The Difficulties

The Shortage of priests

Violations of religious freedom are evident. The Council of Ministers, at the national level and the local administrative authorities and party members, at the lower levels are empowered with legal authority to control the citizen’s secular and religious life. For instance, the most serious problem facing the Catholic Church is the shortage of priests.  Young Catholics are not only discouraged to enter the priesthood but also are bound to meet strict requirements, rules, and regulations  if they wish to serve their Catholic faith as a priest.

   A case in Evidence

Phan Van Loi was born on March 9, 1941 in Huong Tra, Thua Thien Province (Central Vietnam). He was admitted to the Little Seminary Hoan Thien, Hue, in 1961 then to the Grand Seminary Xuan Bich, Hue, in 1969. In May, 1978,  Phan Van Loi was dismissed from the priesthood and ordered to leave the Grand Seminary on ungrounded reason by the Communist administration in Hue. However, Phan was determined in his decision firm to continue to serve his religious faith as a priest. He was ordained without State authorization, that is “in hiding,” by Bishop F. X. Nguyen Van Thuan at Giang Xa, Son Tay (North Vietnam) on May 21, 1981. He was arrested and imprisoned by the Communist administration on October 21, 1981 for "unusual" religious  practices  He was sentenced to 4 years in prison and incarcerated in Dong Son Camp, Dong Hoi, Quang Binh Province. 

The reason for his arrest originated from his involvement in a play entitled “Let’s Offer Mother Mary Our Children”  on the “Day of Student Priests.” The play, which is based on a true story, relates he pilgrimage to La Vang Holy Cathedral on August 14, 1981 of a Catholic couple in Phu Cam, Hue. They earnestly prayed for the Holy Mother of La Vang and God’s divine favor, in their belief in God that their child would successfully enter the priesthood and successfully lead a priestly life. They were stopped and interrogated at a police checkpoint at My Chanh. Catholic nuns in a vehicle met the same difficulty. By kneeling down on the roadside to pray God for favor they were finally allowed to go.

The players were mostly seminarians. For unspecified reasons, they were all arrested and brought to stand trial before the Court. The Communist administration later discovered that Phan Van Loi, one among the convicts, had been ordained “in hiding.”  Phan  was  separated from the other convicts and transferred to another prison in Binh Dien, Thua Thien Province. He was imprisoned for three additional years. After his release from the prison, he was placed under house arrest  at 90/13  Phan Cu Trinh Street Hue, from October 1988. In the beginning of the ministerial year 1996, he served as  editor-in-chief of the “Ban Duong” (The Companion), selection of articles reflecting his meditations on the needs of the Children of God.  On April 21, 1998, he was convoked “to work with” the security service as a result of the publication of “Ban Duong.” His printed materials of a photocopy type and computer were confiscated.

        

The approximate version of the report by the priest on the “session of work” at the police headquarters  is as follows:

“[I said to the interrogator] Yesterday you came to my residence. You ransacked it unmannerly. You found no evidence whatsoever. You got improperly angry and seized a number of written religious  materials the possession of which, in your views, is in violation of the law, and thus is considered as illegal. Any Catholic priest is  naturally in possession of these photocopied religious materials like this. If you ransack any Catholic priest’s dwelling all over the world, or any place of residence of the Catholic priests in Hue Diocese, you will find the materials of this kind. I would then consider that you have enforced the law unlawfully. Those books are not on the black list. I bought them here and there. Naturally, Books of this kind are published without State authorization.  Control on religious publication is strict. But, they are sold in the street Why do you arrest those people who sell them and ransack the houses of those people who buy them, instead? Is it right to cause harm to a honest man --a priest-- to admonish other priests in Hue. You abuse authority to do this while our Bishop is absent from Hue. It is evident that it is an act of repression against religion.    

[The interrogator said]: We will carefully read the books we confiscate one by one to examine their contents and their techniques of printing then settle the matter. Any book that violates either one of these criteria will be held back. However, the main problem to solve  is that you have to admit that you have distributed the “Tin Nha” (News from Home) to Catholic priests in Hue.

      

[I replied]: I have already reported to you on this matter. We need not talk more about it. You should bring in witness for confrontation. That will settle the matter.

At this point, the interrogator changed his tone. giving a lecture on  moral conduct and principles of honor of a priest. Playing the role of a counselor, he explained to a priest  how to perform self-examination in the interests of the Church's service and individual life in the future. He advised me to legalize my status as priest to better serve my Catholic faith. The lecture is sometimes coupled with warning, threat, and insult with a tone of superiority “dare to do things but dare not admit  doing them” and “do things of which  the Church is really ashamed.” 

