have expressed concern with publishers and manufacturers to convince them that their bottom line will actually suffer from these types of decisions.

If you like the Catholic Book Publishing children’s books, now would probably be a good time to buy them because we are going to be discontinuing all of them over the next few months as our supply runs out.

A Chinese bookstore owner who was taken into custody and accused of printing Bibles to give to local house church congregations has been sentenced to three years in prison and fined nearly $22,000, according to a report from Compass Direct.

The report said a Beijing court today delivered the guilty verdict in the trial of Shi Weihan on allegations he ran an “illegal business operation.”

WND has reported on the case since the businessman’s original arrest, including when a report came out last year that even his friends hardly recognized him because of the deterioration of his health while in jail awaiting court proceedings.

But hey, stuff costs less when it comes from there and they basically own our country because of all the debt we keep selling them so why not buy Catholic products from there, too?

Next time you’re shopping for Catholic stuff, ask yourself why a Catholic store would sell Catholic products from a country that regularly persecutes Christians.

H/T World Net Daily

…seems to have affected a lot of people, including The One, Barrack Obama, who seems to think that the Chinese transportation infrastructure is far superior to the U.S.A.’s. I guess that as long as you only look at the things in Beijing upgraded for the Olympics he may have a point but I’m sure he wouldn’t enjoy the dirt roads and lack of basic water supplies in other parts of the country.

The Olympics also temporarily drowned out the ongoing persecution of Christians, political protestors and Tibet. I did notice a few news reports of people getting arrested during the festivities and today comes news that 74-year-old Catholic Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo has been arrested for the twelfth time in four years. His current whearabouts are unknown. It is especially strange that he would be arrested since he has been under house arrest since 2007 so it isn’t likely he got himself into more trouble during that time.

Again, I have to ask: Why are you buying Catholic products from a country that has a governmental policy of religious persecution?

You know things in China must really be bad when the secular media starts to take note of China’s abortion and child labor practices. HBO is showing a documentary next week that includes film shot by people posing as tourists about the Chinese child slave trade and the forced abortion and selective abortion practices in China.

There really isn’t any excuse to be buying Catholic products from a country that has such a horrible anti-morality pervading the country.

Ever since we started our business we have had a policy that we won’t sell products from China. This is why you won’t find cheap statues, porecelain nightlights, St. Joseph House Selling Kits and plush dolls in our store or on our site.

If you want to see why, you can read our past posts on Chinese human rights abuses and religious persecution. Today there is another article about how China is starving its own people to make sure that the Chinese Olympics are successful. The few people in the village of Shijiayao aren’t allowed to trap rain water because it is all being diverted to Beijing for the games and to support the growth of the city.

Reservoirs across the country are being drained to make sure there is enough water to fill the cannals and fountains in the city during the games.

Read the whole article and give it some thought when you find a great deal on a Chinese statue at another Catholic store.

This is our second posting from bloggers who are attending the Catholic New Media Celebration in Atlanta this month. We asked them the question “How has new media like blogging and podcasting changed evangelization?” Here is Mark Shea’s answer:

I suppose the quickest summation is this: before the appearance of the New Media I was hardly doing Catholic evangelization.  Now I do it all the time.

See, it’s like this: I’m a writer.  Writing before the Internet involved a lot of paper, postage, ink, and time.  You actually had to mail the article to an editor, who then had to do stuff to the paper (either send it back with a polite “No thanks” in the Self Addressed Stamped Envelope or send it on to copy editing to change your esoteric piece titled “Encountering the Mystery of Christ in the Most Holy Rosary” into “My Friend the Rosary”).  Weirdness happened in typesetting.  Editors tend to buff out things they don’t like.  All this took time.

Then came the internet.  Sending article and book MSS became extremely easy (except for Luddites).  That sped up the time in which I could write and turn around articles.  It also made possible the birth of the USENET group and other forms of online “community” where people could chat about the Faith.  This meant new opportunities to meet friends, interesting questions–and jerks.  Conversations ensued.  Those turned into ideas for articles and books.  Those turned into articles and books.  Those turned into a wider audience and people with new ideas for exploiting the technology such as www.catholicexchange.com, which hired me to write for them.

Then help with book projects on various motion pictures such as The Passion of the Christ. Then do radio spots.  Then do podcasts.

All that led to lots of talks around the English-speaking world from Australia to England.  And all the while I was busy writing.  I started a blog called Catholic and Enjoying it which wound up being read by a not-inconsiderable number of folk and which put me in touch with a lot of other bloggers, info sources, and media types, who in turn afforded me more opportunities to talk about the Catholic gospel (aka “the gospel”) on various fora and in various venues.  I’ve talked about the gospel on college campuses, in pubs, on cruise ships, in people’s houses, on the air, in airplanes, on the tube, at parishes, at Protestant churches, with atheists, and a lot of other places that I can’t think of offhand.

And not just me.  The blogosphere has made possibly 50 gazillion creative initiatives for spreading the gospel and doing corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Some folk will hear, on That Day, “I was a tsunami victim and you raised funds for me on your blog.  Enter into the kingdom.”

Isn’t it funny how these things work?

It’s the same situation with that cheap plastic statue you just bought at your local “Christian” store.  You may be against the whole situation in China, but you can’t really can’t change it on your own.  That dinky cheap crucifix you just bought (you know, the one with the “Made in China” sticker on the back) they can’t even buy in China.  How about rosaries, bibles, or scapulars? They can get you in trouble, even jail time and beatings.  So why is a country that tries really hard to stamp out Christianity and Catholicism the largest producer of cheap religious articles?  Maybe we should try to figure that out.