Vietnam-Vatican Relations
From: Bill Hayton <bill.hayton@bbc.co.uk>
Date: 2008/9/23
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
This is a slightly shallower question than the one Chung would like answered, but does anyone have any thoughts about why the Nunciature was demolished this week?
Vietnam has been negotiating with the Vatican over resuming diplomatic relations for some time, PM Dung went to meet the Pope in Rome not long ago and things were looking bright. As I understand it the main issues to be resolved are:
1. the 'return' of church property (Chung's point about who the property might have belonged to first notwithstanding!)
2. the ability of Catholic organisations to provide health, education and social services.
There appear to have been some significant developments on point 2. Down south Catholic organisations are informally providing some social services, particularly for people with HIV/AIDS. Very recently the government gave approval for Caritas Vietnam to come into existence for the first time since the end of the war. Steps towards diplomatic relations if you like.
But then the authorities in Hanoi demolish the Nunciature - the old Vatican embassy. Surely a step calculated to offend everyone in the Vatican.
So what's going on - is it uncoordinated wings of the party-state just doing separate things? Is it liberalisers and hardliners fighting over the direction of the country and each asserting their influence in different areas of life? Is it that the fight over land rights trumps everything else, diplomatic relations included? Or is it something else? Any ideas?
Bill Hayton
----------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:07 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
A related question, the denunciations in Vietnam's media of the Hanoi archbishop as being unpatriotic and the official warning given to him that he could be arrested seems like a jolt to the more distant past, away from what I perceived to be a trend toward more favorable Catholic church-state relations in recent years. I think the last time an archbishop received this kind of treatment was Hue Archbishop Nguyen Kim Dien in the late 80s, after he made statements critical of the government's religious policies. The size of the demonstrations in Hanoi also seem much larger than other demonstrations in recent years over land rights or religious freedom. Is this true, and if so would anyone who has followed this issue have some comments or insights on the matter?
Steve Denney
----------
From: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: 2008/9/23
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Well, I am not really familiar with the present local conditions, but I very much doubt if the VCP leaders would consider the issue of land rights as such more important than diplomatic relations with the Vatican. As far as I know their mindset, they are always very much focused on the possible international aspects of any question, and even ready to subordinate domestic considerations to diplomatic ones. They probably expect the Vatican to refrain from having a say in the land problem and other major church-state controversies, and if they find that the Vatican does not yield to their demands, they make their dissatisfaction known in various ways. So my advice would be to ask the Vatican, rather than Hanoi, about the negotiations and about the Vatican's standpoint on the "controversial" issues. Any demand or request presented by the Vietnamese Catholic church becomes infinitely more important if the Vatican also backs it, and so if we know what the Vatican is for, it will probably soon become clear what Hanoi disagrees with and what irritates it the most.
All the best,
Balazs Szalontai
Mongolia International University
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: aoverl@yahoo.co.uk, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear List:
I'm very much in agreement with prof. Szalontai. Let me address the comment by Chi Tam (quoted below), which I think, will also deal with the questions raised by Bill, Stephen, and Jeffery.
I agree here: it is not a question of religion ! If you notice, the third item refers to "the view of the majority of the non-Catholics", which is about 90% of Vietnamese population, Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Even more, the first two items may refer to Buddhists, but the reason they object to the return may not have anything to do with religion, or to be more specific, much more than thequestion of religion. In a short email, things like that are certainly difficult to convey, or pick up.
The essential issue that deeply divides the two sides, I think, is not so much religion as the views of history - two diametrically opposed perspectives of Vietnam's last century re: the French colonization of Vietnam and the peculiar Catholic nature of the Diem regime.
To the great majority of Vietnamese, French colonization is one of the most shameful periods of Vietnamese history, what President Roosevelt considers one of the worst exploitative colonial systems. And the Vietnamese Catholic Church was intrinsically tied to it - from beginning, middle and end. It received enormous privilege, power, and benefits because of its collaboration, causing untold sufferings to million Vietnamese for a period of 80 years. Because of US's geologicalical interest, selecting the Catholics as the rock of Gibralta for an anti-communist crusade, that privilege continued, to a lesser degree, under Ngo Dinh Diem. Lots of forced conversion occurred in Central Vietnam - sometimes whole village. The Buddhist Association then sent President Diem and the Chair of the National Assembly a package of over 30 documented cases of forced conversion. There was no response, not even an acknowledgement that the complaint was received. Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc boasted in an interview that there were so many converts that there weren't enough priests to perform the task.
For a great number of Vietnamese Catholics, if not the great majority, colonization is not much of an issue. Hence Father Hoang Quynh's demonstration banner "Tha mat nuoc hon tha mat chua" (Rather give up our country then give up Christ) in the mid 1960s. It is the first time in Vietnamese history that there is a conflict between the love of one's country and that of one's religion as the choice is to serve one, but not both. Hence the great controversy with the canonization of 117 saints of Vietnam, an enormous pride for the Vietnamese Church, but to other non-Catholics, many of these saints could be called traitors.
So, to return the Hanoi land to the Church, the land that was illegally seized or otherwise ill-begotten for it was all obtained through the power of the colonial regime (all before 1954, if not much older, in the late 19th and early 20th century - making it very different from recent land controversy - same phenomenon, different origin, like oranges and apples), is to legitimize this horrible history. For the non-Catholics, the building of a Church on the land of a razed Buddhist temple is not just a matter of religion: it's a symbol of the destruction of the national culture, a loss of soveriegnty, and the arrogance of the colonists. Pope John Paul made an apology for the Church's seven mountains of sins in the last 20 centuries in 2000. The Vietnamese Catholic Church, except for a few individuals (Ly Chanh Trung, Nguyen Van Trung, Father Tran Tam Tinh, etc), has never acknowledged its responsibility in that period. Church's official history, as far as I could find, actually states that the Church had played no role in the French colonization of Vietnam.
Because of these two deeply split views of history, it's almost impossible to reach a common ground. When the Buddhists raises the issue of the razed Bao Thien pagoda where both the Saint Josheph church and the papal nunciature currently stand, Bishop Nguyen Van Sang first said that he was unaware of that history, then, when presented with the fact, deemed it, for the most part, irrelevant. My personal view is that had Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet offered some sort of apology to the nation, and to the Buddhists in particular about the past, very few Buddhists would object to the return of the land. It's simply an acknowlegement that by doing that, we are not once again forced to kowtow under some foreign pressures, or foreign-supported pressures. The Vietnamese, throughout history, do not perform well under foreign yoke.
It might be difficult for a few in the West to relate to this for Christianity there plays, and holds, a very different role. Let me try to give a reverse, though crude, analogy.
Suppose in WWI the US Lutheran church helped spearhead a succesfull invasion of America by Germany, ruled it until, say 1954. During that time the Lutheran church razed many other non-Lutheran churches, including the ones in Washington D.C. and New York, in order to build its own. It also took over a vast amount of land (the Vietnamese church, by one account, owed close to 1/4 of all arable land in the South). After 1954, the new government took back quite a bit of the land, but leaving, say, all the Lutheran churches standing, including the one in DC. It, however, took away some of the surrounding area.
Now, it's 2008. American Lutherans demonstrate in DC, demanding that the land surrounding the church there should be returned, for it was *illegally* taken away from them. In the name of *Justice and Peace*, that must be done. If the current government offers a choice of some other pieces of land instead (it recognizes the need of American Lutherans to have some extra space), the Lutheran church, however, refuses, saying it is not "requesting a donation", but simply demand a return of what's properly theirs (Hanoi city adminstrator offers a choice of one hectar, two hectars, and another, about 7000 square meters right in the city).
The 'eastern' press, say in Malaysia, Japan, India, etc, portrays it as a HR issue.
As for Bill's question, my personal guess is that it might have something to do with the 2008 World Youth Day in Sidney, where Pope Benedicto wore a symbol of the 3-striped South Vietnamese flag for a brief moment. What would the Vietnamese govenment view such a symbolic gesture. May be prof. prof. Szalontai could help us figure it out.
-Chung
UMASS Boston
----------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Actually, I was not thinking about the history of Catholicism under colonial rule. And I think that Tran Tuyet Nhung's study of Vietnamese Catholics in the 18th century would undermine the idea of Catholicism as foreign. As well, Diem's privileging of Catholics was an issue in the South; not the North.
What I had in mind was that in the post-1945 period, lots of individuals and groups were dispossessed and their properties were turned to other uses. How many "uy ban nhan dan" occupy former temples in Hanoi, for example? Temples that belonged to some villages and were used by villagers when traveling to Hanoi became housing for Hanoi residents. Whatever the merits of the villages' claims to have their properties returned to them, Hanoi authorities are not keen to evict current residents merely to please folks who do not live in Hanoi ("liberating" or neighborhoods some buildings in order to make way for some new official building is a different matter). My hunch is that if the state were to cave in to demands by the Catholic church, other groups, religious or not, which do not have the outside support enjoyed by the church, would be extremely upset.
This whole episode can be contrasted to the drive by communities to restore their communal properties to their pre-revolutionary purposes, starting with Lim Village's successful bid to get its communal house back from the local branch of the Communist Party in 1995. Since then, throughout the country, communal houses and temples that had been used as warehouses for tractors or storage of fertilizer, or youth centers, etc... have returned to their former use.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
----------
From: Charles Keith <ckeith@msu.edu>
Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 6:06 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Chung (and list),
I won't go so far as to repeat, word-for-word, my lengthy rebuttal of your simplistic picture of the relationship between colonialism and Catholicism in Vietnamese history - it's archived, and you should feel free to consult it. I will, however, permit myself to repeat that your view is indeed simplistic, and rests much more on myth and propaganda than on any actual attempt to understand the subject. The nasty persistence of views like yours becomes significant in moments like these, and they do nothing but prevent informed debate about the issues at hand.
Best,
Charles Keith
Michigan State University
----------
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 8:02 AM
Dear list,
I have to second Charles Keith's point that we should not trot out simplistic views of Vietnamese Catholicism -- particularly when we have had discussions in the past over some of these issues aimed to move views forward. Chung asks for particular examples of where he could stand corrected. But where I disagree with Chung is often at a broader level -- not the particular details, but the way a group of examples is strung together as an argument. The big issue is: what is the relationships of Catholicism to Vietnamaese history?
I have just finished reading Jacob Ramsay's book on 19th century Vietnamese Catholicism as well as Charles Keith's Yale dissertation focusing on CAtholicism in the the first half of the 20th century (I was an outside reader of Keith's dissertation). Taken togerther, both works undermine lots of the stereotypes about Catholicism and Vietnam. Ramsay reminds us, for example, of the obvious point -- French colonialism and Catholicism were *NOT* tightly linked in the early 1800s at all.It did not exist in an antagonistic position to the Nguyen court -- quite the contrary, it was reasonably tolerated. He gives extended and highly interesting discussions of how Catholic missions and laity accommodated themselves to the Nguyen state. If we take a long-term view of Catholicism's place in Vietnam, this view makes even more sense. Ransay's book is excellent -- although I wish it were longer, and delved deeper into differences in the situation of Catholics in the north, center, and
south of the country. I also wanted to see more contrast of the French mssionary experience with the Spanish -- but perhaps I am asking for too much.