       

[I ] sat reading prayers [I then said]: “For a long time, I have preached about faith to people. Today, I listen to you  doing the preaching. Thank you.

       

They produced a whole pile of printed materials with this remark on the cover sheet “Report on the Violations of the Conduct of  Public Administration.” As they prepared to list the items they intended to confiscate in the report, I :verbally reacted::  “I protest the way you conduct public affairs. You do as you please, regardless of l due legal procedures. You can only draw up minutes and execute a temporary seizure of “evidences,” if you like. While paper is already at hand, list the items on it.” 

When one cadre of the Culture Department  prepared to draw up minutes, another one showed me a small sheet of paper with the printed word “SEALED”  and this line: “the offender signed” on it.  I protested: “Should I sign this paper, I would voluntarily avow that I have committed a crime, and you will use this as proof to arrest me in the future? I demand that you correct that line. “All right. Correct it yourself,” they replied. I crossed out  the line and wrote: “The proprietor signed.”

Phan Van Loi was arrested without a proof thereafter. (Tin Nha, No. 34, July, 1998).

     The Shortage of Priests in the South

Harassment of this type was common practice, discouraging the Catholic youth to enter the priesthood.  In the parishes in Saigon, where international organizations and agencies have their ears to the ground, the ratio of priests to the faithful was exceptionally low, with only one or two priests for about 7,000 followers. There were 5 priests for 95,000 followers in the Phan Thiet diocese. The shortage 0f priests was also critical in the provinces of the Center. In the diocese of Nha Trang where the Catholic faithful  numbered about 150,000 out of the population of 1.4 million inhabitants. The entire diocese had only 117 priests for this huge faithful. The diocese of Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands had only 56 priests for 185,000  followers.  The State tightened control on the Church. The State-created “Patriotic Catholics Committees” was vested with authority to direct the Church functioned alongside the Church’s clergy in the parishes. Methods of  administration and political measures as such, within twenty years, had decreased the number of the Church’s  Orders and priests to an alarming rate.

     The Shortage of Priests in the North

In the North, the shortage of priests became increasingly critical. In many parishes, there were no priests at all. In the Bac Ninh diocese, there were two bishops and one priest for 120,000 followers. In the Lang Son diocese, there was only one priest for 5,000 followers in a region of 25,000 km2. The priest was the Reverend Hoang Trong Quynh, who was then  over 70 years old. Bishop Vincent de Paul Pham Van Du was also very old. He was ordained in 1948. He became the bishop of the diocese in 1960 and had been in office there ever since. In 1990.  after 36 years  under the Socialist regime, the number of Catholic priests deteriorated immensely. There were only 7 priests for the faithful of 145, 000 in the Haiphong diocese. There were 2 bishops and 1 priest for 72,000 followers in the Bac Ninh diocese. By 1993, the total number of priests in the North was about 277 including 30 priests who were ordained “in hiding. In the Hanoi diocese, there were 16 priests 7 of whom were over sixty years old for the faithful of 150,000. In the Phat Diem Diocese, there were 23 priests for the faithful of 125,000. In the Bui Chu Diocese, there were 27 priests and 27 “illegally-ordained” priests for 300,000 followers. In many parishes, there were no priests at all. In the diocese of Lang Son, there was 1 priest, who was 93 years old (1998) for approximately 5,000 followers.

The total number of priests throughout the North  decreased alarmingly the following years. There were  about 277, including 30 priests who had been ordained “chui” (in hiding). It was much less than the number of priests in Saigon Archdiocese, where 300 priests served their faith. In  Hanoi Diocese, there were only 16 priests, 7 of whom were over 60 years of age, who were in charge of 150,000 faithful. In the Bac Ninh Diocese, there were 5 priests and 12 nuns for the  service of 100,000 faithful in 46 parishes. In  Phat Diem Diocese, there were only 23 priests for the 125,000 faithful.  In Bui Chu Diocese, there were 27 priests and 27 "illegally ordained" priests for 300,000 followers. The Communists expect that, in 15 to 20 years when the older priests will have died, the faithful will become leaderless and the Church will disintegrate by itself.  (The Committee for the Struggle for Religious Freedom in Vietnam, 1993: 11-12).

