Friday, January 17, 2003
Asia File
The gospel-nation collaboration
Catholics have donated tens of thousands of workdays for building roads, irrigation systems, and power transformer stations in remote areas, writes Barun Roy
Published : January 17, 2003
Thousands of Viet Nam's Roman Catholics gathered last August, as they had in previous years, in the village of La Vang, outside Dong Ha town in Quang Tri province, for the annual festival of Our Lady of La Vang which, after Christmas, is the biggest Christian celebration in this predominantly socialist country.
On January 2, about 450 priests from across the country gathered in Hanoi for the fourth quinquennial congress of the Vietnamese Catholic church and, in the presence of Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, restated their acceptance of the principle of "living the gospel amidst the nation."
Is there any contradiction here? Hardly. One may not call it a religious revival, but the socialist rulers of Viet Nam have indeed restored the people's right to belief and non-belief, giving them the freedom to follow the religion of their choice or remain non-believers.
The Catholics, accordingly, have started going to church again. They observe all the Christian festivals as before, and Christmas is as joyous an occasion for them as anywhere else.
Churches damaged during Viet Nam's prolonged war of independence have been restored and new ones have been built. Ho Chi Minh City alone has 150 functioning churches and more than 400 priests.
In the last four or five years, some 700,000 New Testament versions of the Bible are said to have been printed and distributed nationwide. Last November, the Pope appointed two new bishops for Viet Nam with the approval of the government.
But Vietnamese Catholics also agree that Christianity shouldn't make them any less patriotic than others who are not Christians. Viet Nam is their country, too, and they have an obligation to be part of its development. Out of this realisation, a new equation is emerging between the church and the state that some critics view as capitulation but others regard as pragmatism. Confrontation is out; cooperation with the government's development efforts is the new motto of Viet Nam's Catholics.
This was the theme of the fourth congress in Hanoi and this is what is meant by "living the gospel amidst the nation" - practise your religion while serving the country. Most of Viet Nam's 8 million Catholics (almost 10 per cent of the population) live in the countryside and are engaged in farming. The congress heard how, over the past years, Catholics have donated tens of thousands of workdays and billions of dongs for upgrading traffic networks and building roads, bridges, irrigation systems, and power transformer stations, especially in remote and isolated areas.
It was told how Catholic charities have built schools and health facilities throughout the country and how the Hung Vuong day-care centre, founded by Catholics in My Tho parish in Tien Giang province, has become a national model for pre-school education.
Many dioceses have established homes for street children and the helpless elderly. Others provide free meals to poor patients and the homeless. In some cases, poor families have been provided with houses and artisans in need have been given interest-free loans.
Catholicism came to Viet Nam as early as 1533, via Macau, and the country's first bishop was appointed in 1650. But its journey through history hasn't been smooth. Church historians claim that nearly 130,000 of its followers were tortured to death during 400 years of persecution under various regimes.
After the 1975 victory of the communists, thousands of priests, bishops, and lay people were either jailed or sent to re-education camps. But the government has since moved, though slowly and cautiously, towards ensuring greater latitude for believers. Hanoi no longer frowns even as gods make a comeback.
But critics say that the government has a hidden motive behind its generosity - to create a patriotic church. They base their allegations on the government's reported moves against unregistered churches in various parts of the country, especially in the Central Highlands region bordering Cambodia. The government believes that these illegal churches, inspired by American Protestant thought, are trying to incite Montagnard tribals against its policies.
One report claims that at least 354 of 412 churches in Dak Lak province alone have been disbanded as part of the government campaign and that hundreds of Christian villagers have been forced to flee to Cambodia. Several hundred are said to have been granted political asylum in the US. Last December, eight Montagnards were jailed for anti-government activities in a crackdown said to involve mostly Christian hill tribe minorities. An opposition group claimed that the jailed leaders, one of whom received a ten-year prison sentence, were protesting restrictions on their evangelical Protestant churches. The government argued they were rallying villagers to rise against its policies on land reform.
As the church readjusts to a nationalist role, such clashes are to be expected. But, as the Catholic congress shows, Viet Nam's Christians now largely acknowledge that the freedom to practise one's religion has to come with an obligation to serve the country.
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