The Roman Catholic Church

     Requests and Demands

     On April 4, 1990, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Vietnam, held in Hanoi, sent a letter of recommendation to the Communist rule requesting it to create favorable conditions for religious activities, to respect the rights to religious worship, and to allow it reopen seminaries and to attend to the humanitarian services. Religious laws in replacement of atrocious reptrssive practices were used to put Catholics and followers of other religious under the control of the State. The Decree 69 HDBT of March 21, 1991, shows these vile intents.

     Remarks on the Decree 69/HDBT of March 21, 1991

The Decree 69/ HDBT of March 21, 1991 met with strong and direct criticisms among the Catholic circles, which were reflected in the articles in the newspapers overseas. One of them noted:

“ After the disintegration of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe, the Communist Party of Vietnam, fearful of similar antigovernment political movements in Europe that might take place in Vietnam, hung on to its hostile policy against the religions. The Decree 69-HDBT of March 21, 1991, which came out with the most rigorous dispositions as a result of a deliberate decision aiming at restricting religious activities and preventing opposition from the religions.

"People come to realize that this is an instrument the Vietnamese Communist administration creates to nullify the influence of religions in the life of the people. While, the State, by Article I of the Decree, guarantees the right  to freedom of religion and the right to  not to follow a religion, prohibiting discrimination against all beliefs and religions, it imposes rules and regulations with strict measures on the exercise of religious freedom. It regulates religious activities, celebrations, and practices, conditioning the faithful' s religious life to carry out the State's objectives, policies, and to enforce the laws and regulations and subject them to the circumstances under which they can hardly serve their faith.

Article 7 , in addition, stipulates that all religious activities must not hamper the State labor production, thought reform, and military obligations. The State, by this article only, has all that it desires to compel the follower to observe whatever discipline which it finds necessary for the defined tasks and to obstruct the follower’s participation in religious practices and activities. The authorities, thereby, can easily prevent the follower from attending Holy Sunday Masses or holiday celebrations, for instance. In terms of labor production and thought reform, the Decree inherently empowers the cadres with the necessary application of the law owing to which they have the full authority in the decision making process to coerce the follower to work slavishly for labor production and dutifully attend political indoctrination sessions. Thus, schedules for work hours and political education sessions are coincidentally arranged on purpose with the Church’s programs of religious services and activities. To neutralize all other religious activities, the cadres can also organize the so-called days of labor for socialist production or full-time sessions of political indoctrination on religious holidays or the days of religious celebration.  As a result, the follower, being worn out after long days of hard labor or tedious indoctrination, will  neglect their religious duty.

    

Decades before, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Catholic faithful in the North were forced to work wage-free for the State on Sunday morning and attend political indoctrination on Sunday afternoon. To execute this measure, the cadres simply excuse themselves with the reason that they simply enforced the law. In  reality, they intentionally hindered the faithful from attending the Sunday Mass or practicing their religious duties. These servants of the people were at the same time the true lawmakers and law enforcers even though the laws can only be compiled by the legislative body. With such a legislative power, they voluntarily issued administrative orders to invalidate the admission of the Catholic laymen to the schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Pedagogy. They even assigned a Catholic civil servant to a position in the political machinery, the security service, and the party leadership hierarchy. Strict measures on a Catholic in matters of public security were evident: Their religious identity was remarked on their identification cards. In this way,  the police could easily check his social background. In any event, a citizen could be discriminated against only on  account of his or her religious faith.