Ramsay's work shows how Minh Mang's repression eviscerated much of the missionary enterprise -- it was in reaction to this that the Missions Etrangeres de Paris funneled more missionaries to Vietnam to help rebuild the church. But this increase in missionary activity lasted a finite amount of time -- 50 years? then declined sharply.
Charles Keith's dissertation is long enough (over 400 pages), and deserves to be read by anyone interested in Catholicism in Vietnam. It is excellent, thoughtful, and places Vietnamese Catholicism in a broad historiographical context. . Keith gives a complex (but completely understandable!) view of Catholicism's transformation in this period, one in which French colonialism is not the motor of change. Missionary Catholicism *declined* in this period, and Vietnamese control of the church in Vietnam rose. Relations between the Catholic church in Vietnam and French colonial authorities became quite testy. But perhaps most important, Keith also addresses how the Vatican devolved much power in the Church to the national (.e. Vietnamese) level, and how we see in this period the construction of a vibrant Vietnamese Catholic religious community. He provides a rich socio-religious history of the period from 1887 to 1945, one that is cognizant of Catholicism's relation to politi
cs, but does not reduce its significance to that realm.
I might add that my own recent research on the First Indochina War shows that in the early years, there were plenty of Catholics willing to either support the Resistance or go along with it. The Viet Minh would have garnered even greater support if it hadn't pursued what many cadres later agreed, in hindsight, were failed policies toward religious groups. Or perhaps I am being too diplomatic here. In the Mekong delta, the apparent Viet Minh targeting of Catholic villages, the burning of churches, and the like, swayed many rural Catholics against the Viet Minh, gave rise to infamous Catholic paramilitaries (like Colonel Leroy's UMDC). In the early years after 1945, the Catholic population was probably quite open to an inclusive Viet Minh. But not really after 1947 or 1948. Who can blame them? This was not a question of being a "traitor" to Vietnam (why do we still need to say such things?). It was a visceral reaction to harsh repression.
Given that the study of Catholicism in Vietnam is advancing -- as evidenced by the recent work of Lan Chu, Nhung Tran, Jacob Ransay, and Charles Keith, to name a few authors-- one hopes that such scholarship can inform debates on this list.
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
-------
From: John Kleinen <J.G.G.M.Kleinen@uva.nl>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: aoverl@yahoo.co.uk, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Ask the French troops during the first Indochina War who to their surprise encountered fierce resistance from patriotic Catholic parishers (in Nam Dinh e.g.) who didn’t opt for colonialism nor for communism. Irony of history?
John Kleinen
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Keith:
I certainly welcome your view, and would say my view is certainly a sort of overall characterization, with possible exceptions in many individual cases.
With that proviso, I would hope you could provide some counter examples of some general significance, instead of just presenting your own conclusions, which I certainly respect but have no obligation to agree with, esp. with nothing so vague as asking me to look at the archive. What do you find in that archive that make my view so off-base ? Is it too difficult to summarize a few salient evidences ? What about "my" archive, should I ask you to look at it too ?
Re: Pope John Paul's 2000 apology for the seven mountains of sin the Church had committed throughout the last twenty centuries in South America and Africa, what are the differences between what the Spanish Empire did in South America and the French Empire did in Vietnam ?
I just want to make clear with the List that I have no intention of "smearing," "blackening" or whatever, the Vietnamese Catholic church. We are discussing history, what is the record ? Please cite it. It's certainly a tough subject, but if we do not lay it out, when could the differences by resolved ? I certainly welcome any counter-arguments and will be happy to modify my view accordingly.
I sincerely hope that the Vietnamese - Catholics and non-Catholics- would find a way to patch up their disagreements, which would make it a much stronger country, and a much more cosmopolitan culture. To do that, one has to look at history as it is, and not as one would like it to be. If I am wrong, please someone points it out for me, with evidences,
With All Respect,
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear prof. Szalontai:
There is certainly a long history of this breaking away from the Vatican, or severely restricting the Catholic church from being able to interfere in the national affairs. Some other examples:
- The French revolution in 1789
- The establishment of the Anglican church of England
- The taking away of all the land from Vatican except for what remains today in Italy
- The whole Protestant movement
- Mexico, a Catholic country, repeatedly tried to limit the reach of the Catholic Church:
*The 1857 Constitution: greatly curtailed the power of the church,. it abolished the special Church courts for priests.
*The 1917 Constitution: abolished the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church was blocked from owning or administering Church properties.
The 1917 Constitution of Mexico:
- "Clergy were forbidden to vote, hold political offices, or assemble for political purposes, and the wearing of clerical garb in public was forbiden... Mexican states were given the power to license (and therefore limit the number of) clergy."
- Article 27 "proclaimed that Mexico's land and resources ultimately belonged the government." It "became the justificationfor the expropriation and redistribution of Mexican land on a significant scale."
- "Mexican Church-State struggle has its root in the colonial era, when the Spanish Crown through the patrovato real or royal patronage. The colonial Church assumed a privileged position in Mexican society, monopolizing the education system, serving as the chief financial institution, and exerting a general social influence through its regular contact with the people. Clergy also enjoyed the fuero, which provided a kind of legal immunity. The Roman catholic Church emerged from the colonial period with considerable wealth and prestige. Its strength was the concern of politicians throughout the 19th century, and this issue ultimately helped precipitate a civil war.
Through the Constitution of 1857 and the Laws of Reform (issued in 1959), Mexican liberals attempted to curtail clerical privileges and to severely undermine the economic and social clout of the Roman catholic Church."
- "The anti-clerical sentiment that was a part of Mexico's nineteenth century history resurfaced during the Revolution, with many revolutionaries viewing the Church as an enemy and targeting clergy and Church properties in their campaigns. This sentiment was expressed in Articles 3, 5, 127, and 130 of the Constitution of 1917. The architects of the Constitution sought a weaknened church that would be subordinate to a strong Mexican State."
- "To this end, the Constitution prohibited Church involvement in primary education, forbade the Church from owning or controlling real property, and prevented clergy from voting, holding office, or assembling for political purpose. The Constitution also provided for the state's regulation of the clergy, which would allow local officials to restrict the Church's presence within their jurisdiction..."
- "In 1924, [Preisdent] Calles invited state officials to regulate their clergy, and he encouraged an effort, ultimate unsuccessful, to establish a schismatic "Mexican Catholic Church."
[Mexico: Am Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture and History, by Coerver, Pasztor, Buffington, 121-123]
Would such kind of information be helpful in Vietnam - giving it a diffferent perspective?
Sent: Wed 9/24/2008 8:32 PM
----------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu> Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:48 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I think this article by Ben Stocking written two days ago might be worthy of discussion in this context, as regarding the disputes over land rights and deteriorating relations between the Vietnamese government and the Catholic church in Vietnam:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQVjwqiv1eWVsGsnLajOkLkZNAGAD93BSLJ80
The state media denunciation of Archbishop Kiet as supposedly being unpatriotic for a statement he made regarding travelling abroad with a Vietnamese passport reminds me of the denunciations of the Dixie Chick singer after she said (in London) that she was ashamed the President of the U.S. was a Texan. In both cases words were torn out of context and used to impugn the patriotism of those who openly opposed government policies.
VNA reports today that the Hanoi People's Committee has decided to "discipline municipal Church Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet and several other priests in line with national law." It isn't clear what this means, as he has been issued an official warning, along with four other priests.
see: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/09/805253/
Asianews.it, a Catholic news service, comments on the campaign against the archbishop:
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/09/805253/
- Steve Denney
----------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:59 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sorry for my error, the link to the AsiaNews.it is:
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=13303&size=A
- Steve Denney
----------
From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong <nguyenvo@humnet.ucla.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24 To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Anh Chung,
You wrote: So, to return the Hanoi land to the Church, the land that was
Your argument rests on unequivocal nationalist grounds. But often times, nationalist claims are just as untenable as colonialist ones. Is the nation monolithic, fully represented by its government, or does it contain disparate groups with disparate histories, often times violently forced together (as did the war waged by the North to unify the country--setting aside the merits or demerits of that enterprise). Violent land seizures were not just perpetrated by the French empire against some monolithic Vietnamese nation. You don't want to discuss on-going government-assisted land seizures from peasants for capitalist development. Fine. Perhaps it is to avoid framing it as an issue of power between state and societal groups including religious organizations like the state-persecuted United Buddhist Church of Vietnam--Giao Hoi Phat Giao Thong Nhat. I'll leave that for another conversation if we ever have the time. But have we forgotten the Chams and the Khmers in Central and Southern Vietnam? If the issue at hand is strictly a conflict that dates back to some illegitimate original seizure of Vietnamese land by the French, then how could we possibly look without flinching at all the land seized through violent means by Vietnamese dynasties and modern Vietnamese governments from the Chams, Khmers, South Vietnamese, central highland minority communities, and many other groups down through the centuries to this very day?
There is the violence of empires, and there is the violence of nations. I am in complete agreement with you: Yes, let's delegitimize this horrible history.
nguyen vo thu huong
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Huong:
Thanks for writing. I'd agree with your analysis if the intention is help people become more broad-minded, more compassionate, less me/myfamily/mycountry/-centered. Actually, that is very Buddhistic, if we follow that all the way (perhaps not what you mean) - to remove all attachments in order to experience the ultimate void - Sunyata - which is at the same time filled with plenitude.
But we live in a world usually much less perfect, full of greedy, power-hungry people who, if left to themselves, would try to take everything, leaving crumbs for the rest. Each will have to fend for him or herself to survive, and to guard against being the slave stool of others. That's true within or between nations, as you point out, constrained only to some extent by mutually agreeable conventions.
But, unless we pretend that we already live in a One-World government of one Nation, there is a great deal of differences between the takeaway of the sovereignty of nations, and that of individuals. It deals with the issue of group culture, group identity, group solidarity, and the project for its continuity through time. The diversity and richness of life.
In the case of the Chams and Khmers, yes, VNese scholars should document fully what dastardly deeds we did - and yes, we did many dastardly deeds, so that there would no illusion about any sense of pristine purity, or exceptionalism. There is, however, a difference in the case vis-a-vis France: the Chams and the Khmers fought us and we fought them times and times again - a two-way conflict. We were lucky to end up winning, but it could also be otherwise. We had no desire to take over France (or no capability, we did not even know where and who they were). It came to take over us. It was technologically superior to us. All a one-way, and pre-plotted story.
Take the recent case of the Toa Kham protests. The Vietnamese government tried to persuade Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet to cease his flock's prayer vigils en masse in order to negotiate. He refused. But when the Vatican's secretary ordered him to stop, he did so immediately. Any government, unless it puts its head under the sand, must understand the implication of this. What if in the future Vatican's policy conflicts with Vietnam's in some fundamental way, which way would Archbishop Kiet go? Can people delegitimize this kind of question ?
When a country was occupied for 80 years, and it then took the death of at least five million and untold number of the wounded, maimed or disabled for life, and a country and a culture almost destroyed, let's not forget what they, and those survived, had gone through.
