{"id":6209,"date":"2005-06-26T00:18:18","date_gmt":"2005-06-26T00:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/a-thaw.html"},"modified":"2005-06-26T00:18:18","modified_gmt":"2005-06-26T00:18:18","slug":"a-thaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/a-thaw.html","title":{"rendered":"A thaw?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An LATimes piece on the changing Vatican-China relations<\/a><\/p>\n

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Twice a year, in May and September, the worlds of the patriotic and underground Catholic churches converge at Cross Mountain in Shaanxi province as thousands of faithful climb the mountain, carrying crucifixes and kneeling in prayer on the way up. At the top, priests hear confessions in the open air as a team of priests says mass. And in a Chinese touch, firecrackers are set off at the moment when the bread and wine are blessed, a traditional means of dispelling evil spirits.<\/p>\n

The crowd is dotted with obvious undercover police in black shirts, expensive slacks and sunglasses, who mostly just observe the proceedings.<\/p>\n

The festival is inspired by Liu Jialu, a priest who, while in Italy around 1717, asked the pope if he would designate a sacred place in China.<\/p>\n

Li Duan, 89, a bishop in Fengxiang village in Shaanxi province, has spent much of his life navigating the divide between the underground and official churches.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An LATimes piece on the changing Vatican-China relations Twice a year, in May and September, the worlds of the patriotic and underground Catholic churches converge at Cross Mountain in Shaanxi province as thousands of faithful climb the mountain, carrying crucifixes and kneeling in prayer on the way up. At the top, priests hear confessions in…<\/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-6209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA thaw? - 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\/06\/a-thaw.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A thaw? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An LATimes piece on the changing Vatican-China relations Twice a year, in May and September, the worlds of the patriotic and underground Catholic churches converge at Cross Mountain in Shaanxi province as thousands of faithful climb the mountain, carrying crucifixes and kneeling in prayer on the way up. At the top, priests hear confessions in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/a-thaw.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-06-26T00:18:18+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":"A thaw? - 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\/06\/a-thaw.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A thaw? - Via Media","og_description":"An LATimes piece on the changing Vatican-China relations Twice a year, in May and September, the worlds of the patriotic and underground Catholic churches converge at Cross Mountain in Shaanxi province as thousands of faithful climb the mountain, carrying crucifixes and kneeling in prayer on the way up. 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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\/6209","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=6209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}