High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In 1958, the People's Republic of China's communist government appointed two Catholic bishops to be consecrated without approval from the Vatican. Since then, the Catholic Church in China has been controlled by a government-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, that opposes submission to the Holy See and the Pope. Effectively, this association, if it can be considered Catholic, violates Church Canon law section 751, which states, "...schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff..." Pope Benedict XVI referred to its agents as "persons who are not 'ordained', and sometimes not even baptized", who "control and take decisions concerning important ecclesial questions, including the appointment of Bishops" and he went on to say: "Consequently, we have witnessed a demeaning of the Petrine and episcopal ministries by virtue of a vision of the Church according to which the Supreme Pontiff, the Bishops and the priests risk...