Article 8 of the Decree stipulates that all regular religious services and activities (Mass attendance, religious preaching, or Bible study, and so on), at the worship place must be conducted in accordance with the customs and annual programs in the local areas. Only can  the services and activities that are registered with the local authorities' authorization be exempt from permission. Notwithstanding, special religious services and activities are subject to prior authorization.  Since the lexicon of the law is not defined, the cadres may interpret it as they see it fit. The term worship place is, for instance, ambiguous. It can be either a pagoda, a temple, or a cathedral; it can also be either a pagoda, a temple, or a cathedral and its dependent buildings. Thus, in some localities,  religious practices and activities are to be performed inside the pagoda, temple, or cathedral.  Schedules for these religious services are to be registered with the local authorities annually. The celebration of Holy Masses, the Bible study, or the practices of chants of worship for celebrations are all to be conducted or performed inside the pagoda, temple, or cathedral. The rules and regulations can be varied according to the authorities whims and wishes. In other localities, the cadres allow the religious to conduct the Bible study and the singing practices of hymns inside the dependent houses within the surroundings of the pagoda or cathedral. In other localities, the regulations are observed with strict control. Buddhist or Catholic Boy Scouts Associations, the “Legio,” the Little Souls, and so on, are dissolved, and their activities are thus prohibited.  Many followers were detained as a result of their visits to patients in hospitals or of giving aids to the poor in the name of their religious organization. Many of them were often accused of performing unlawful religious propagation. Many others were arrested and banished to long-term reeducation.

As regards religious propagation, Article 14 stipulates that the Church is permitted to print and publish prayer books and books of religious study and printed culture materials.  However, this Article only provides empty words since the printing, publication, or importation of prayer books and printed culture materials are all subject to rules and regulations. Moreover, all printing houses, exportation and importation agencies, and information and culture services are owned or directed by the State. Private enterprise in this area of business is prohibited. Even the printing of calendars used for religious services and books for religious study are subject to permission. Still, the State Department of Mass Communications and Culture only authorizes the publication of a limited number of copies of the materials of  this kind. In addition, in order to be given the permission, the Church is required to find recommendation of a State-affiliated dignitary, Buddhist monk. or Catholic priest. The Church finds difficulty to publish journals or bulletins. Only those journals published by State-affiliated  religious organs are permitted to publish unconditionally. They naturally carry out the Vietnamese Communist Party’s policies, propagandizing its goals and canvassing the followers' support to serve its purposes. Religious teachings in these journals is often diffused to the advantage of the Party and State.

Not much less rigorous are the regulations on the practice of humanitarian services. Article 16 of the Decree stipulates that all dignitaries, priests, religious associations and humanitarian services are allowed to operate in the areas of activities permitted by the State. Nevertheless, since  the takeover of political power in South Vietnam in 1975, the government has proceeded with harsh measures to nationalize physical resources of all religions. The Church has thus been devoid of material resources for humanitarian services; neither has it had access to humanitarian activities. The Communists certainly doubt that these services will only accredit certain religious leaders with prestige. Therefore, all humanitarian activities must operate under the control of Party-affiliated associations and the Fatherland Front. Consequently, after decades in power, the Communist administration has failed to replace the religious associations in  promoting maintain humanitarian services with success. This failure  also  results from the irreparable irresponsibility of the cadres whose corrupt practices plague  the nomenclature.

The population, on the other hand, does not support the Party and State in these efforts since humanitarian aids do not always reach the needy. Many State-operated camps for the blind and lepers, deprived of budget, have sent their patients back to their families, which, in turn, can hardly afford to take care of them and have to send them back to the camps. Having found no support whatsoever to subsist, these unfortunate patients have no choice but wander around the streets of large cities and survive at the mercy of passersby. Foreign visitors to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, could see groups of lepers trailing behind them in the streets and begging for alms. To cope with this situation, the State authorities, in the recent years, have invited the nuns they had been repudiated from humanitarian services to return to help them in the camps for the blind and lepers, orphanages, hospitals, and nursing homes since the State cadres are incapable of handling these tasks. State authorities may have come to think that these services would not accredit the members of religions with a political role  Nevertheless, humanitarian service in other areas such as the rescue for or giving aids to the victims of floods or fires were specifically  considered the tasks of the officials. They must be operated and supervised by Sate-affiliated organs and the Fatherland Front, instead. In Saigon, humanitarian aids to the needy by the Catholics were for years conditional on the approval by the Catholic priest Huynh Cong Minh, a Hanoi protégé and prominent member of the State-affiliated Union of Patriotic Catholics. Sources said that  restrictions in these instances could stem from the fact that rescue aids to the needy which, especially those from international humanitarian foundations, were generally luxurious gifts, and were thus an easy prey to the cadres. 