As academic studies, yes, let's delegitimize everything. But let's remember that it could happen again, and when it does, let's delegitimize selectively. That's part of the function of history.
Best,
Chung
UMASS Boston
----------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It may be worth remembering that the persecution of Buddhists of the 8th and 9th centuries in China (the most severe of which took place in 845AD and sent many monks to the then colony of An Nam) was over Buddhist monks' refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the state and to bow to its authority (the term " xhu shi" or "xuat the" which is used to mean joining a monastery literally means "leaving the world" or "leaving society." Literally, monks (who were then of aristocratic backgrounds) refused to kowtow to the emperor or to be constrained by his laws. And of course, they, the monasteries and their lands, as well as members of the tenant (sangha) and slave (dharma) households employed in the monasteries or on the lands, were exempted from taxes, corvee and military service. Another powerful reason for the conflicts between Buddhist monks and the court was the wealth of the Buddhist sangha. Many Confucian scholars, including Han Yu (768 824), added their fuel with reminders that the Buddha was foreign, unlike Confucius or Laozi. Fast forward twelve centuries and the terms of the debate do not seem to have changed much, only the actors.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
----------
From: phuxuan700@gmail.com <phuxuan700@gmail.com>
Date: 2008/9/24
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I am neither Catholic nor I know Hanoi Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet personally. I however believe in due process; I believe in giving people benefit of the doubt.
In the last several days, Vietnam news media has carried article after article attacking Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet as shown below. With great respect for VSG, I hope none of us will be part of Hanoi's defaming campaign.
http://www.cand.com.vn/vi-VN/binhluan/2008/9/100020.cand
http://www.cand.com.vn/vi-VN/binhluan/2008/9/100119.cand
http://hanoimoi.com.vn/vn/41/181609/
http://www.tuoitre.com.vn/tianyon/Index.aspx?ArticleID=279599&ChannelID=118
Calvin Thai
----------
From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong <nguyenvo@humnet.ucla.edu>
Date: Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 6:14 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hum, Thank you for telling me I was born in a reductionist western Cold
War spatial construct called "the South." I often felt the landscape was
a bit unreal. Those of us born in "the North" might be equally amused.
As far as I could tell, people in "the North" referred to "the South" as
Mien Nam, Nam Bo, and vice versa. What might Vietnamese (or anyone who
does not want to associate themselves with Washington's Cold War
headquarters) call all those spaces if they didn't want to unthinkingly
perpetuate Western Cold War reductionist spatial constructs? Are there
constructs that are not reductionist, or that could entirely avoid being
used for one political purpose or another?
As for the spatial constructs of "the North" and "the South," historians
on the list will have to help us figure out if they were exclusively
imposed by Cold Warriors, or if they also have histories of their own
prior to or beyond Washington's Cold War naming.
Best,
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/25
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
John,
Could you provide a bit more details on this fierce resistance from patriotic Catholic parishers? If it's so, it would certainly be a welcome find.
There were indeed a number of patriotic Catholic priests who were imprisoned or exiled by the French because of their resistance activities - Fathers D?u Quang Linh, Nguy?n Th?n D?ng, Nguy?n Tu?ng..., and many other Catholics who joined the revolution. One of the best known was Mai Lão B?ng who was jailed twice by the French, then put in prison for the third time, together with Phan B?i Châu, by Chinese troops in Qu?ng Châu.
Their action, however, was all prompted by their own personal decision, not by the encouragement or organization of the Church. The regretful fact is that Church's policy was actually against it.
For example, during the entire colonial period, from 1858 to 1954, except for a very brief period in cooperation with Ho Chi Minh's unity government when Bishop Le Huu Tu served as his advisor, there was *not one* official ecclesiastical statement calling on the flock to rise up against the foreign invasion and occupation, *not one* church-sponsored event to support the resistance. That's a long time, 96 years, for things to inadvertently fall through the crack.
When the colonization effort had achieved its initial goal, Bishop Puginier laid it out to French authority his and the Vietnamese Catholics' absolutely critical contribution:
"Without the missionaries and the Christian followers the French would be like a crab whose claws had been smashed. Such an analogy might be simple and commonplace, but is accurate and powerful nevertheless. Truly, without the missionaries and the Christian followers, the French would be encircled completely by the enemies, they couldn't trust anyone; they would only receive erroneous intelligences, which would have been provided with malice to destroy their situation; they would fall into a state where they could do nothing and would have to endure real disasters rapidly. They could not hold their position here; they would be forced to evacuate the land where their interest and even their very presence would be endangered." (Alain Forrest and Yoshiharu Tsuboi, Catholicism et Societes Asiatiques)
It was also Bishop Puginier who advocated and then implemented the policy of Christianization as the most effective way of pacification to create, in his words, "a little France in the Far East" as Spain had had its "little Spain" in the Philippines.
Mark W. McLeod, in The Vietnam Response to French Intervention, 1862-1874, makes this very clear:
"It is useful to consider Balny's actions at Phu Ly and Hai-duong and Harmand's at Nam-dinh with an emphasis on the relationship between Catholic Missions and the French forces. The analysis reveals that the French were far from alone in their attacks on the loci of Vietnamese authority because the invaders received a significant level of support from the missionaries and the Vietnamese Catholics. Moreover, the methods of the French officers and their Catholic collaborators could hardly be considered as evidence of a superior morality even by their own contemporary standards, for the Catholic Missions exchanged labor, resources, and information in return for French assistance in perpetuating summary executions, desecrations of Buddhist religious edifices, burning of non-Catholic villages, and pillaging of imperial citadels. This Catholic collaboration with French imperialism has not been adequately recognized by historians, but it was a significant contributing factor to the French success in Tonkin."
We then had many prominent Catholics who led various units of Catholic soldiers to act as guides, informers, judges and executioners to crush the Resistance.
Here are a few of the more notorious cases:
1- In 1886, Puginier ordered Tran Luc of Phat Diem to gather 5000 Catholics as re-enforcement for French troops in the long drawn-out and so far unsuccessful campaign against Resistance Leader Dinh Cong Trang at Ba Dinh. Facing such a massive numerical advantage, the Ba Dinh fort fell.
2. Do Huu Phuong, later Governor Phuong, a former student at Penang Missionary school, helped defeat the rebellion of Nguyen Trung Truc in Rach Gia.
3. Huynh Cong Tan, a Catholic follower of Resistance Leader Truong Cong Dinh. On 20 Aug 1864, he changed
side, ambushed and killed his leader in Go Cong. In Sept 1868, taking command of 127 Catholic soldiers, he pursued and captured Nguyen Trung Truc in Phu Quoc island.
4. In 1858, Ta Van Phung, a student at Penang Missionary school, wanted to take over North Vietnam from the
Hue court. Duval was sent by the French to help him with weapons and organizations in order to create a Catholic North Vietnam. He helped train many units of Catholic soldiers. The uprising spread to Quang Yen, Hai Duong, and Nam Dinh. The Hue Court had to send one of its most able commanders, Nguyen Tri Phuong, to pacify the area. Phung was captured and sentenced to death in Hue.
In the later period:
1. In July 1947 Jean Leroy was given the task of forming 3 "Christian Defense Mobile Units" (Unites Mobiles de Defense des Chretiens or UDMC) in order to provide security for Ben Tre. He recruited mainly among Catholics. In 1948, they became a Supplementary Battalion for the French Expeditionary Force. In the succeeding years it expanded into 88 units of 71 members each, with a total of 6,200. It carried search and sweep missions all the way from Saigon, Bien Hoa, Long An, My Tho, Go Cong, Ben Tre, Long Xuyen to Soc Trang, Bac Lieu. Tra Vinh...
Its flag and insignia made it look like an army of the Crusade: a Blue Cross on a yellow background inscribed with the words "Pro Deo Et Patria" (For God & Country). Clearly, that country is France.
In 1952, the entire force was made part of the "National Army".
2. In Sept 1947, Ho Chi Minh sent a letter to Bishop Le Huu Tu of Phat Diem stating he would "share with you part of my responsibility for the administration of Kim Son district that comprises 40 villages (with 32 parishes) and a population of about 150,000. Administrative and military organs of the government will withdraw so that Advisor would have complete authority to organize..."
That was the beginning of Phat Diem Secure Area (Khu An Toan Phat Diem), the shelter for refugees and those who opposed the Viet Minh.
In summary, the nature of the relationship of the Church and the French occupation could be seen in the Letter sent out by 11 bishops (6 French, 5 Vietnamese) on 9 November 1951. Here's a short excerpt:
"The Christian notion of Fatherland does not exclude other countries that we must love also because all of us are the children of the same God..."
In the midst of a difficult national Resistance, the Church leaders had not a word for it, but worried about the fact that the flock might fail to love "other countires." It is well understood what those other countries are.
This is but a slice of history, a history that had long gone. The presence, and the future, however, are not necessarily driven by it, but remain always open.
-Chung
UMass Boston
----------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/9/25
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Chung:
Your summary erases out of history the Vietnamese who were Catholics before French conquest. By the end of the 18th century, Vietnam had the second largest Catholic population in Asia after the Philippines.
Hue-Tam
----------
From: Charles Keith <ckeith@msu.edu>
Date: 2008/9/25
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Chung,
I won't try to convince you with my own arguments or research any further, it's clearly pointless. Let me simply urge you (and everyone on the list interested in the subject) to read Jacob Ramsay's new book, Mandarins and Martyrs (Stanford, 2008). It is the first real social history of the Church in 19th-century Vietnam, and it in my mind definitively shatters the tired laundry list of "collaborationist" activities, presented (as usual) in a total contextual and interpretive vacuum, of which you seem so fond. I'm fairly certain Ramsay isn't in the pay of the Vatican, in case you're wondering, but you might want to ask Hanoi about that. On the period from 1945-1954, I urge everyone who reads French to read Claire Tran Thi Lien's massive and excellent thesis on the Church during the First Indochina War (Les Catholiques Vietnamiens pendant la guerre d’indépendance (1945-1954): entre la reconquete coloniale et la résistance communiste [Vietnamese Catholics During the War of Independence (1945-1954): Between the Colonial Reconquest and the Communist Resistance] (Ph.D. dissertation, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 1996). If you would like evidence of Catholic resistance to the French after 1945, she (as French PhD students tend to do) lists literally every example to be found in French colonial archives, often in long unedited passages from the documents themselves. I'm not sure how you'll explain away the perspective, straight from the mouth of the colonial administrators themselves and repeated ad nauseam, that Catholics were every bit as "nationalist" as anyone else, just (perhaps understandably) not always fond of Communists. Perhaps you'll posit a massive French conspiracy to skew the archives so that in the event that the war was lost and sensitive documents captured, the French-loving Catholics wouldn't face too many reprisals. If that's the case, the plan didn't work too well.
And it's nice, albeit confusing, to hear you say that history is not entirely determinative of our present - because in your past posts, you've argued that the historical fact of French colonialism in Vietnam warrants whatever measures the current Vietnamese government might decide to take against Catholic protestors. For reasons of public civility, I'll refrain from commenting on that line of argument.