     

The shortage of priests in Thai Binh Diocese, which comprises Thai Binh  and Hung Yen provinces, was most critical. In March 1996, Bishop Nguyen Van Sang  could ordain only 4 new priests, raising the number of priests of the diocese to 35 for 140,000 followers. Many priests had to take charge of  two parishes. Since its foundation in 1936, the ecclesiastic personnel had never been obsolete. According the statistics established in 1938, the diocese was administered by 1 bishop, 25 priests, 333 Bible instructors, and 12 brothers for 120,000 followers.  The Bishop indicated that restrictions on the formation of priests instituted an obstacle. A large number of seminarians of the diocese had to wait for decades to be admitted to the seminary. Some seminarians  became old, 50 or even 60 years of age. Politics was all that matters. The Church  performed its sacerdotal services with a small number of priests.  “The Office of Religious Affairs disfavors the candidacy to the priesthood of people of old age. Young candidates devoted to the sacerdotal life are numerous, but the number of those who are permitted is limited. Only 14 students from Thai Binh Diocese are admitted to the candidacy.”

Monopoly of Power

   The Rights to Religious Freedom

     The Official Viewpoint

On December 31, 1993, the Permanent Mission of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United Nations at Geneva defended the religions policy in Vietnam, saying; that “Vietnam is a country where approximately 20 million  people (nearly one third of the population) practice more than 10 different religions. Through thousands of years of its history, Vietnam hast experienced religious intolerance, discrimination, or conflicts. The Vietnamese State and the Communist Party of Vietnam have affirmed that Religious beliefs constitute a spiritual need of the believers as proclaimed in the political report delivered before the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1991. In the light of Vietnam's tradition of national union, the Vietnamese Government pursues a consistent policy of broad national union between believers and non-believers with a view to encouraging the Vietnamese of all social strata and diverse religions in the whole country and abroad to contribute to the national cause of building Vietnam into a strong country with a rich people and a civilized country. In order to dispel prejudices and complex difficulties existing among the people as a result of 30 years of war, the Vietnamese State is committed to ensuring abolition on all narrow-minded prejudices and discriminatory attitudes towards religions fellow countrymen.  On the legal plane, religious rights and freedoms are guaranteed in Vietnam's Constitution. Article 70 of Vietnam's Constitution stipulates that citizens are entitled to the rights to  freedoms of belief and religion,  to practice or not to practice a religion. All religions are equal before the law. To concretize and realize the provisions in matters of religion in the Constitution, the Vietnamese Government has promulgated specific orders:  Circular 234 (signed by the President of the Republic on June 14, 1955), Resolution 297 (adopted by the Government Council on November 11, 1977), Decree 69 (issued by the Government Council on March 21, 1991) and Circular 479 (issued by the Prime Minister of the Government).”

    The Reality

Inconsistencies in the provisions of the laws and the enforcement practices of the  laws with persistent, inconsistent, harsh and measures of the authorities had led to discontent or even unrest in various religious communities. There were voices raising problematic issue by the Bishops of Vietnam in their petition to the government in October 1993. The prelacy of the Roman Catholic Church of Vietnam requested the government to allow all  Catholic priests and religious returning from  reeducation camps to resume their pastoral duties, that Catholic laity be free to contribute  to  educational services  the Church to  be free to maintain its own ministerial publications. And, although some seminaries reopened, there were still more candidates than spaces. The Bishops of Vietnam hoped that other closed seminaries would soon be reopened, and the State to return to the Church the confiscated properties and the facilities of various Catholic religious Orders. In conclusion, the Church's leadership wished that " the basic conditions that are indispensable to the normal functioning of a religion and that would allow the Catholic Church to serve the country and the people effectively be the concerns of the government."

   

There were other issues that were of great concern to the Church. The Bishops insisted that the plight of the nearly 55,000 refugees that still suffered misery in the refugee camps in Southern Asia. They had been denied refugee status and had faced with forced repatriation They were concerned as well with the unresolved problems affecting American children,  the continuing effects  of Agent Orange, and other consequence left y the destruction.

       

“We pray that, with the growing dialogue in these  recent years and, nowadays,  with the lifting of the economic sanctions, greater tolerance and understanding will come, thus characterizing the  relations between the two countries. We hope in particular that the Vietnamese authorities will develop a more respectful and tolerant approach toward the religious institutions of their country. Religious liberty will ever an essential criterion for improving relations between the United States and Vietnam. As the advocates of improved relations between our two countries, we remain committed to defending the rights and dignity of all believers in Vietnam.” As always, their requests  came to no response.

