In a new sign of improving relations between the Vatican and China, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has just returned from China, where he met with Catholic church and government officials and publicly celebrated Mass in a parish church in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, said this week that he was "very optimistic" that diplomatic ties between the church and Beijing would be established, opening a new chapter in a long and sometimes difficult history in church-state relations. Mahony’s low-key journey was not announced in advance because of what archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg called diplomatic sensitivities. Although Mahony described the tour as a private sabbatical, he said he is preparing a report of his findings for the Vatican. [Source<\/a>] Reading the article I could almost imagine in it Cardinal Mahony declaring that his diocese has joined the Patriotic Catholic church in China. After all they would not have to make many if any changes. The Patriotic church does not come under the authority of the Pope. Between liturgical wackiness, ordaining an openly homosexual deacon, trying to make pastoral associates the equal of priests, heterodox conferences, known dissenters in the diocesan magazine – I think you could make a pretty good case that there is not much difference between the Patriotic Catholic church in China and the L.A. Diocese. Faithful Catholics in L.A. don’t come close to the level of persecution as the underground church in China, but their beliefs are not exactly met with open arms by many in that diocese.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a new sign of improving relations between the Vatican and China, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has just returned from China, where he met with Catholic church and government officials…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[Via Vatican Watcher<\/a>]<\/p>\n