Charles
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/25
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Chi Tam:
Thanks for noting that, but I think we are discussing the role of the Vietnamese Catholics in the French conquest of Vietnam. That would not include those before 1850s, would it ?
Chung
----------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/9/25
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yes, but your neglect of this very important group seems to suggest that somehow Vietnamese Catholics were there because of French colonial activities and that somehow they were not quite Vietnamese and actively collaborated with the French. I won't rehash Charles Keith's argument. It has long been known that the French hoped that Vietnamese Catholics would rise up in support of French conquest and were very disappointed when they did not. The new scholarship by Ramsay, Keith, Tran thi Lien underscores this point.
In an earlier post, you questioned the refusal of Catholics to recognize the authority of the state. As you well know, this is not a position unique to Catholics. The Unified Buddhist Church holds the same view. And as I tried to show Buddhist monks of the Tang dynasty refused to recognize the supremacy of the state and were attacked by Confucian scholars for worshipping a foreign deity. Vietnamese Buddhists in the 1930s would have been delighted to be part of a world-wide Buddhist movement.
Hue-Tam
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/25
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Charles:
Let me just pose a few questions which will help resolve this fruitless back-and-forth:
1) Could you provide a single letter/policy statement written by the Vietnamese Catholic church that officially states its opposition to the French invasion and occupation of Vietnam?
If your interpretation is correct, there must at least a few dozen?
Since it's most likely that most of VSGers would not have the time to do what you ask, would it be simpler for you to give us this material, since you have studied them?
If you can't provide such document, because the Church had never held such a view, what does it say to us?
2) Could you provide any case when the parish, the diocese, the Church secretly organized a group of Catholics to join the Resistance?
3) During the colonial period, the Vietnamese Catholic church, before 1945:
- owned more than 25% of the arable land in the South.
- owned a bit less in Central and North Vietnam.
- and so many buildings, schools, hospitals, etc.
Was it because of its persistence opposition to French colonialism that it was only allowed to own that
much? Otherwise, it would have owned the whole thing, right?
4) How many French missionaries received national medals and awards from France?
How many Vietnamese priests received French medals and awards?
Does it include Tran Luc, the builder of the famous Phat Diem Church? Or Nguyen Ba Tong, the first Vietnamese Bishop?
We all know the Catholic church is one of the most closely organized and supervised in the world. How did these men managed to serve someone the Church opposed so openly? Did the Vatican drop its ball here?
5) Why is it that, on the whole, French colonialists always went among the Catholics to recruit?
6) Chasseloup Laubat, minister of the Navy & Colony Department, publicly stated that Cocochine (Nam Ky) had to be turned into a second Philippines, ie. a Christianized state, in order to secure long-term stability. To achieve that end, his Department made two decisions:
1. The Navy would be responsible for founding a system of parishes in Nam Ky.
2. French missionaries would be classified as civil servants serving the government, and therefore would receive an annual salary. In 1864, the total payout was 40,000 Francs; in 1879 it went up to 145,000.
Since the "Vietnamese Catholic Church" did not actually become an independent entity until 1961 (or thereabout) by Vatican edict, all Vietnamese Catholics actually belonged to the French church before 1960.
Do you think that as a member of the French church, and we all know how well-organized the Catholic hierarchy is, Vietnamese would dare to act in oppostion to the Mother Church? In Catholic doctrine, would such disobedient black sheep automatically go to hell ?
7) If you think that my view is so off-based, please point out for me what facts I have stated are false, wrong, made up, misinterpreted? If you cannot, then it means that whatever I say has basis in fact, it may not be the whole fact (if you could add others), but it is fact nevertheless.
Let's see:
a) Do you disagree with Bishop Pujinier's statement re: his and the Vietnamese Catholics' role in the French conquest?
If so, why? What facts prove him wrong?
b) Do you disagree with McLeod's quoted statement? He bases his resources directly from letters and communication of French offices and missionaries. Do you think he misreads, misinterprets what he has?
c) Did Tran Luc gather 5000 Catholics to be support troops for the French to defeat one of Vietnam's heroes - Dinh Cong Trang?
Did the Church strip him of his duty; exile him to the High Land? Or was he promoted, and remained one of the most powerful Catholic leaders in Vietnam? Why is it so? Why did he receive one of the very high medals from the French?
d) In the Letter issued by 11 bishops in 1951, could you point out any statement support the national struggle for independence? Do you think that is an important letter, signed by 11 bishops in the middle of the national struggle? What do you think is its intention when it asks every Catholics to oppose the communists?
As I state in my reply to John Kleinen, there were many instances of resistance by Vietnamese Catholics - priests and laity. But they were not resisting on behalf of the Church, but despite it. Give me some examples of official Church's resistance in support of the National anti-French movement.
Frankly, I find that you have the most unusual form of argument: asking others to check out the archive, then read this book and that book, all the while completely incapable of producing a single fact of rebuttal. All you do so far, just as in your last long letter, I regret to say, is to state all sort of opinions, not backed up the citation of one single fact.
Take the case of the history of the Vietnam war. The great majority of American historians consider it a mistake, that victory is most unlikely. There a few who argue otherwise. Following your example, which group should I ask you to read? Or should I ask which conclusion would you prefer? They all have their sources, their informants, their logic, and their absolute confidence that they are right.
There are many ways, people will convince themselves, to be a nationalist. One might consider being a nationalist within the embrace of Christianity. In that case the French conquest is required, and then one fights for one's form of "Vietnamese" Catholicism. Or one may function within the colonial system, but fight certain French policies to protect Vietnamese or one's own interests.
I think you misread my comment: It's open, but then one has choices: either hews to the path of the past, or breaks away from it to start anew.
You don't assume that because it's open, we would achieve the same result whatever we do? That's a very strange way of reading it! It's also dangerous to take comment from one post out of context and apply it to another.
Chung
Umass Boston
----------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/9/26
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I am not Charles but I will try to respond to your questions.
The French hoped that Vietnamese Catholics having been persecuted under Minh Mang and his successors would rise up and welcome them as saviors. It did not happen despite French efforts at proselytization. In fact, it is not even clear that we should be talking about "French efforts." Napoleon III was supremely uninterested in turning Vietnam Catholic. It was his empress, Eugenie, who listened to appeals by Catholics and engineered Spanish participation in the expedition. French priests went on to lament the lack of real support offered by the French government to their mission. Additionally, northern and central Vietnam were conquered under the secular Third Republic.
One can be Catholic and patriotic at the same time, as many Vietnamese demonstrated. It does not have to happen serially. There were also some Catholics who opted to collaborate with the French, but, as one might expect in a country where Catholics are a minority, a lot more non Catholics did as well. And many of them did not do so out of treasonous intent or necessarily for self-serving reasons. A parallel can be drawn with Red River Delta scholars who welcomed the Ming armies because they thought that the righteous order of things that had been upset by Ho Quy Ly's usurpation, would be restored.
I do not think it is appropriate to demand evidence that parishes organized in active support of the Viet Minh. In most non-Catholic villages, the population was divided in its response to the situation. Some actively supported the Viet Minh, some collaborated with the French and the majority tried to avoid taking sides. This is true of villages that now lay claim to having actively supported the revolution.
Hue-Tam
----------
From: Charles Keith <ckeith@msu.edu>
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:09 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Chung,
Despite my better judgement, I'll respond, point-by-point, to your questions
1) If this really matters, the then-four Vietnamese bishops wrote two public letters in 1945 supporting the Revolution and urging the world to recognize Vietnamese independence.
2) As Professor Tai points out, your question is mostly misplaced, because most villages (Catholic and other) were divided about how to respond to the post-1945 political situation. But again, I'll point you to Claire Lien's thesis for the reams of evidence on this point. You'll excuse me for not taking the time to write them all out, but I'm not interested in carpal tunnel syndrome.
3) Your claim that the Church owned 25% of the arable land in the South during the colonial period is almost certainly wrong, and drastically so. This was not medieval France. The Church owned more land in the North, logical since 75% of Catholics were in/around the Red River Delta. I've looked at virtually all of the relevant archival material on Church land ownership to try to figure out what the numbers were, and it's not clear. Yes, the Church did own a good bit of land. But what does that mean? The French state didn't give it away to the Church - it sold it, as it did to (mostly) everyone else. The fact that the French state confiscated and then sold land is of course an historical injustice, but that's not the point. The question is whether the colonial state favored the Church in land issues, and the answer is no. Often the state refused to sell certain lands to Catholics (frequent in the highlands, where the state did not want the Church to go), and yes - sometimes the colonial state even confiscated land from the Church to do something else with it. Sound familiar? The bigger problem with your land argument is that you conflate properties that the Church hierarchy purchased/owned with the much larger category of Catholic village lands, which existed in a completely different legal category and can't be described as belonging to the Church hierarchy in a meaningful way. Are we to say that "Buddhists" owned 75% of the land in colonial Vietnam simply because a great majority of the Vietnamese population is Buddhist in some way?
4) The fact that some missionaries and a very small handful of Vietnamese Catholics received honorifics from the colonial state is completely irrelevant. So did a lot of people. And by the way, internal correspondence about two of these honorifics (to Nguyen Ba Tong and Ho Ngoc Can in 1935) makes it clear that the colonial administration did this as a way to try to smooth what were then very rough relations with the Vatican. You can see my article in the June 2008 JVS on the first Vietnamese bishops if you're interested
5) Your point about the colonial state "recruiting" among Catholics is unclear. Do you mean for the civil administration? Because if so, other than a brief period in the 1860s, your point is wrong. The state made no effort whatsoever to privilege Catholics in the colonial administration, and the number actually in the administration was almost certainly equal or less than the percentage of Catholics in the population.
6) Yes, a few French naval officers and administrators were strongly Catholic and wanted to see many Vietnamese convert. I don't see how that is relevant. Many French administrators were anti-clerical Masons - should we describe French colonialism as "Masonic"?
7) (a) Yes, newsflash, some Catholics fought in support of the French. Leaving aside the reasons why (read Ramsay's book and you'll understand that it's more complicated than you persist in insisting), and leaving aside the fact that this was SOME, not ALL Catholics, Puginier was probably the most ardent of all French missionaries and shouldn't be taken as representative of all French missionaries in any meaningful way. On this, see JP Daughton's recent An Empire Divided. And again, are we to assume that what Puginier said was somehow representative of Vietnamese Catholic viewpoints? If we are to take what we know about colonialism seriously, surely you can't make this argument about what was in many ways a "colonized" Church (but NOT a "colonial" Church).
(b) McLeod is correct that some missionaries participated in the French conquest. Again, how can you take this and draw the conclusions that you do about ALL Catholics, French and Vietnamese? It's an interpretive leap that continues to baffle me. McLeod certainly doesn't draw this conclusion from his own evidence.
(c) See point (b).
(d) This point rests on the idea that Communists were the only legitimate form of Vietnamese nationalism after 1945, so I'm not quite sure where to begin. So I won't.
