A year ago, I wrote a story about the fiery, 85-year-old former Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and his staunch opposition to an agreement between the Chinese government and the Vatican, which at the time was believed to be months away. The Chinese Communist Party cut ties with the Vatican in 1951.

Today, talks are stalled, as the two sides continue to grapple over how bishops are chosen: Should the ultimate control be with the Vatican? Or the government-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association? There are also concerns about what would happen to the underground Catholic Church, which in the past 70 years has faced intense persecution for their loyalty to the pope.

At a recent Mass dedicated to Wei Heping, an underground priest who died two years ago under suspicious circumstances, Zen reiterated the foolishness of making a deal with the Chinese Communist Party: "Dialogue is important and necessary. However, [the Holy See] is too optimistic about the communist regime. It has depended on its diplomacy instead of faith. It does not have a bottom line to reach an agreement."

In China, the Catholic Church has faced greater difficulties from the government than Protestants because of their direct connection to a foreign authority. While Protestant churches are growing in both numbers and boldness, Roman Catholicism is stagnating and even shrinking. The difference in numbers is staggering: Protestants numbered 1 million in 1949 (the beginning of the People’s Republic of China) and has grown to about 60 million today. On the other hand, Catholicism grew from 3 million in 1949 to just 12 million today.

In the Jesuit publication America Magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ian Johnson examines the causes for this difference. For one, Catholic missionaries were slower than their Protestant counterparts in raising up indigenous leaders. So when the Communists took over and kicked out the foreigners, the Catholic Church struggled to survive as local Protestant believers stealthily evangelized and started house churches.

While Protestant churches are growing in both numbers and boldness, Roman Catholicism is stagnating and even shrinking.

The hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church also made it more difficult to grow under a repressive government, which requires unapproved groups to travel light and flexible. Even underground Catholic churches need their bishops approved by higher-ups, while any Protestant believer with access to a Bible (or a part of a Bible) could start a church anywhere: in a house, a farmhouse, or a warehouse.

Johnson traveled to the small Catholic village of Dongergou in Shanxi province, and found that Catholicism is still mainly a rural religion in China. As the villages empty out, the faith isn’t translating to the cities. They see Catholicism as a part of life they were leaving behind, rather than a vibrant faith for their new life in the big cities. Meanwhile Protestant churches are growing among the urban population.

“We do feel that in terms of expansion, we are not as ambitious and bold as Protestants,” Jing Anqi told Johnson. The 27-year-old Catholic had moved from a local small village to Beijing. “They can preach more confidently. But what we focus on now is trying to influence people with our deeds, not with our lips.”

Turtle-shaped rock formations: At every scenic tourist spot I’ve visited in China, tour guides love to point out a rock shaped like a turtle, a hill that looks like nine horses, or a sandstone column that looks like a maiden holding a basket. Sometimes the likeness is ambiguous at best, and I loved how author Peter Hessler described this phenomenon in his 2001 book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze: “This is a ritual at every Chinese nature site; there seemed to be no value in the natural world unless it was linked to man—some shape that a mountain recalled, or a poem that had been written about it, or an ancient legend that brought the rocks to life.”