Catholics see more light in Vietnam
By Andrew Symon
HANOI - Evidence of the Catholic Church's vigor in Vietnam can be witnessed in
the well-attended masses at Hanoi's St Joseph's Cathedral and Ho Chi Minh
City's Notre Cathedral, both imposing neo-Gothic structures built in the heart
of the cities by the colonial French more than a century ago.
The spirited attendance at these and other churches across the country is a
measure of the ruling Communist Party's willingness in recent years to allow
for more selective religious freedoms. While cracking down hard on
pro-democracy groups, the Catholic Church and its estimated 8 million devotees
have especially enjoyed greater freedoms and local stature.
Variously associated with French rule, the former US-backed
South Vietnam regime, and most recently as a potential fifth column considering
their homage to the Vatican, Catholics have over the years been viewed with
suspicion by the ruling and atheist communists. But under pressure from the US
to improve its religious rights record before Hanoi's accession last year to
the World Trade Organization (WTO), today there are far fewer restrictions
placed on the Catholic Church and its congregations.
With greater religious freedoms has come more political assertiveness,
witnessed most prominently in the church's recent demands for the return of
extensive properties nationalized after the 1975 communist takeover. Recent
mass prayer vigils - in reality political protests - by Catholic devotees
outside of land and property they want returned to the church represent a new
grassroots challenge to the party's authority but have nonetheless been allowed
to go forward.
Now Hanoi has even broached the possibility of restoring formal diplomatic
relations with the Vatican, which were severed in North Vietnam in the 1950s
and later in the south when the country was reunified under Communist Party
rule in 1975. Last month, senior officials of the Vatican's secretariat of
state, led by the church's under secretary of state, Monsignor Pietro Parolin,
visited Vietnam for discussions with senior ministers, including Foreign
Minister Pham Gia Khiem.
The two sides reportedly discussed the possibility of restoring ties and the
Vatican's delegation toured the country to check on the state of the church and
congregations. Discussions on normalization are to continue through what the
Vietnamese Foreign Affairs Ministry calls a "joint expert working group to
promote the building of a roadmap for the development of Vietnam-Vatican
relations".
One symbolic event during the visit took place at a 2,000-strong mass at the
shrine of Our Lady of La Vang in Quang Tri province in central Vietnam.
Authorities had recently returned the land around the shrine for church use. La
Vang, built to commemorate the 1798 apparition of the Virgin Mary, is
associated with anti-Catholic persecution by Vietnam's Confucian emperors
between 1625 and the consolidation of French power in 1886 and is one of the
country's most important Catholic sanctuaries. Many Catholics over that period
took refuge in the forest of La Vang and many reported that the Virgin Mary
appeared to them to comfort, heal and protect them from their persecutors.
More recently, many thought that another miracle had occurred at the Notre Dam
cathedral in Ho Chi Minh City in October 2005, when a young boy claimed to have
seen the stature of the Virgin Mary outside the church weeping. While this was
discounted by local clergy as rain on a dusty statute, it did trigger
gatherings of hundreds of people for a few days and points to the grip that
Catholicism still has on many Vietnamese.
The Catholic Church has a long and tortured history in Vietnam, with its
congregation's present size second to only the Philippines in Southeast Asia.
Spanish and French Jesuit missionaries first entered and began making converts
in the 1600s. It was they who developed the Romanized alphabet for the
Vietnamese language, known as Quoc-Ngu, which replaced the use of Chinese
characters in French times.
Arguments in Paris for French military expeditions against Vietnam's Nguyen
dynasty and French rule from the mid-19th century onwards was partly justified
then as a response to ill-treatment of Catholics by Vietnam's rulers.
Subsequently, Vietnamese Catholics were prominent as officials in French
colonial times and in the military and government of the US-backed South
Vietnam, which fell to the communists in 1975.
South Vietnam's first president, Ngo Dinh Diem, and its leader in its last
days, Ngueyn Van Thieu, were Catholics. Many wealthy landowners who saw their
properties nationalized by communist authorities in the south were also
Catholics, as were thousands of refugees who fled persecution and resettled as
political refugees in various Western countries.
Pressure from above
The first signs that Vietnam's current leaders might adopt a more liberal
policy towards the church came in January 2007 - coinciding with Vietnam's
US-supported entry to the WTO - when Prime Minister Ngyuen Tan Dung visited
Rome and met Pope Benedict XVI, marking the first meeting ever between a senior
party leader and the Vatican.