Chung, your individual pieces of evidence are often correct (though certainly not all the time). That's not the point. The problem is that you take individual crumbs of history, separate them entirely from their context, and use them to draw conclusions about an entire part of the Vietnamese population over all of history. Excuse me for frequently making reference to works of scholarship, but I'm not sure how else to do it. This is a complicated issue to which individual scholars have devoted years of their lives, and it's not possible to list their evidence in an email. If you're really interested in understanding this issue (which I'm not at all convinced of at this point), you're going to have to make a good-faith effort to consider other points of view, which almost always rest on much more solid ground than your own.
As for your claim that colonial history is not, in fact, one of your justifications for the way that the Vietnamese government deals with the Catholic issue, I'll quote from one of your previous posts: "Take the recent case of the Toa Kham protests. The Vietnamese government tried to persuade Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet to cease his flock's prayer vigils en masse in order to negotiate. He refused. But when the Vatican's secretary ordered him to stop, he did so immediately. Any government, unless it puts its head under the sand, must understand the implication of this. What if in the future Vatican's policy conflicts with Vietnam's in some fundamental way, which way would Archbishop Kiet go? Can people delegitimize this kind of question? When a country was occupied for 80 years, and it then took the death of at least five million and untold number of the wounded, maimed or disabled for life, and a country and a culture almost destroyed, let's not forget what they, and those survived, had gone through."
If that's not what I said it was, excuse me for putting words in your mouth - but it sure looked like it.
Charles
----------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: 2008/9/26
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
to the question: My guess is that their intention was to preserve the Catholic church in Vietnam, as they may have feared the church would be destroyed under a communist regime. As it turns out it wasn't destroyed or forced underground, as happened in China, but was severely constricted for many years.
In literature I read from Vietnam from some years ago, Vietnamese Communist Party spokespersons insisted that Vietnamese Catholics must be Vietnamese first and Catholics second, but this loyalty to country is equated with loyalty to the party leadership and its policies. To what extent, if any, has this approach changed in recent years?
The attack on Archbishop Kiet in the Vietnamese press for being unpatriotic over a statement he made about using Vietnamese passports while travelling abroad -- a statement which was taken out of context and twisted around -- it seems there is still this tendency to question the patriotism of Vietnamese Catholic leaders. But I am surprised the archbishop of Hanoi would be attacked in this manner, given the general improvement in church-state relations.
- Steve Denney
----------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 10:57 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It appears the government of Vietnam might be moving toward pressuring the Vatican to replace Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet of Hanoi, or at least its media is citing statements from "Catholic followers" to this effect. From a VNA report today:
"The Hanoi People's Committee's written warning against Kiet and some other priests is not strong enough, the Catholic follower also said, stressing the need to propose the Vatican to dismiss him from his current position and the municipal authorities to expel him from Hanoi."
The warning given to the archbishop, according to this VNA report, was for "slandering local authorities, disregarding law and directly inciting and encouraging law violations."
see: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/09/805821/
- Steve Denney
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/28
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu on behalf of Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Sent: Fri 9/26/2008 7:11 PM
Dear Chi Tam:
Thanks for writing.
These certainly are things of great interest to internal French politics. You are absolutely right about the influence of Empress Eugenie on Napoleon. Though Napoleon III might be initially uninterested in the conversion of the VNese, it was, however, finally his decision to make, not Empress Eugenie's, to order the invasion of Vietnam. The fact that the conquest started with Napoleon, then had continued through the secular Third Republic, and all the way through DeGaule and others until 1954, demonstrates fairly conclusively, I would think, how tenacious this, we can now safely call, "French efforts", had been.
About Bishop Pellerin's promise that 600,000 Vietnamese Catholics would rise up under the "tyrannical" Minh Mang once French troops arrived, plucking the ripe colonial fruit ready to fall from the tree, it was well known that he just said that as a white fib in order to, in his pious way, push things forward a little bit in the service of the Lord.
In mid 19th century VN, Catholics occupied small enclaves, surrounded by the great majority of non-Catholics. It would be impossible for them to rise up locally without being crushed; it would also impossible for them to travel en masse to Da Nang without being noticed and dealt with. Before French troops came to provide them with weapons, training, and supervision, they had none. But a few thousands of Vietnamese Catholic did manage to arrive in Da Nang, and when Admiral Rigaul de Genouilly realized he could not stay there and sailed off to Saigon (all the intelligences for making that kind of decision were provided mostly by the missionaries, who, in turn, relied on their loyal flock), many more thousands of Catholics joined his expedition there. Thereafter, wherever the French advanced, Catholics in the surrounding areas would all rise up to join them.
As far as I know, I haven't seen a single documented case of any Catholic parish withdrawing from, let alone fighting against, this aupport.
All you say is true, but the issue is, I think, a bit complex. To understand the behavior of the Vietnamese Catholics vis-à-vis others one needs to refer to the colonial mindset at the time, the missionary's indoctrination, and the social and educational background of the early Vietnamese converts.
First, most early converts were at the bottom rungs of society - poor, uneducated, and unaided. There were very few, absolutely few, Confucian scholars or monks,; they formed the backbone of the leadership of the anti-French resistance.
When the missionaries came among these poor, offered assistance and a way out not only of their misery, but also to become members of the new Select, the new Chosen, of the Country of God (Nuoc Chua), a citizen of the People of God (Dan Chua), towering above those prestigious mandarins, monks, and wealthy villagers, it's easy to undertand how they'd have put all their faith and soul into it.
We are not in the 20th century, certainly not 21st, with all these modern trappings of ecumenism, freedom of thought, respect for all religions, etc.; we were then at the height of the "mission civilisatrice", the white man's burden, and Conrad's heart of darkness.
It started very early, with Alexandre de Rhodes (unless we went back all the way to the source, Pope Nicholas V's Papal Bulletin Dum Diversas of 1452), who opined:
"I believed that France, as the most pious of all kingdoms, would furnish me with soldiers who would undertake the conquest of the whole Orient, and that I would find the means for obtaining bishops and priests who were Frenchmen to man the new churches"
(Helen Lamb's translation, Vietnam's Will to live, 1972, p. 38-39).
Note Chasseloup-Labat's decisions earlier, implementing that very conjoined relationship:
It was not the Church, but the Navy, which would set up the system of parishes: how could one separate the Church from France's colonial policy. It would be pure fantasy. Yes, there were infightings, factional French politics, but there was little, except for some liberal intellectuals in France, and none whatsoever in the colony, disagreement on the need to colonize Vietnam.
That demonstrates most eloquently the mental mindset of the time - to serve God is to serve the Fatherland, to serve the Fatherland is to Serve God (Pro Deo Et Patria - UDMC's motto). The local parish priest served as a government's functionary, received a salary from it, acting as its eyes and ears, assuring its security and success. What more needs be said?
For most of the Vietnamese converts, then, it was not just Catholicism that brought them salvation: it was also France that brought Catholicism, and it was also France that could protect them from the rejection of their king and countrymen.
That's why Father Hoang Quynh was proud to declare "Tha Mat Nuoc Hon Tha Mat Chua" (Rather give up one's country than giving up Christ).
That training, that way of thinking could also be seen today the in a homily by Tran An Bai, Chair of the (Oversea) Vietnamese Catholic Community, in honor of the 117 martyrs:
"Those who died for the religion considered light the bond of husband-wife, deemed inconsequential the way of father-son...
Those die slowly under the cangues and shackles had put the Fatherland behind the values of eternity."
Yes, there were many non-Catholics who served the French too. But there was a difference. They did so because of poverty, desires for financial advantages or honors, not because they supported France's goal. The Vietnamese Catholics, however, did it because they identified with the missionary's teachings, ie. the support for France - one of "the other countries" that they ought to love because they all believe in the same God (Bishops' letter, 1951)
No, no parallel at all. Supposed that was true, at least what the Ming restored would be another feudalistic, Confucian system under its control. What would the French restore? Certainly not that.
Ho Quy Ly's temperament and transparent grasp for power alienated the majority of scholar-mandarins. When the Ming troops came, very few wanted to put themselves under his authority to fight. In an early changing of dynasty, from the Ly to the Tran, Tran Thai Tong received almost universal approval.
Not at all. The point I was trying to make there is to ask Charles to give any evidence of an effort by the Church, at ANY level - from parish to diocese to the top hierarchy - to show support for the anti-French resistance, for that's what Charles contends.
If Charles is correct, there must be some signs, some traces, some historical evidences of that support. It couldn't be that that support was so secret that today we couldn't locate a whiff of it, it has all disappeared into smoke? [I would respond to the Bishop's two letters in 1945, during the period of the August revolution, later - "a switch in time save nine".]
>Hue-Tam
Chung Nguyen
UMass Boston
----------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/9/28
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Chung:
You erase out of your history the awful persecution of Vietnamese Catholics. You also neglect to point out that the overwhelming majority of non-Catholics did not rally behind patriotic scholars, and in fact, many scholars did not rise up against the French but continued as if nothing had happened. There are different reasons for this: the idea that hieu rather than trung (which at the time did not mean patriotism or nationalism but loyalty to the dynasty) was the most basic and most important virtue; the idea that by continuing to administer, the mandarins were discharging their duty (an explanation offered by Emmanuel Poisson in his excellent study of the Vietnamese bureaucracy 1840-1940). Pitting "the Catholics" against "the patriotic scholars" is, in my opinion, not correct. Among non-Catholics were also many who refused to recognize the supremacy of the state and the authority of its mandarins.
I also think it's anachronistic to impose a nationalistic framework on pre-20th century Vietnam.
Finally, at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I do believe in the importance of following one's conscience and one's faith. It has nothing to do with the alleged "foreignness" of Catholicism.
Hue-Tam
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/9/30
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Before I respond to Charles, let me just refer to an earlier discussion we had on VSG in Feb 2008 on practically the same topic - the term "colonial-Christian", the early intertwined relation between Roman Catholicism and colonialism. It has very deep roots:
"The term "colonial-Christian," as I have clearly stated, is a term I borrow from Vincente L. Rafael, professor of history at the University of Washington. That concept has taken on a life of its own and has been applied to other countries beyond the Philippines. It means "Christian" AND colonial, not "Christian IS colonial," which is historically accurate, for there is a long history of association between the two, from the conquest of South America by the Conquistadors, the establishment of many Christian colonies in Africa and Asia, which could be traced all the way to a long line of Church's edicts. Pope Nicholas V was the first to formally define the right of Christian kings to subjugate and enslave non-Christians and their territories in the Papal Bulletin Dum Diversas of 1452:
"We grant you [Kings of Spain and Portugal] by these present documents, with our Apostolic authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery."
Based on this principle, a series of bulls and treaties later - Bull Romanus Pontifex of 1455, Bull Aterni Regis of 1481, Bull Inter Cetera of 1493, the Treaty of Tordesillas, the 1750 Treaty of Madrid, etc., divided the world into two, half given to Spain and the other half to Portugal, with complete dominion over the land, resources, and pagans to be exploited and converted by force.
