Nuns arrested as Beijing turns up heat on Church in Hong Kong
www.reuters.com
Clerics see arrests as a sign China wants to shut Hong Kong’s unofficial Vatican mission, where nuns work. The diocese has also moved to curb activist voices.

Ceteris paribus, democracy is good.

There can also be a lot of complicated and locally specific dynamics complicating that, and sovereignty is important for the world working smoothly.

These two factors combine to make me pretty hesitant to comment too loudly on Hong Kong just because there’s so much I don’t know.

But here are a couple of things I do know:

  1. When you arrest nuns–here in the US, too–99 times out of 100, you’re the bad guy.
  2. A state applying pressure on the the Catholic Church to reshape its hierarchy (instead of issuing external criticism, etc.) is some real Borgia shit.