Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam

11. Miracles and Myths: Vietnam Seen through Its Catholic History

371 11 Miracles and Myths: Vietnam Seen through Its Catholic History Jacob Ramsay Vietnamese Catholicism has a rich store of myths and miracles and its own heretics and gnostics.1 Indeed, the story of Catholicism’s reception and interaction with local religious culture, and the history of its intersection with the Vietnamese state — from dynastic to recent times, over the last 400 years — is as complex as it is long. Underpinning this heritage is the influence of the myth, as widely expressed in French colonial, postindependence Vietnamese and Western scholarship, of Catholicism’s essential foreignness. Introduced by Western missionaries from the late 1500s and more forcefully imposed by French priests during the colonial era — the myth proposes — the religion was anathema to local tradition. Because missionaries sought to impose the religion in absolute terms, placing obedience to God above loyalty to the temporal authority, Christianity could not but be rejected by the Confucian order (Buttinger 1958). With only a small and marginal following, the religion was rejected by the mainstream, and hence the faith never attained harmony with local ways 11฀Jacob฀p371-398.indd฀฀฀371 7/3/07฀฀฀10:43:18฀AM 372 Jacob Ramsay (Lê 1975). Vietnamese Catholics, who subsequently became surrogates of their imperial masters, turned their backs on traditional culture, creating a rift within mainstream society (Kiệm 2001). Yet, as powerful as this shorthand overview of Catholic history is, like all myths and cursory interpretations of social conflict it clouds a complex reality. Certainly mission successes in converting tens of thousands of Vietnamese from the seventeenth century can be attributed to Catholicism’s absolutist spiritualism. But we cannot assume all converts were attracted to the religion simply on this basis alone, or that, having converted, Catholics could not accommodate loyalty to local political authority with their beliefs. Buddhism is also an imported belief systems, but in contrast to Catholicism is regarded in popular discourse as essential to Vietnamese tradition. It would be unthinkable to consider personal identification with Buddhist beliefs as anathema to one’s position within the political order. For all the violence generated by Catholicism’s integration, the religion has become arguably just as much a Vietnamese faith as Buddhism and for that matter, Confucianism. The aim of this chapter therefore is to illuminate the ambiguous relationship between the church, the state and mainstream Vietnamese society by looking at the everyday manifestations of the religion in popular myths and material culture and contrasting these with the religion’s representation in post-independence official historiography. I argue that contemporary perceptions of Catholicism’s place in Vietnamese popular religion and tradition draws on an official conception that has been recycled from the dynastic period. In short, the myth of Catholicism’s incompatibility derives in part from pre-colonial Confucian thought that loyalty to the throne necessarily supercedes religious and familial obligations. While there are vast difference between the dynastic and modern period in terms of how officials dealt with questions of belief, identity and political loyalty, one thread, the conflict between an individual’s obligations to the state and personal belief, remains as contentious today as it did in the early nineteenth century. Miracles: The Weeping Statue Affair In late October 2005, thousands converged on the Cathedral of Our Lady in Ho Chi Minh City’s centre after rumours spread that the statue of Mary there had been weeping. Waves of Catholic faithful, curious onlookers and sceptics flooded the square late on the Saturday afternoon, forcing the 11฀Jacob฀p371-398.indd฀฀฀372 7/3/07฀฀฀10:43:19฀AM Miracles and Myths: Vietnam Seen through Its Catholic History 373 city’s police to close off surrounding streets to motorcycle traffic. For days after, hundreds came to the square, to see the statue, to pray or simply mill around in the crowd. Although numbers dropped after several days, a vigil at the statue base lasted for much of November. From the very first, the episode stirred the ire of church authorities who sharply rejected the miracle — they accused “bad elements” of seeking to exploit the blind faith of the city’s Catholics. In the end, however, the episode retreated from public attention. In late November, special Vatican envoy Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples, visited Vietnam. During his “pastoral visit”, Sepe met with high-ranking officials, including...