    The Measures

In late March 1993, the Chairman of the State Committee for Religions, Vu Quang, informed the Episcopal Conference in Saigon of the government’s new policy concerning religious practices. There would be solutions to the current religious issue. The government would be ready to allow a number of Catholic priests to go and study religious subjects overseas. Those priests who returned from reeducation would be allowed to resume their priesthood unless their conduct proved to be appropriate. Seminaries that were legally accredited by the government would be allowed to perform religious functions.  Nevertheless, Catholic priests were still not be allowed to study abroad without authorization and those priests who returned from reeducation were not permitted to perform their religious services as pastors.

Other measures were executed. The state-affiliated daily Saigon Giai Phong (Saigon Liberated), on August 17, 1975, reported that, on August 15, 1975, at a meeting of the Catholic clergy in Saigon, Mai Chi Tho, the then Vice-chairman of Saigon Military Management Committee, affirmed with antipodal remarks that to nominate a bishop, for instance, is not only a religious matter. Catholicism is essentially an incorporated component of the Nation. Therefore, the appointment of a person to head a diocese must be approved by the revolutionary administration. Following this line of politics, in October 1993, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council had pronounced its protest against the Vatican's nomination of Bishop Huynh Van Nghi of Phan Thiet diocese as the Coadjutor Administrator of Saigon Archdiocese. The Council also announced that it would never bear to see Bishop Nguyen Van Thuan to become the Archbishop of the Saigon prelacy, charging the Bishop with anti-revolutionary crimes, a blood debtor to the people and the mastermind of national discord. The protest, in reality, came out of preexisting decision. The Communist rule wanted Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh to remain the unique supreme leader of the Saigon Archdiocese. Its hostile attitude toward Bishop Nguyen Van Thuan might result from political reason. The Bishop is a nephew of the late President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem`, an old political adversary to the Communist regime.

Artifices, in effect, were devised to blind public opinion from the reality. On November 11, 1993, the State Catholic priest Huynh Cong Minh, the pastor of the Archdiocese Cathedral of Saigon, informed without an ecclesiastic order before the First Congress of the Ho Chi Minh City Committee for Solidarity of Catholics that Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh had asked all Catholic priests to withdraw from the said organization. The State priest even stressed that “the participation of Catholic priests in the Committee as well as in other political and social organizations are the responsibilities of the laity, and not of the clergy. Political realities in the past had not allowed the laity to assume this task. Therefore, the archbishop gave a number of priests permission to temporarily be in charge of it. The situation has changed. The country is in the process of renovation, and the economic, social, and political activities have gone back to normalcy. The archbishop wanted all activities of the laity to be normalized, and, thus, the clergy` will eventually be able to assume the task that the laity cannot. Their task, now,  is to perform religious duties, an area where the religious personnel are in want.” 

The declarations by the State priest were really unconvincing. People knew very well the Committee of Union of Catholics led by the “Gang of Four,” of which Hynh Cong Ninh is a member, was only an instrument in the hands of the Communist Party. It was used as a means to an end in the monopoly of power of the Communist Party. The political regime sought through its activities to impose control on the Catholic Church. Nonparty members in it only played a nominal role.  Genuine priests could only be exploited to the service of the regime. Being aware of the anxiety of the Catholic clergy to a presence of certain true priests who would involve in the activities of that State-created organization, Huynh Cong Minh assumed the role of a State spokesman to maneuver the public. His assertions came from the common  tactics usually applied by the Communist, "to move a step backward in order to move two steps forward.

The control of the State on the Church fomented indignation among Catholic circles and parishes. Leaflets denouncing violations of religious freedoms by the Catholic Movement for Religious Freedom were found at La Vang Cathedral in Quang Tri Province, Central Vietnam (August 18, 1993) and in Long Thanh Catholic Community and the Ho Nai parishes in Dong Nai Province in South Vietnam (September 5, 1993). Regarding the issue of religious freedom, the Committee for the Struggle for Religious Freedom, in its communication to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights in 1994, had this to say:

"If there exist now 20 million believers, that is one-third of the Vietnamese population, as the Permanent Mission of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United Nations reported, it is then understood that 50 million of the Vietnamese population are atheistic. Supposing that the aforementioned statistics were authentic, it reveals a desperate tragedy: after 50 years under the Communist rule the Vietnamese Communist Party and its administration have successfully transformed the traditionally pietistic Vietnamese into atheists, with only one-third of them are now religious believers. This fact alone reveals how crafty the so-called  religious policy of the Vietnamese Communist Party and State is.”

