A Study On The Catholic Local Society In The Period Of Late Qing Dynasty And Early Republic Of China

Shanxi，one of the relatively early provinces introducing Catholicism， has seen theprocess of nearly four hundred years from the first introduction in South Shanxi in thelate Ming dynasty to the popularization all over the province in the twentieth century.After times of changes in the Catholic communication and parish partition, the firstindependent parish in Shanxi province was founded in1844. Forty-six years later,Luan parish having more than thirteen thousand believers from Changzhi, Jincheng,Linfen and Yuncheng was picked out by the Vatican to be an independent one inparallel with Taiyuan parish. Generally, the partition of Luan parish is not just asimple case of regionalization, but a systematic project concerning many complicatedparts such as the communication of Catholicism, the official partition anddevelopment of the parish, the profound social context of China and so on.Throughout history, we could see the extensive and profound effect Luan parish madeon the whole area of Luan from its development situation and internal organizationstructure to operation pattern and interaction with the local people.