Is the China deal a repeat of the Investiture Controversy?

Steve Widengoff is next.

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Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast

for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith.

The long history of the Catholic Church means that

the Church has faced almost every kind of political question

or crisis or whatnot, but we're in one again in China.

Difficulty, a political difficulty for the Church in China,

dealing with the communist government of China,

trying to figure out how the Church can defend its rights

and its people in China, particularly because China

is an expressly atheist state that wants everything

under the control of the government, including churches.

Lots of folks have suggested that Pope Francis has kind

of slipped into an Investiture Controversy

here with the Chinese government, allowing

the Chinese government to have way too much say

in who can be a bishop in China.

Well, that does sound a lot like what happened

in the 10th and 11th century in Europe.

So we decided to get a historian, a church historian,

...