To decimate the Churches' influence over the faithful and deprive them of their authority over their clergy, the administration, by the Articles 19 and 20 of the Decree vests the authorities with full control over the Church, giving them the authority to approve of the legality of the ordination, assignment, and displacement of  a dignitary, priest  or monk.  Abuses of power engender correspondingly. Officials could easily eliminate a prominent and prestigious dignitary, priest, or monk from a key position and substitute a religious of prestige with a State protégé,  and thus gradually consolidating the State-affiliated clerical contingent.

This and other vile schemes, in the last analysis, revealed the Communist administration the mastermind of a rigorous policy of attrition against the religions, not only to restrict their religious services but also intentionally uproot the legitimate Churches from the Vietnam soil. It intentionally transformed them into servile State-affiliated organizations, artfully  destroying any potential opposition from them. Until 1992, the Communists had not approved of the Vatican's confirmation of a cardinal in replacement of the late Cardinal Trinh Van Can, who had passed away many years before that. Still, Hanoi furtively canceled the Vatican’s official Episcopal nominations for the dioceses of Hanoi, Thai Binh, Hung Hoa, Thanh Hoa, and Hue. It even banished the priests of prestige to the parishes in the suburbs or remote areas in  the countryside.

      Contenders of a Bad Faith

To move on its path of socialism, Hanoi introduced a new economic reform plan in its effort to stabilize the totalitarian Communist State. In September 1992, the Communist-instituted National Assembly elected General Le Duc Anh the President of the State and reelected Vo Van Kiet the Prime Minister of the government. This legislative organ also adopted a new constitution, codifying in many areas “the free market economy in the direction of socialism” and recognizes in the area of religion the rights of the citizens  to ”practice or not to practice a religion.”  This is only a half of the truth. The State, in practice, always looks for way to bring the religion under its control. Restrictions have been already devised to compel a believer to submit himself to the State authority, with such provision as “no one shall be allowed to take advantage of belief and religion to violate the laws and policies of the State.”     

The believers in Vietnam  are incontestably bound by many restrictions of the law to practice worship.  The Decree 69 of the Government Council on March 21, 1991 and, later, the Circular 02 of February 1993, as a case in evidence, establish more intricate guidelines and instructions to implement the previously-promulgated laws on the religion. The latter decree, indeed, prescribes provisions that are ambiguous and vague with twists of words, such as “the places of worship shall be protected by the State” (Article 11); and “all religious denominations are allowed to have their places of worship, prayer-books, worship articles necessary for religious use  and all priests, to print and publish prayer-books (Article 14). The latter article proves to be ambivalent as religious practices are bound by the restrictions of the law, they are limited to and performed within the worship place, and religious denominations are not allowed to open seminaries and training establishments  (Article 77). 

The law, again, invigorates the authority of the security police in this respect. The Decree 69/HDBT, indeed, specifies rules and regulations with strict requirements: 1. Ordinary religious activities inside the worship places such as reunions for prayers, preparations  for a ceremony, assemblies for catechism studies and so on must be conducted in conformity with the religious customs of the religion concerned and in accordance with the annually-registered programs, and all these activities are subject to prior authorization. Special religious activities that are different from the ordinary religious ones are subject to prior approval of the authorities (Article 6); 2). 2. The clergy, adepts, and organizers for religious activities including those followers who are responsible for the religious services, i.e., who are in charge of the religious services in the area where they conduct religious activities, need prior approval from the local administrative authorities (Article 20); and 3. For religious congregations (or religious collective organizations or the like), if they wish to set up religious activities other than those described, they will have to solicit permission and obtain authorization from the Council of Ministers or the agencies to which authority is already delegated by the Council (Article 21).