    A Show of Power

The show of authority was apparent. For instance, the civil authorities refused to grant authorization to three Vietnamese bishops to go and attend the conference organized by the Federation of Conferences of Bishops of Asia scheduled to be held in Manila, January 1995. They said that they would not allow the bishops to attend the event because the Conference of Bishops of Vietnam Reunified had not yet been a member of the federation (Much Vu, October 1994). Vu Quang, Director of the Bureau of Religious Affairs, might have explained to the bishops that it was the old Conference of Bishops of South Vietnam that had been a member of the said organization. The new Conference of Bishops Reunified was not a member in the federation. During the process, twelve Bishops had requested in vain the Communist authorities to give permission to come to Manila to participate in the event. 

On October 7, 1994, Archbishop Etienne Nguyen Nhu The, the Titular Archbishop of Tipasa in Maretania and Apostolic Administrator of Hue Archdiocese, reported to the World Bishops Conference at the Vatican that the religious life in Vietnam was suffering restrictions. The situation gave rise to many problems, “particularly those concerning the formation of priests, the lack of means for the reconstruction of diocesan premises, and the shortage of ministerial personnel. Congregations that are devoted to religious education and charitable activities cannot pursue their missions in accordance with their own charisma because of the State monopoly of power in the areas of religious and humanitarian services. Thus, despite some relaxation in 1986, the Catholic Church of Vietnam had not had  significant freedom. As a matter of fact, “the household registration system restricts freedom of movement and residence status caused difficulties for the clergy to perform ministerial duties and religious services and religious organization and to operate religious activities even within religious communities. Meetings for religious services, in principle, are not subject to  authorization. Nevertheless, authorization prior to any form of assembly is required.”

  

State oppression ever persisted. On October 1, 1995, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, again, sent a letter to Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet reminding him of the difficulties that it had met as a result of the application of the State’s hostile politics of the government on the religion.  The prime minister had already given promises and granted solutions to the problems the Church had presented in its previous requests, namely, the ban on restrictions on movement of the priests and bishops to perform pastoral duties. the creation of a seminary at Hue, and the considerations of  the proposal from the Episcopal Conference on processing procedures for  admission of prospective seminarians to seminaries. Most problems concerned remained unsolved, thus causing the pastoral duties of the clergy as well as the religious life of the faithful more difficult.  It took off much of the Church's utmost persuasive fervor due to the hostile politics on religions of the government.    

   The Conference of Bishops of Vietnam for many years had wished to be allowed to own and operate a house of editions to print and diffuse diverse religious materials. Nevertheless, their requests for authorization had never been accorded. Surprisingly, the Directives 379/TTG, issued on July 23, 1993 decreed, among other regulations, that "the authorization for printing religious books must be given in conformity with the law on publications, as foreseen in Article 18, and "the organs of administration of the State with competence in the matter of  publication  will determine concretely [the legal procedures for the creation of] the houses of editions that take charge of  publishing most  books of prayers and religious works conveniently.” (EDA 291)

As always, the Vietnamese Communist Party turned kept a close watch on ideological deviations of the organizations orbiting within its system. The religious circles are of particular concern. The review “Catholicism and the Nation,” which is an propagation  organ of the State-sponsored Committee of Union of Catholics, in its issue of June-July 1997, was called into order by the Committee of Ideology and Culture of  the Communist Party Section  of Ho Chi Minh City. In its letter addressed to the editorial staff, the Party authority blamed the review for forming erroneous judgments on history and historical personages as they did not chime with the official appreciation of the Communist Party.  For instance, the Reverend Truong Ba Can, the editor-in-chief and a regime’s “protégé,” was blamed for his devious judgments on Stalin and his regime. Indeed, In his article in the monthly supplement, the politician-priest described Stalin as a leader who had acquired numerous merits but who at the same time had committed numerous unforgivable errors and mistakes. The commentator further proliferated that under Stalin’s  leadership, the Soviet regime became “sanguinary and cruel.” The two adjectives “sanguinary and cruel,” the authorities stressed, did not depict in any way the true picture of the political regime even if, during a certain period under his leadership, Stalin carried an erroneous politics. “Sanguinary and cruel” were only appropriate for the description of a capitalist regime or the fascist regime of Hitler. By giving improper judgments of value on Stalin and his regime, the review involuntarily incited animosity towards socialism among those who tried to discredit the “Revolution.” 

