{"id":4239,"date":"2005-08-09T16:24:50","date_gmt":"2005-08-09T16:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html"},"modified":"2005-08-09T16:24:50","modified_gmt":"2005-08-09T16:24:50","slug":"the-sisters-of-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html","title":{"rendered":"The Sisters of Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting article from Commonweal. Check out the sidebar, as well.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

It is an exciting time for the Presentation community. Since the government\u2019s ban on religious orders was lifted twenty years ago, the Presentation sisters have been allowed to recruit actively. Though they haven\u2019t had much success in China\u2019s large cities, they have many aspiring postulants from the countryside. The sisters also have more power to chart their own course. No longer beholden to colonial French bishops, they are defining themselves in ways that their predecessors never dreamed of. And though the sisters avoid discussing church politics, they may be uniquely suited to deal with the most serious problem facing the Chinese church: the gap between the \u201cofficial\u201d or \u201cregistered\u201d church and the unregistered \u201cunderground\u201d church. <\/p>\n

It is a schism that dates to the 1950s, when Communist leaders began requiring Catholics to register with the Catholic Patriotic Association [CPA], a government agency charged with oversight of all church activities in China, including the appointment of bishops. Today, the Vatican recognizes both churches and publicly advocates reconciliation, but the division remains bitter (see sidebar<\/a>). Nevertheless, over the last twenty years the differences between the two churches have become less and less clear. For example, though China\u2019s registered bishops are officially appointed by the CPA, the Vatican has quietly recognized the legitimacy of approximately two-thirds of them. Equally significant, priests and sisters associated with the registered church are no longer required to be members of the CPA. Many of the Presentation sisters grew up in the underground church and only later chose to belong to a registered community of sisters. Thus, if and when the Vatican and Beijing restore diplomatic relations, the sisters will be in an excellent position to heal the rifts that have developed in China\u2019s Catholic community. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article from Commonweal. Check out the sidebar, as well. It is an exciting time for the Presentation community. Since the government\u2019s ban on religious orders was lifted twenty years ago, the Presentation sisters have been allowed to recruit actively. Though they haven\u2019t had much success in China\u2019s large cities, they have many aspiring postulants…<\/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-4239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Sisters of Shanghai - 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\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Sisters of Shanghai - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Interesting article from Commonweal. Check out the sidebar, as well. It is an exciting time for the Presentation community. Since the government\u2019s ban on religious orders was lifted twenty years ago, the Presentation sisters have been allowed to recruit actively. Though they haven\u2019t had much success in China\u2019s large cities, they have many aspiring postulants…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-09T16:24:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Sisters of Shanghai - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Sisters of Shanghai - Via Media","og_description":"Interesting article from Commonweal. Check out the sidebar, as well. It is an exciting time for the Presentation community. Since the government\u2019s ban on religious orders was lifted twenty years ago, the Presentation sisters have been allowed to recruit actively. Though they haven\u2019t had much success in China\u2019s large cities, they have many aspiring postulants…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-08-09T16:24:50+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html","name":"The Sisters of Shanghai - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-08-09T16:24:50+00:00","dateModified":"2005-08-09T16:24:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-sisters-of-shanghai.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Sisters of Shanghai"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/4239","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=4239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}