In the Bull Inter Cetera of 1493, Pope Alexander VI bestowed upon Spain the right to annex all the land Christopher had found, as well as any other land Spain would discover in the future, thereby establishing the Doctrine of Discovery (which the US Supreme Court later invoked to take the land away from Native Americans), avowing the right of Christians over all non-Christians. In the bull the Pope expressed 'his desire' that the "discovered" people be "subjugated and brought to the faith itself..." so that "Christian Empire" would be propagated. Vietnam fell within the dominion of Portugal. It was only due to the advocacy of Alexandre de Rhodes that the Pope allowed it to be transferred to France (1)" - the beginning of the 80-year brutal colonial history of Vietnam.
Such was the mindset of the Roman Catholic Church and of the time. Such were the actions of Christian kings and queens. All of that, I think, establishes beyond any doubt that the French officials, French missionaries and Vietnamese converts, at the time, were used intentionally as instruments of conquest and exploitation, as expressed in their own words and actions - Minister Chasseloup-Labat, Father Alexandre de Rhode, Bishops Huc, Pellerin, Puginier, Gauthier, etc. There were certainly French missionaries and Vietnamese converts who were meek, pietistic, and peaceful at heart, but that does not change the fundamental aim of the mission. It is documented in great details in Cao Huy Thuan's 1968 dissertation - "Christianisme et Colonialisme au Vietnam 1857-1914." (This was published in 2000 by Yale University Press, without the first 60 pages and with a new title -" Les Missionnaires et la Politique Coloniale Francaise au Vi?t Nam 1857-1914." Of the original dissertation, there were two Vietnamese translations, one unauthorized by Huong Que, Los Angeless, 1988 and an authorized version by Nguyen Thuan, HoChiMinh city, 2003).
Let me quote three Vietnamese witnesses at the time:
1. In the battle for Hanoi fort, Marshall Nguyen Tri Phuong, shot in the abdomen and thigh, was taken prisoner. "Garnier came to Phuong's bedside o say pointedly how much he was honored to be his opponent even for such a short time. Refusing dialogue, Phuong kept a haughty silence. But when Bishop Puginier arrived for the extreme unction rites, the Buddhist warrior exploded. "Shut up. You missionaries have helped the French to rob Annam of Cochinchina and Tonkin. I do not want to see you. All I want is to die." The he ripped away his dressing and bled to death."
(Oscar Chapuis, The Last Emperor of Vietnam, p. 58)
2. King Tu Duc's observation in 1860:
"We need to eliminate from the root that brutal religion because without its converts, that barbarous troops from the west would have no one to help, would receive no supplies. Without re-enforcement, they will have to leave our land." (Dieu Et Cesar, "Thap Gia Va Luoi Guom," Chap. I, sect 5, p. 40]
This, interestingly, dovetails very well with Bishop Puginier's own anlysis, quoted earlier.
3. Phan Boi Chau's "Thien Ho! De Ho! (O Heaven! O Christ!)
Phan Boi Chau is one of the most iconic Vietnamese of the 20th century. In 3/1923 he published this work in Shanghai. It was then translated into Japanese in 1928, and republished with three others of his works in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birthday in Japan in 1967. The Chinese text was rediscovered in 1960, translated by Chuong Thau in 1962, and finally published in Vietnamese in 1978 - 55 years since its first appearance.
It is Phan Boi Chau's bills of indictment of the French conquest of Vietnam, through (1) the use of religion falsely to turn Vietnamese against their own country, (2) a useless, bookworm education to train functionaries to serve the colonial regime, (3) the imposing of brutal laws to maintain tyrannical rule, privileging French's interests while trampling those of the Vietnamese, keeping them permanently in chains.
"The French government," he writes, "knows that the use of force alone wouldn't be the best policy, so it uses religion, borrowing the figure of Christ and the Cross as a jumping jack, in order to secretly carry a policy of genocide on our people. It is the French's most potent magic in its conquest of Vietnam, abetted by the religionists in its success." (Reprint with Le Trong Van introduction, no date, p. 43).
They "wear the mask of Jesus to hide the true face of a Religion of Thieves." (p.6)
A note on the network of intelligence:
"During the period of the French conquest of Vietnam, the Church had played an important role, as everyone knows. The Church had known how to organize a faultless network of intelligence, supplying all the information related to individuals, companies, activities, actions and political plans in Indochina. The church had been able to place its trusted agents in all organs, in most of the business concerns, in the central cities as well as in the remote provinces..." (Paul Maunet, France and Annam between two lines of fire, Paris, 1928, quoted in Dieu Et Cesar, p.77) (1)
I hope that Charles is informed enough that he would not consider these "crumbs of history," unless he refers to the size of the colonialists' moral claim. He rightly refers to the issue of context. What, then, was the context for these quotes? It could not be the Church's ardent support for the Resistance (except for a short period after the August revolution), could it? Were Marshall Nguyen Tri Phuong, King Tu Duc, and Phan Boi Chau all sorrily mistaken? It would take a leap of faith to hold on to such a stand!
Now, let's look at Charles' counter arguments.
Sent: Fri 9/26/2008 8:09 PM
"Despite my better judgement, I'll respond, point-by-point, to your
questions"
Now, we are getting somewhere. Unfortunately, Charles leaves out quite a few points, esp. the more weighty ones,
1) If this really matters, the then-four Vietnamese bishops wrote two
public letters in 1945 supporting the Revolution and urging the world
to recognize Vietnamese independence.
This was the period of the August Revolution (8/1945), when Vietnam declared its independence and formed a functioning government throughout Vietnam. Even Bao Dai abdicated to become the Supreme Advisor to Ho Chi Minh, as did Bishop Le Huu Tu of Phat Diem. Events forced the Church's hand, but as soon as the French returned, the Church changed side again, with Phat Diem becoming a strong base for French troops' operations. In 1951, eleven Bishops, including the 5 Vietnamese, issued an official proclamation, calling all Catholics, to, essentially, "love" France and oppose all communists."
I believe you have just confirmed the point I make. Do you think a letter issued in 1945, that is, 87 years after French troops lobbed its canon balls into Da Nang, and had established its firm rule over Vietnam, that was just a touch too, shall I say, late? What happened between 1858 and 1945? Were they asleep? Or were they busily helping the French out:
Admiral Page's secrete report to headquarter from 14 to 15 December 1859:
"Moreover, there isn't one Vietnamese convert who did not enthusiastically apply to voluntarily become a soldier for the French army. The Vietnamese King, because he was not a Catholic, was not their king. Now, your Honor could understand why the king and his mandarins look at the missionaries as their enemy... In the first years of his enthronement, King Tu Duc treated them with consideration. He ordered local authority to overlook illegal acts or infractions of police rule. But then the Catholics under the missionaries' leadership became more and more insolent and arrogant, viewing the local authority as nothing. They publicly rebel, saying that they don't care to obey those who belong to another religion."
Why are we talking about the post-1945 period, and only about post-1945 period? What about 1858-1945 period? You again, have a strange way of making a counter-argument. You simply assert something, and then ask people to take it on faith.
Again, you just provide one assertion after another. Not a single citation of fact. Let me refer you to Father Tran Tam Tinh's "Dieu Et Cesar" (Paris, 1978). Since I don't have access to the French version, I'll quote from the Vietnamese translation ( HCM city 1988) with appropriate Chapter & section.
Chapter I, section 7:
"The colonial regime had imprisoned the Vietnamese permanently in a state of poverty, ignorance, and injustice;...the colonists forced the people to stay in a state of drunken stupor to the point of forgetting who they were, or addicted to opium to the point of animal stupidity...
The report on 19 Feb 1908 noted: The liquor consumption in the month of Nov 1907 rose to 744,798 liters, overtaking the month of October by 40,957 liters, but less than the month of November, because that year we were able to sell a total of 923,245 liter. For the sale of opium, it keeps rising to our great delight."
"A few examples above show the height of the level of ethics the civilizing mission of Christianity the French was bringing to Vietnam. In this period, however, the Catholic church was more and more thriving and developing. Some leaders of Vietnamese Catholicism even dare to call the colonial period the "golden age of the Church of Vietnam.""
Free land grants to the church, by the colonial regime, in 1862, 1923, 1926, 1927, 1930, and 1931. Many other offerings - not only of private, but also public land -given by colonial officers, out of personal piety. [p. 48]
"The Church, and many of its legal entities, were considered "the biggest landlords" of the time."
Many other exemptions and special treatments - free postage for the Bishop of Saigon, 50% public funded for priest's 5-month vacations, an annual amount of 170,000 Francs given to the diocese of Saigon from in 1872 to 1882, 50,000 Francs each for the Church in Central and North Vietnam, etc. [49]
Chapter IV, sections 5 & 6:
"The Church Mission is organized with great power in Cochinchina. The Church is very rich, possessing many vast areas of land, and owning many important benefits in the majority of local businesses, thanks to the Church's capital, either in the name of the Church itself, or mostly through the name of a third party." (Paul Monet, quoted in Dieu Et Cesar, p. 77)
In a secret report to the Governor General, the Governor of Nam Ky wrote: "Let's not forget from the first few years of our occupation, the Church had taken care to obtain huge fortunes in Nam Ky . It owns 28,500 hectares of rice field, not counting land, other properties and riches in the city. In the western part of Nam Ky, it owns large areas, anywhere from three, four, or six thousand hectares each (Saigon, 14 Dec 1934, quoted in Dieu Et Cesar, p. 77-78)
In Jacobs Seth's Cold war Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950-1963, the Church's land in South Viet nam was "370, 000 acres (1500 km2), which Diem exempted from the ceiling limit of 1.15 km2 (p 93-96),
It's interesting to note the way you come up with a counter-argument here: first, you state there is no data according to " your archive." Second you say that the number I cite must be wrong because there were more Catholics in the North than in the South, hence the Church had to own more land there.
The reality is that even though there were many more Catholics in the North then in the South, land in the old North was scarce, it was not easy for the Church to amass as much as it did in the South unless it seized it from existing peasants'. In Nam Ky, there existed vast tracts of land that could be taken by fiat, esp. under the status of a colony, where the Governor had close to absolute power.
Nguyen Ba Tong, the first Vietnamese Bishop, and Tran Luc, one of the most powerful church leaders of the period, are not "a small handful of Vietnamese Catholics." That is like saying George Bush and Nancy Pelosi are just "a handful of Americans" !
You choose to skip the question on the 5,000 Catholics Tran Luc brought to successfully help French troops to defeat one of most important rebellions of the time - Dinh Cong Trang and his base Ba Dinh. It would be difficult to explain it away, wouldn't it?
See all above.
Bishop Puginier was one of the most powerful church leaders of the time. It was Resident Bonal who helped him raze the Bao Thien church, donated it to him without cost. Then using his influence, Puginier successfully built the most important church in Hanoi - St. Joseph that still stands today. Not only that, he was the intelligence master who brilliantly organized all his converts to acquire all the necessary information to assist French troops in their operations. He was the head leader who ordered Tran Luc to gather 5,000 Catholics to crush Dinh Cong Trang's rebellion.