The editor was also blamed for infringement on the unwritten orientation rules and regulations according to which opinions and viewpoints that did not  reflect the Party’s lines of  politics are likely deemed to be deviations. The warning was equally addressed to the author of an article published in the same issue. The article appeared in a form of a prayer of a priest who repented his sin and asked for redemption on Ash - Wednesday.. expressing excruciating grief: “Lord, We Have Caused Misfortune to the Generation to come.” The author evoked in veiled terms the misconduct in matters of abuse of power of a dogmatic State education agency. Weaknesses of similar type reflected the worries of the population about the  penury of intellectuals, the increase in evils, the practices of commercialization of the instruction, and the quantitative insufficiency and qualitative incompetence of the teachers as well.

To justify their remarks, the authorities redirected public opinion to the Party’s orientation. Everyone must constrain himself to the study and practice of socialist ideals as well as the contents and methods that are prescribed by the Party’s political lines in the domain of education. To elevate that spirit, after having recommended the teachers to fight against the actual degradation of ideology education and the expansion of religious propaganda to  poison  the school environment, thus genuinely strengthening civic, ideological, and moral education, and the practice of Marxism-Leninism..   

Control of thought was persistent and pervasive throughout a long period. The rights to information of the Church was limited within the places of worship. In April 2000, in an interview accorded to the review “Catholicism and the Nation,”  the press organ of the Committee of Union of Catholics in Ho Chi Minh City, Pham Ngoc Chau affirmed the exact date of the creation of a Printing House for Religious Editions. The State cadre even enumerated the objectives of the printing house and specified the character of two categories of publication of different forms, one for the books with religious contents, books of prayers and the other for books for religious teaching. In the latter category, there were two sub-categories, one for the publication of books of religions published by the religion and the other for the books on religions published by the Communist Party of Vietnam and the State. (EDA 309)

The review “Catholicism and the Nation”  cited as proof, a number of works had already appeared in this house of editions such as the ones administered by the Bishop of Long Xuyen Bui Tuan and Father Ngo Duc Hau, the editor of the “Journal of Jesus.” According to Pham Ngoc Chau, during the interview in April 2000, the House of Editions would have published 120 book titles belonging to the first category. Many Catholic and other religious works  might have been  published in the year 2000, among which were the Buddhist Scriptures (Holy Writings), the Old Testament, the New Testament, the “K'oran” as well as the prophetic writings of the Founder of Hoa Hao Buddhism Huynh Phu So (EDA 269).

      

Restrictions on diffusion of information and communication between the Church and faithful became even stricter. The Catholic review Hiep Thong (Communion) was suspended at  the command of the Bureau of Religious Affairs and the secretary of the Episcopal Conference. The review might survive if it changed its subjects and form, although the notice from the authorities indicated clear decision  on the matter.

    

Along with the suspension of “Hiep Thong,” the Roman Catholic Church of Vietnam ceased to have its official voice. The Party-affiliated review “Cong Giao va Dan Toc” (Catholicism and the Nation) seemingly played the role of an semiofficial organ of information and apparently assumed the role of “spokesman” of the Church. To make it clear about the nominal role of the review to public opinion, the Reverend Chan Tin, an advocate for human rights and religious freedom. declared his protest against the decision by the International Catholic Union Press (UCIP) to  recommend the “Catholicism and Nation” with a gold medal  during  a congress held at Fribourg, September 17-23, 2001, which honor it did not deserve. 

In his letter to the UCIP on October 12, 2001,  the Reverend Chan Tin stressed that “the organization has made a serious error, due to lack of adequate information on the role that the review “Cong Giao va Dan Toc” and the Committee of Union of Catholics.  They only play a nominal role of demagogues within in the political context created by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The award only evokes an outrage and deepen a wound inflicted on the honor of the whole Vietnamese Catholic community and, especially, those who have suffered injustice, imprisonment ,and  residence surveillance, or are resigned to live in forced silence for their struggle for freedoms of speech, of the press and of religious freedom in Vietnam.”

The review, in effect, had been created in Paris before the end of the Vietnam War. Its office was later installed in Saigon after the war and became the press organ of the Committee of Union of Patriotic Catholics, the precursor of the Union of Catholics. The latter association then became a member of the Fatherland Front. Its function was, according to the terms used in its charter, was in charge of mobilizing the Catholics to engage in carrying out important objectives of the Communist Party and State. The authorized Catholic publication  is not the least representative of the entirety of the Catholic faithful of Vietnam.