Los Angeles ? When Cardinal Roger Mahony unveiled his towering Our Lady of the Angels this week, he hailed it as the first Roman Catholic cathedral to be dedicated in the United States in 30 years.

That claim is rattling some nerves in Dodge City, Kan., where a new Catholic cathedral was dedicated nine months ago.

The vast Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe is reflected in the baptismal font that dominates the entry of the new church that was dedicated Dec. 9, 2001, in Dodge City. Some nerves were rattled this week when Los Angeles' Cardinal Roger Mahony hailed his gleaming new Our Lady of the Angels church as the first Roman Catholic cathedral to be dedicated in the United States in 30 years.

“Most of my priests just shake their heads and wonder where the news services are getting their information,” said a befuddled Bishop Ronald Gilmore.

The newly built Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe with its copper roof that seems to rise above the surrounding plains is the seat of Gilmore’s 49-parish Catholic Diocese of Dodge City.

Mahony, who was among those attending Our Lady of Guadalupe’s Dec. 9, 2001, dedication, said it doesn’t fit his definition of a cathedral.

“I was there and it was very nice,” Mahony, dressed in crimson vestments, recalled after presiding over a three-hour dedication Mass at his modernist downtown cathedral on Monday. “It was built primarily to be a parish and they designated it to be a cathedral as well.”

Before the Los Angeles and Dodge City dedications, the 1971 opening of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco marked the last dedication of a Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States.

“I remember using the phrase, ‘The first new cathedral dedicated in the new millennium,”‘ Gilmore said. “So, that is just a fact.”

Mahony said some might “quibble,” but he believes a cathedral should be located in the heart of a city, where it can engage “in conversation with the public, political, civic and cultural community.”

“So, in that classical sense, this is a cathedral in the heart of a city,” Mahony said of his new cathedral, which is walking distance to City Hall and overlooks the Hollywood Freeway.

Built on part of an 80-acre parcel, Our Lady of Guadalupe is located in a rural setting on the outskirts of town, a response, Gilmore said, to recent population growth in that area of Dodge City. It replaced the diocese’s old cathedral, a smaller building near the heart of town.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III, defines a cathedral as “the chief church of a diocese, in which the bishop has his throne.” The word is derived from the Latin term cathedra, which means throne or elevated seat.

Gilmore presides from his throne, albeit a modest one made of contrasting slates of Mexican wood, at Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“It’s a one of a kind item,” he said. “It was really designed to be a chair, not a throne.”

By contrast, Mahony’s throne is an elaborate seat with two ebony arms and his own personal coat of arms.

That’s not the only distinction: Our Lady of Guadalupe cost $11 million. Our Lady of the Angels, with its 25-ton bronze doors and private crypts that sell for upwards of $50,000, came in with a price tag approaching $200 million.

Lawrence Cunningham, a professor of theology at Notre Dame University, said the debate over which cathedral deserves the moniker of “first” is irrelevant.

“It matters absolutely nothing,” said Cunningham, who lectured last spring at a conference on new cathedrals at Notre Dame University attended by both Mahony and Gilmore.

He said Our Lady of the Angels had the opportunity to do for Los Angeles what the medieval Cathedral of Chartres did for France.