Hanoi's increasingly conciliatory position also notably cuts a sharp contrast
with China's position towards the church, which is considerably more
restrictive, including a bar on Chinese Catholics from recognizing papal
authority. Instead, China allows for a state-sanctioned church of about 5
million members, which does not answer to the pope and ordains its own bishops.
There is also a clandestine Chinese Catholic Church, with an estimated 10
million adherents who look towards the Vatican for spiritual guidance. China
and the Vatican severed ties in 1951 and relations have remained strained
because the Vatican recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign nation rather than as a
renegade province.
With the establishment of communist rule in Vietnam's north in 1954 and in the
south in 1975, various controls and restrictions were placed on the Catholic
Church and other religions. For party ideologues, then adhering to a rigid
Marxist-Leninism philosophy, any organizations remaining from the old regime
and not directly part of the state and party were to be policed heavily.
While churches generally were allowed to remain open, the government restricted
their social and educational activities and took over seminaries, schools and
medical clinics. Catholics were broadly discriminated against and until a few
years ago complained of facing obstacles when seeking employment and promotions
in government agencies.
There are six officially recognized religions in Vietnam: Buddhism,
Confucianism, Islam, Protestantism and Vietnam's own particular home-grown
faiths, Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, all of which operate subject to government
approval. Other non-recognized religions, such as independent Buddhists,
Baptists, Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Hindus, the Baha'i Faith,
as well as independent Cao Dai and Hoa Hao groups, all operate illegally.
This is still officially the case, but policy and its implementation have
recently become more liberal for many religions, with the Catholic Church and
other officially sanctioned religions given considerable more latitude to
operate, as recent US Department of State reports document. Other watchdog
groups, such as the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, continue
to highlight the party's continued abuses against certain sects, including
restrictions against Vietnam's largest Buddhist organization, the United
Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
The Catholic Church, with its antecedents in the West, has recently received
better treatment. One major sticking point between the Vatican and Hanoi,
though, is the nomination and appointment process of local bishops. While the
government continues to vet nominees, the Vatican wants the right to appoint
church leaders unhindered by any government approval process.
Hanoi's more open policy towards the Catholic Church has been adopted mainly to
assist Vietnam gain greater international acceptance, including its recent
accession to the WTO, and to pave the way for it to play a more prominent role
in the United Nations and other multilateral bodies. Washington removed Vietnam
from its list of countries which restrict religious freedoms in late 2006,
symbolically just before Hanoi hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
meeting in Hanoi.
Testing the limits of Hanoi's tolerance have been mounting protests calling for
the return of nationalized church property. At the start of this year, an
estimated 2,000 people gathered at St Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi's old quarter
near Hoen Khiem Lake calling for the return of nearby property that had once
been Vatican's embassy. In mid-April, hundreds of protesters camped in front of
Hanoi's Redemptorist monastery making similar demands.
The protests were a clear challenge to the state, but authorities have not yet
reacted with the same heavy handed tactics they have deployed against
pro-democracy groups. Although the government has not caved in to these growing
demands, authorities have said they were willing to discuss the issues. The
Vatican, for its part, also called on local Catholics not to challenge "public
order" for fear of violent state reactions to the vigils.
While the government has been tolerant of property-related demands, it has
struck back hard against Catholic clergy who engage in wider politics. Critics
point to the March 2007 jailing of the now 62-year-old dissident Catholic
priest Father Nguyen Van Ly for allegedly "undermining national unity" by
engaging in political activities as a member of the Bloc 8406 pro-democracy
movement. Father Ly had already spent a total of 14 years in prison since 1983
for his opposition to the Communist Party.
Some predict the new and more open space in which the Catholic Church now
operates could close quickly if the economic difficulties caused by spiraling
inflation and growing labor unrest continue to undermine the position and power
of progressive elements in the Communist Party leadership now led by Dung and
believed to have been instrumental in allowing for more religious freedoms.
To the extent that conservative rivals see cracks emerging in social stability
from economic problems, they may also fear that these will be exacerbated if
non-state actors, including the Catholic Church, are allowed too much freedom
and politicize mounting economic woes among their congregations. How the
Catholic Church and its congregations fare in the months ahead will be a good
indicator of which political group holds sway and the direction of Vietnam's
policy towards the church.
Andrew Symon is a Singapore-based writer and analyst and a frequent
visitor to Vietnam. He can be reached at andrew.symon@yahoo.com.sg.
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