When Dupuis and his followers were sowing a great deal of chaos in Hanoi, tearing Marshall Nguyen Tri Phuong's proclamations, leading to clashes between them. The Court of Hue turned to Bishop Puginier to intervene. "But Puginier, in a pure display of hypocrisy to say the least, replied that he was liable for spiritual matters, and had no authority to intervene in politics. In fact, the role he endless played in "providing advice" to Dupre and his associates showed that he was deeply involved in the French design over North Vietnam." (Oscar Chapuis, ibid., 55)
When he died in 1892 in Hanoi, he was awarded the prestigious National Savlvation Medal, and specially proclaimed as an Honorary Officer of the French Army to recognize his enormous contributions to the conquest of Tonkinn, the only missionary so honored. The question is not that he was different from others. He certainly was, for he towered above most of them, because of his intelligence gathering capability, his knowledge, power, and influence.
Perhaps, you could now revise your estimation of this great missionary, esp. the significance of his opinions?
It's interesting that you seem baffled all the time. See all the facts cited above. Again, all you provide are assertions and opinions. The Church had, and has, never been, organized on the basis of a democratic vote. Bishop Nguyen Ba Tong could not operate on his own, neither could Tran Luc, on important issues. May be you experience a different Catholic Church than what I know. Read again about the network of intelligence above. Who organized it? Who were the informants? Whom did it serve?
Every deductions McLeod makes are based on letters, communications between French officers, or missionaries, or their memoirs. He can't be dismissed so easily. His work is confirmed by Cao Huy Thuan, Patrick J.N. Tuck (French Catholic Missionaries and the Politics of Imperialism in Vietnam, 1857-1914: A Documentary Survey), Alain Forest & Yoshiharu Tsuboi (Catholicisme et Sociétés Asiatiques), Nicole-Dominique Le (Les Missions-Étrangères et la Pénétration Francaise au Viet-Nam), Avro Manhattan (Vietnam: Why Did We Go?), Helen B. Lamb (Vietnam's Will To Live), Nguyen Xuân Tho ( Histoire de la Pénétration Francaise au Viet Nam (1858-1897), Lê Tr?ng Van (Nh?ng Bí ?n L?ch S? Du?i Ch? D? Ngô Dình Di?m), Chu Bang Linh (Dang C?n Lao,) D? Quang Hung (M?t S? V?n D? L?ch S? Thiên Chúa Giáo ? Vi?t Nam), Lý Chánh Trung, Tôn Giáo và Dân T?c), etc.
The letter makes two major points:
1) "The Christian notion of Fatherland does not exclude other countries that we must love also because all of us are the children of the same God..."
Yes, I could understand why the Church could feel threatened by "the communist ideology", but why, in the middle of a struggle for national survival, where almost all Vietnamese supported one way or another, the Bishops would call on their flocks to love France, a national enemy at the time?
2) The threat of excommunication for anyone who had anything to do with the communists.
I understand that this is a complicated issue, which Father Tran Tam Tinh documented very well. His conclusion was that first Father Le Huu Tu, then the rest of the Church, fell into the trap set by the French, who had successfully won the support of both the US and the Vatican (Chapter II, sections 1-7), despite the greatest efforts by Ho Chi Minh to show respect to the Church and to win its alliance (Chap. II, Sec. 2, p 79-81). Paul Mus also analyzed this with great insight (quoted, p. 86-87).
"The anti-communist doctrine in Vietnam," Father Tran Tam Tinh said, "was a product of Christian dogmatism and France's propaganda branch." (p. 81)
"After the meeting, Pope Pius XII told the general [de Lattre de Tassigny]: " I blesses the army you command and represent because it is protecting our Christian civilization." (Ibid., Sec 4, p. 92)
"At the local level, however, the Vietnamese Catholic troops were the most ferocious. To ensure the more effective protection of the parishes, they continuously carried out sweeps of the surrounding Buddhist villages, imprisoned or killed, without any trial, the guerillas or anyone suspected as being part of the Viet Minh. Following the examples of the French army, they plundered many villages, robbed, murdered en masse, burned everything considered pockets of the Resistance. Some priest-captains, believing that the time to bring Catholicism to the whole country had come: they ordered their troops to plunder the pagodas and temples, take home all the Buddhist statues for use as firewood, and then to plant the cross on the pagoda or put the Virgin Mary there. It was truly frightening, to recall some of the names, such as Fathers Kham, Ton, Luat.." (Ibid., p. 94)
It's also worth noting that out of 15 diocese in all of Vietnam at the time, only 2 were under the guidance of Vietnamese bishops (Bui Chu and Phat Diem). 13 others had French bishops. What would be their choice, and instructions?
How were the Vietnamese priests trained in colonial Vietnam?
"The Vietnamese priests were trained in order to habitually live under domination. It should be noted that in 1630, the ratio of foreign missionaries was only 20% out of the total priests in Vietnam, but they held all the critical posts - bishops, administrative chiefs of the diocese, domain chiefs, seminary directors, priests superior, head priests in the city, etc. In most dioceses, a Vietnamese priest could not sit in the same table with his French counterpart, even less to eat with him." ( Chap. I, sec. 8, p. 52)
"At Bui Chu diocese, in celebration of St. Dominican day, all the Vietnamese priests, regardless of ages, had to prostrate themselves before the (French) missionaries, including the very young ones... And they had to kiss their shoes, in order to remind them of the words of St. Paul - "Blessed are the feet of the missionaries." (Ibid., p. 53)
"Except in the city, where population were usually mixed, in the country Catholics often bundled together in separate enclaves, living apart from the Buddhists, crowding around the steeple of a church built in a western style, thrusting its tip into the sky, above the bamboo hedges. Enclosed and regimented by the priests, they became a powerful force, a fearful force when the parish priest called on them to rise up to protect their faith, their church. Such a system of oases separates and isolates them from their countrymen, pushing them to reject, to boycott anything the Church had not officially approved, such as reading the Tale of Kieu, or revolutionary materials that were all deemed anti-Catholic. Works by Voltaire, Montesquieu, let alone Marx, were both banned by the colonial regime, and banished by the Church. Even a large-sized Saint book in a bilingual publication (Latin-Vietnamese), remained unknown to the faithful: it stayed in the libraries of seminary, but Catholic believers were not allowed to touch." (Ibid., 54)
Let me just make a frank observation: All your arguments create a history that parallels quite well with the Church's official documents. While mine fits quite comfortably with the great majority of the works of non-Catholic Vietnamese, or Catholics the like of Father Tran Tam Tinh, Ly Chanh Trung, some of Nguyen Van Trung, etc. Perhaps, that might be our problem - where you stand depends on where you sit.
Since not a word of what you deduce is mine, it is, by definition, an interpretation - your interpretation of what I write. Certainly you have every right to interpret it the way you see it. But there are reasonable and unreasonable interpretations. I would submit that yours is entirely unreasonable.
First, there is a paragraph break between "Can people delegitimize this kind of question?" and "When a country was occupied for 80 years..." That paragraph break, which is unfortunately missing in your quote above, is crucial, because it establishes two independent sections. Each of the two paragraph above stands on its own, and raises two independent issues. The second one states a fact of history which, at least, all Vietnamese should not forget.
Let me just say that your interpretation has never crossed my mind, esp. the phrase "whatever measures". Any conflict has to be resolved with care, regardless of the gulf of its differences. Only an idiot, I think, would claim that "whatever measures" taken would do!
>>Charles
I would agree with Charles that the issues we discussed are complicated, but not so complicated that one consistently reaches the opposite conclusions! I don't think there is any point in trying to perpetuate myths that only prolong past errors and injustices.
There were good reasons to explain the Vietnamese Catholics' early receptivity to religious conversion. They were then mostly extremely poor, and enormously dissatisfied with the feudal regime because of the lack of attention to their misery and continuing crop failures. But the missionaries took great advantage of that, creating unbridgeable division within Vietnam's society, as Father Luong Kim Dinh admits. Bishop Puginier insisted to Governor General Lanessan that all the Van Than scholars (the scholars movement that supported the King) had to be "eliminated." When Lanessan asked why, he replied - " because they loved their country too much" and that "not one of them was willing to be converted." (Ibid., Chap. I, sect. 6, p. 50)
If Charles's willing to defend the Church's actions in VN then, would he also be willing to defend the same Church's actions in Africa, the Middle east, etc? Or the actions of the Spanish Church, the Portuguese Church in South America or South Asia? Does he think Pope John Paul II was wrong in apologizing for twenty centuries of past sins on 12 March 2000?
For if we continue to do that, past causes of discords will live on in the present, and one way or another, will make themselves felt in the future. Ignorance breeds conflicts.
C. Nguyen
UMass Boston
(1) In a paper on the role of the Protestant organization CMA in French Vietnam - "Unintended Yet Essential Political Ties: The Christian and Missionary Alliance in French Indochina," Michael Barker writes:
"By the end of World War II, the United States had created an intelligence service known as the O.S.S. which was most certainly involved in Indochina during and after the war. Interestingly, one O.S.S. officer, Sergeant George Wickes, used connections within the Roman Catholic Church to collect information on the Viet Minh." (http:www.bucknell.edu/Beaucarnot/documents/Barker_Paper.pdf)
________________________________
----------
From: Tobias RETTIG <tobiasrettig@smu.edu.sg>
Date: 2008/9/30
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Tobias Rettig
Singapore Management University
tobiasrettig@smu.edu.sg
Dear All,
I have been following this debate for quite some, and if I recall, I even made a brief contribution in February.
The way the debate is going, it will go on eternally, or at least until one or two parties are utterly exhausted.
Why is that so? Because the opposing sides apply two different levels of analysis, or ways of interpreting society.
On one side are those who place more emphasis on specific events and texts, on the other side are those who emphasise context and complexity.
I can understand both modes of analysing, but would tend towards the latter, because it allows for a richer analysis. For instance, in my February post, I had pointed out that not all Frenchmen of the time were enthusiastic Catholics and highlighted the rivalries between different groups of Frenchmen, including high-placed republicans and freemasons.
Does the complexity theory deny that there were alliances between church and colonial state? I do not think it does, and it would not be very credible if it did, but it also highlights all the exceptions: anti-Catholic Frenchmen; pro-independence Catholics; non-Catholic Vietnamese who sided with the French, and the like.
Best regards, and happy Hari Raya Puasa,
Tobias
-------
From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu]
On Behalf Of Chung Nguyen
Sent: Wednesday, 01 October, 2008 11:31 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Before I respond to Charles, let me just refer to an earlier discussion we had on VSG in Feb 2008 on practically the same topic - the term "colonial-Christian", the early intertwined relation between Roman Catholicism and colonialism. It has very deep roots:
Such was the mindset of the Roman Catholic Church and of the time. Such were the actions of Christian kings and queens. All of that, I think, establishes beyond any doubt that the French officials, French missionaries and Vietnamese converts, at the time, were used intentionally as instruments of conquest and exploitation, as expressed in their own words and actions - Minister Chasseloup-Labat, Father Alexandre de Rhode, Bishops Huc, Pellerin, Puginier, Gauthier, etc. There were certainly French missionaries and Vietnamese converts who were meek, pietistic, and peaceful at heart, but that does not change the fundamental aim of the mission. It is documented in great details in Cao Huy Thuan's 1968 dissertation - "Christianisme et Colonialisme au Vietnam 1857-1914." (This was published in 2000 by Yale University Press, without the first 60 pages and with a new title –“ Les Missionnaires et la Politique Coloniale Francaise au Việt Nam 1857-1914.” Of the original dissertation, there were two Vietnamese translations, one unauthorized by Huong Que, Los Angeless, 1988 and an authorized version by Nguyen Thuan, HoChiMinh city, 2003).
