Abstract
When Pope John XXIII held the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the most renowned religious event of the Twentieth century, Cardinal Thomas Tien Ken-Sin held the first China Bishops Rome Convention (CBRC) at Headquarter Society of Divine Word (SVD), Rome on the second day of the Council. This study focuses on the significant role the high orders of office play in the motivation of specific events, precisely the China Bishops Rome Convention. I will touch upon two specific areas of historical study. The first focuses on a specific aspect of the CBRC — the engagement of the diasporic bishops of China and the bishops of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau during the period of the Second Vatican Council. Through positioning this history in larger historical contexts, I will make clear the smaller narrative of the bishops of diaspora and the influences of schism, specifically the historic moment characterized by controversy of schism and its veiled secrets. The second traces the influence of the Second Vatican Council on various operations in the local Catholic churches. I center my discussion on the organization of the Chinese Bishops' Conference after the declaration of the Constitutio dogmatica De Ecclesia Lumen Gentium (LG) and its placement in the historical context of the First Vatican Council and Second Vatican Council in addition to the global wave of National Bishops Conferences. This uncovers and brings into public light various invaluable primary sources concerning these unfamiliar histories. As a researcher, I hope that reconstruction and weaving together these narrative threads will produce a more vivid pattern of this historic fabric and in doing so help pave way for future historians and myself to explore and provide a more accurate map of this new terrain.