Tiananmen Square, where tanks mowed down pro-democracy demonstrators 18 years ago, was the scene this week of a celebration to mark the one-year countdown to next year's summer Olympics, which will be held in Beijing.

The same communist regime that killed democracy advocates in 1989 will host the Olympics in 2008.

The first Gold Medal of these games should be awarded to the Chinese Politburo for its Olympian achievements in religious persecution.

In the past month, these achievements have been particularly prodigious in the priest-snatching category.

The most recent spate of clergy incarcerations began not long after Pope Benedict XVI publicly released a letter to the Catholics of China.

In part, this letter was an effort to reach out to the Chinese regime, which has outlawed the Roman Catholic Church since 1951 and which, since 1957, has operated its own "official" church called the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, in which the bishops and priests are picked and registered by the communist government.

In part, the pope's letter was a statement of things the church views as nonnegotiable in its future relations with that regime.

While the pope conceded that "the Catholic Church which is in China does not have a mission to change the structure or administration of the state," he insisted that "at the same time, though, compliance with those authorities is not acceptable when they interfere unduly in matters regarding the faith and discipline of the church."

He flatly rejected China's claim to religious authority over the church or its bishops. "(T)he proposal for a church that is 'independent' of the Holy See, in the religious sphere, is incompatible with Catholic doctrine," he said.

On July 5, Wen Wei Po, a pro-Communist newspaper based in Hong Kong, published what it described as the first response by an "authoritative personage" to the pope's letter. "Such a pastoral letter is unacceptable to us," said the personage, "and will add new obstacles to the dialogue between China and the Vatican in the next step." Continued...