Every deductions McLeod makes are based on letters, communications between French officers, or missionaries, or their memoirs. He can't be dismissed so easily. His work is confirmed by Cao Huy Thuan, Patrick J.N. Tuck (French Catholic Missionaries and the Politics of Imperialism in Vietnam, 1857-1914: A Documentary Survey), Alain Forest & Yoshiharu Tsuboi (Catholicisme et Sociétés Asiatiques), Nicole-Dominique Le (Les Missions-Étrangères et la Pénétration Francaise au Viet-Nam), Avro Manhattan (Vietnam: Why Did We Go?), Helen B. Lamb (Vietnam's Will To Live), Nguyen Xuân Tho ( Histoire de la Pénétration Francaise au Viet Nam (1858-1897), Lê Trọng Văn (Những Bí Ẩn Lịch Sử Dưới Chế Độ Ngô Đình Diệm), Chu Bang Linh (Đang Cần Lao,) Đỗ Quang Hưng (Một Số Vấn Đề Lịch Sử Thiên Chúa Giáo ở Việt Nam), Lý Chánh Trung, Tôn Giáo và Dân Tộc), etc.
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: 2008/10/5
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It's entirely up to Charles if he wishes to discontinue the conversation. I never have a sense that it's just something strictly between the two of us. As a discussion on VSG, anyone could jump in at any time. I would like, however, to thank Charles for giving me an opportunity to present a different perspective, which normally, for both historical and contemporary reasons, doesn't get into the English media:
1- Christianity has an entirely different background, position, and meaning in the West, esp. in U.S., and to a somewhat lesser degree, in Europe today.
2- In the centuries before the colonial era, the Vietnamese had no understanding, esp. systematic understanding, of Roman Catholicism, the Vatican, and its position in the West. In the colonial period and the eras of the first and second Indochina war, the vast body of works in the West onthis subject was completely banned in Vietnam. Most Vietnamese were unaware of them. It was certainly an area of knowledge that would not get you anywhere in terms of career and aspiration; even worse, those who attempted to write even the barest facts about it (e.g. the case of Nguyen Hien Le) might get into serious trouble. For today, esp. in the Vietnamese overseas anti-communist media, the standard refrain would be either a "communist plot" to divide the country or a "devious plan" to incite religious war. Very few, therefore, bother to study it systematically as history. There exists an almost automatic tendency to, in the name perhaps of false ecumenism and facile intellectual high-mindedness, focus on the predictable concepts of Human rights and the greatness of all religions, ignoring the impact of a century of anti-colonial struggle.
In the meantime, for the Vietnamese Catholic community, in Vietnam as well as overseas, the independent scholarly studies of these issues in the West were, and mostly are still, not available; had they been available, as Father Tram Tam Tinh points out, they would have been banned by the Church. That re-enforces the absolute sense of self-righteousness in the parishes. Hence the vastly different perspectives of Catholics and non-Catholics in Vietnam in terms of the interpretation of the past century's history, meanings, and imports - which would define the present's actions and re-actions, esp. its frame of reference. The Western media, naturally, would see the entire conflict within a Western lens, simplistically as a Church-State conflict, esp. an Asian communist state against a Western-oriented Church, oblivious to its much deep roots. It is this colonial-anticolonial dichotomy, not superficially Catholic vs. Buddhist, which, I believe, lies at the heart of the differences.
It certainly does not mean that the independent scholarly studies of the Church, its doctrines and history, necessarily take on the role of the final arbiter. Their existence, however, allows people to look at the issues more rationally, not just theologically.
With only a limited time available to participate in VSG, I apologize for not being to address each post directly. Most of the questions raised, however, I believe I have already I touched upon. For example, for the issue of the communism, I notes its complexity re: the Bishops' letter in 1951 and Father Tran Tam Tinh's view. For the matter of persecution, it's the the conflict between a ruler's legitimate right of national self-defense versus a, I believe, less legitimate, "mission civilisatrice", the expansion, as Pope Alexandre VI put it, of the "Christian Empire" (Vietnam as Bishop Puginier's "Little France of the Far East," Chasseloup-Labat's "second Philippines", and Alexandre de Rhodes' Christianized Orient). The question as to the difference between other Vietnamese, not just our Catholic brethren, who also collaborated with the French, including the many scholars, I have already noted in an earlier post : "Yes, there were many non-Catholics who served the French too. But there was a difference. They did so because of poverty, desires for financial advantages, honors, and security, not because they supported France's goal. The Vietnamese Catholics, however, did it because they identified wholeheartedly with the missionary's teachings."
This would be my last post on this thread.
C. Nguyen
Umass Boston
P.S: I take the opportunity to make some clean-ups in the post below.
----------
From: Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
Date: Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 9:28 PM
To: chucksearcy@yahoo.com, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Not meaning to resurrect this long thread... (My Google-serviced
school webmail shows that there were 42 emails, Chuck Searcy's being
the last.) But I've recently read Jacob Ramsay's new book _Mandarins
and Martyrs_, which was mentioned by a few people during this
debate... It strikes me as an impressive monograph that illuminates
some of the complex dynamics and interactions among several groups of
Vietnamese and French in a very complex period. High recommendation,
esp. to non-specialists like myself. The fact that it isn't long -
only 175 pages of text - should be nice for people who are busy and
don't have time to read long books.
You can learn more about the book - and read the Introduction - from this link:
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=10631
On a larger point:
Historians, I think, are the opposite of physicists. Physicists
strive for simplicity - e.g., E=mc2 - while the historians look for
context and complexity. (Sure, they sometimes illuminate specific
episodes too, but not at the expense of the rest.) After all, human
interactions are usually complex. Even intellectual history, which
tends towards specific texts, engages context and complexity big time.
At least the most persuasive intellectual histories.
While there is a place for emphasis on specific texts and events,
there is often the possibility that it morphs into polemics or, worse,
propaganda. One example is the more polemical "histories" of the
Vietnam War - in book or essay form - that focus on specific texts and
events with little context and even less complexity. The presence of
these "histories" to this day - in both Vietnamese and English, from
different perspectives (communist-nationalist,
anticommunist-nationalist, pro-American, anti-American, etc.) - is a
reminder that the difference between events/texts and
context/complexity, elementary though it seems, is worth repeating now
and then. So thanks to Tobias Rettig for having mentioned it in this
thread.
~Tuan
--
Tuan Hoang, PhD Candidate
Department of History
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
thoang1@nd.edu
Academic year 2008-2009:
Notre Dame Kaneb Predoctoral Fellow
Department of History
1212 HMNSS Building
University of California, Riverside
900 University Avenue
Riverside, CA 92521
----------
From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 8:49 AM
To: Vietnam Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Tuan,
There is another point to this: what rises to level of text/event, or what
is preserved at the level of text/event?
The recent Nha Chung story, for example, rises to a level of text/event that
overshadows a less notable effort by the Party and state to broadly
recognize the place of Catholics as fellow citizens, the easing of
restrictions on foreign researchers to do historical research in Catholic
areas, and, of course, the decade-long movement to repair and construct
churches. You have to wonder how poor farmers in Nam Dinh can afford to
build colossal cathedrals in the rice fields. It can't all be from the
savings of xe om drivers and junk buyers, or people who evacuated in 1954 to
settle in Paris or Saigon. I was shown the door out of Nam Dinh in 1997
about the time I got an answer to this and other questions.
In the case of Nha Chung, the event - which was widely reported -
overshadows a context which is largely invisible to people who do not live
here or who have not made it a topic of their research.
Mike
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
From: Bill Hayton <bill.hayton@bbc.co.uk>
Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 1:40 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
So how do they afford to build colossal cathedrals? What was the answer
that you found in Nam Dinh?
Bill Hayton
----------
From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 1:54 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Bill,
Its an interesting question, no? But I wouldn't want to spoil your fun.
Do some probing. I only know about one case, and as they say, one case
does not make a trend.
Mike
Michael DiGregorio, PhD
Program Officer
Education, Media, Arts, and Culture
The Ford Foundation
Hanoi, Vietnam
----------
From: Fr Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 1:57 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sometimes, they don't. I visited what from a distance appeared to be a
vast, bombed-out ruin of a church in Bui Chu diocese (which lies within Nam
Dinh province) in 2003. As I got closer, I saw that rather than a war-time
relic, it was the uncompleted (and now abandoned work) of an excessively
exuberant parish priest or community who realised, all too late, that they
didn't possess the wherewithal to fulfil their vision.
I realise that this doesn't answer Bill's question, but the suggestion that
there is some vast, bottomless, shadowy fund from which all things are made
possible is simply a part of the psychopathology of anti-Catholic myth.
I do know that Viet Kieu communities are frequently called upon t be
benefactors to church building projects, and are often proud to be involved
(and recognized) A rather grand new church in Bao Loc that I visited in May
bore a plaque offering gratitude to a vast list of names, mostly identified
as Viet Kieu My.
Peter Hansen
Forwarded conversation
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam Vatican Relations...
------------------------
From: Fr Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
Date: 2008/10/31
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks Rob,
Well said, and a good heads-up to what is indeed an excellent site.
Peter Hansen
--------------
On Behalf Of Robert Whitehurst
Sent: Saturday, 1 November 2008 8:26 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam Vatican Relations...
Anecdotal to the discussion of size and means-to-construct the various churches: I posted this collection of photos of the construction of the canal-side La Ma church in Ben Tre [with permisssion] on the skyscrapercity site: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=526887&page=21 . The church went up in the mid 1950s and at that time there would have been no Viet Kieu to support its construction. The congregation apparently was a long-standing local one and not a recently arrived group from the North. For general interest and some wonderful contemporary and historic photographs of Catholic churches all over Viet Nam the two threads “Churches and cathedrals in Vietnam I and II” on the Vietnam forum of the skyscrapercity website is pretty amazing. A lot of history makes it to the site along with the discussion of all sorts of church-related issues. It takes a long evening to just scroll through the photographs alone.
Regards…Rob Whitehurst
----------
From: Charles Keith <ckeith@msu.edu>
Date: 2008/10/31
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
For those who don't know it, there's a recent book on Catholic churches in Vietnam. It's less a scholarly study than a coffee-table-type book, but it is very informative and has terrific pictures:
Nguyễn Nghị, ed. Nhà Thờ Công Giáo ở Việt Nam: Kiến Trức - Lịch Sử. Hồ Chí Minh City: Nhà Xuất Bản Tổng Hợp, 2004
----------
From: Fr Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
Date: 2008/10/31
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
And indeed, an earlier work; Nguyen Hong Duong (ed.). Nha Tho Cong Giao Viet Nam. Ho Chi Minh City: NXB Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 2003.