{"id":1181,"date":"2005-10-12T23:10:39","date_gmt":"2005-10-12T23:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/one-church.html"},"modified":"2005-10-12T23:10:39","modified_gmt":"2005-10-12T23:10:39","slug":"one-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/one-church.html","title":{"rendered":"One Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the bishop of Hong Kong<\/a><\/p>\n

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There is but \u201cone, holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman\u201d Church in China at this point and we can no longer speak of two Churches, so much so that if the government were to acknowledge this, it will also see \u201cthe convenience of reaching a normalization\u201d with the Holy See, Monsignor Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Bishop of Hong Kong, said today at the Synod, explaining also that almost all the official bishops in China have actually been \u201clegitimized by the Pope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Church in China,\u201d the Bishop said, speaking in Italian, to the approximately 250 Synod Fathers, \u201cwhich appears to be divided in two \u2013 an official one recognized by the government and an underground one which refuses to be independent from Rome \u2013 is actually a single Church, because everyone wants to stay united with the Pope.\u201d  \u201cAfter long years of forced separation,\u201d the Bishop went on to explain, \u201cthe vast majority of bishops of the official Church have been legitimized by the magnanimity of the Holy Father.\u201d  Monsignor Zen did not specify if only by John Paul II or also by Benedict XVI.  \u201cEspecially in recent years,\u201d he continued, \u201cit is becoming ever clearer that bishops ordained without the Roman Pontiff\u2019s approval are accepted by neither the clergy nor the faithful.\u201d  \u201cOne would hope that, in the face of this \u2018sensus Ecclesiae\u2019, the government of Beijing sees the convenience of reaching a normalization of the situation, even if \u2018conservative\u2019 elements within the official Church put up resistance for obvious, self-serving reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the bishop of Hong Kong There is but \u201cone, holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman\u201d Church in China at this point and we can no longer speak of two Churches, so much so that if the government were to acknowledge this, it will also see \u201cthe convenience of reaching a normalization\u201d with the Holy See,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOne Church - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/one-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One Church - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}