The Society in Vietman
by Fr. Stefan Taeubner, SJ
Fr. Doan Cong Nguyen, a
Vietnamese Jesuit born near Hanoi in 1941, represented his country at the
Jesuits' recent general congregation. It had been twenty years since he
had been in Rome and an equal amount of time since he had been in open
and free contact with so many fellow Jesuits.
He preached the homily at the first common mass of the congregation.
As Fr. Nguyen explains in this interview (conducted by Fr. Stefan Taeubner, SJ, and first published in Canisius, a magazine of the German Jesuits), it was not clear to those awaiting him in Rome or indeed to Fr. Nguyen himself whether he was going to be allowed to leave Vietnam for the meeting.
Fr. Nguyen's words offer a glimpse of Catholic and Jesuit life in Vietnam during the last two decades and a note of hope for the future.
Fr. Nguyen, you were the only one of the delegates to the general congregation picked up at the Rome airport by Fr. General Kolvenbach. How did this come about?
That was because people in Rome were waiting for my visit for so long--20 years! In April 1975, as I left for Vietnam on the last flight from Rome before the fall of Saigon, Fr. Arrupe accompanied me to the airport to send me off as the Jesuit superior of Vietnam. After that, no more personal contact was possible. Even for this current trip I waited five months for my passport, but at last I made it.
In April 1975, many people saw on TV the escape of U.S. personnel and their dependents from South Vietnam. Thousands of Vietnamese also tried to get out of the country. But you went the other way, arriving on the last flight to Saigon. Why did this happen?
At the time I was studying New Testament at the Biblical Institute in Rome and was close to taking final exams. In March 1975 one could see that the war in Vietnam was quickly coming to an end and that the Communist armies would march into Saigon within a few weeks. I asked Fr. Arrupe for permission to travel to my homeland. But he had me wait until mid April, when he suddenly called me to his office and told me that I should return to Vietnam immediately and there I would be named superior for Vietnam. I had not yet finished tertianship [the last stage of Jesuit formation] and asked him what would now come of that. His answer was, "You will have to be doing tertianship courageously your whole life long."
So you got to Vietnam. What happened then?
On the evening of April 29, the day before the Communists marched into Saigon, the superior general's assistant, who had traveled with me to Saigon, told me that Vietnam would now be an independent Jesuit region, answerable directly to Rome, and that I was to be its superior. So my first function the next morning was to adjust myself and the Society of Jesus to the new political situation after the Communist takeover.
How could you work under the new circumstances?
We soon had to close our large theology faculty in Da Lat. Also, our student centers were confiscated by the government because they thought we had too much influence on the youth through these centers. Every Sunday 2,000 students would come to us. We were officially reduced to a couple of parishes.
Next, in 1976, all 25 foreign Jesuits, many of them working as professors, had to leave the country. Remaining were 36 Vietnamese Jesuits, mostly working in Saigon, and many of them were not ordained.
In 1981, nine priests were condemned to long-term prison sentences, most on charges of "counterrevolutionary propaganda." One priest got fifteen years, I got twelve, the socius got five, the secretary four, and so on. This period was especially difficult for the scholastics. They stayed behind without us and had no opportunity to study theology. Instead, they entered military service, the Construction Pioneers, or the peasants' brigades, by which they earned the right to study at the state university. During this time we were not allowed to accept novices. Only since 1992 have religious orders been officially recognized in Vietnam, implying the right to accept members.
You spent nine years in prison. Was that a hard time for you?
During those years in prison I had many opportunities to stand by my fellow prisoners and to help them. Actually, I was a kind of pastoral minister among the prisoners. I celebrated mass, heard confessions, and gave religious instruction, all in secret, of course. Later on, I was able to help other prisoners with medicines and other necessities. The guards allowed me to do this since they did not have enough medicine for our needs. So, overall, this time was not so bad for me.
One time, one of the supervisors of the prison authorities said to me, "You pray so often for a long time, but God has not listened to you yet and freed you from our hands." I answered, "But I never prayed that God would free me from your hands; rather, I prayed that we both would be in the hands of God." He did not know what to say after that. During that time I read a biography of Fr. Rupert Mayer, SJ. After that I often thought of him during my prayer. He helped me a lot.
What was the actual charge on which they sentenced you and the other Jesuits to prison?
The Communists were not dumb. They knew that I had returned of my own free will. They also noticed that I had a certain influence on the Church and especially on the bishops' conference. We wrote pastoral letters that dealt with the new situation. They thought to themselves, "This man is dangerous to us. He must be a spy for the Vatican." To understand the situation better, you have to consider the history of tension between Communists and Christians in Vietnam.
At the end of World War II, as the Japanese withdrew from Indochina, Communist opposition groups saw their chance. Along with other Vietnamese groups, they fought against the French until the French surrendered at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Many Christians had fought alongside the Communists against the French. But when it became clear to the Christians who it was that they were fighting side by side with, most of the Christians pulled back, and others even fought on the French side. Following Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical "Divini Redemptoris," the bishops in Indochina in 1951 composed their own pastoral letter in which Christians were forbidden to collaborate with the Communists, and this letter stuck deep in the Communists' memory. After their victory in the North and the partitioning of the country in 1954, 800,000 Catholics fled the North for the South. Among them were many priests and bishops.
In the later war for control of the South, many Catholics took the side of the Nationalists and of the Americans who supported them. So the prejudice of the Communists against Catholics in the country is understandable. In their eyes, the Catholics were too often and for too long allied with colonial powers and foreign imperialists.
You have made a great effort in Vietnam to modify this image of the Church.
That is right. After 1975, the Church in the South was especially committed to showing the new government by the way we lived that we Christians were totally prepared as citizens to take an active part in the reconstruction of the country. In contrast to the Catholics in the North, we had accepted the Second Vatican Council actively and wanted to be the "Church in the world." But we were not completely trusted. Especially when the Solidarity movement started growing in Poland in 1981, our government grew worried about some such Catholic movement here.
How would you describe the situation in Vietnam today?
A lot has changed in the last couple of years. Our being released from prison early, the government's allowing the religious orders again, the fact that I could travel abroad--all these are signs of a new opening.
At the same time, we are facing totally new challenges. The economic opening of the country creates as much new poverty as new wealth. The school situation is worse than ever. Many workers can hardly support their families on their wages. Young people are downright overwhelmed with new Western values and consumer goods. We have to provide new direction here. Right now we are working hard to get our young people ready to face these new circumstances.
At the 32d general congregation in 1974, the Society committed itself to the struggle against atheism. I have to say, I find there are two kinds of atheism. The strong, socialist atheism continually forces us Christians to reflect on our own faith in God--it helps us in a certain way to live our Christianity radically.
But we now encounter another atheism that I think is far more dangerous, that of modern consumerism. It subtly seduces us into forgetting about God. For example, when I visited St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, I saw many tourists looking but only a few praying. In Vietnam, the churches are always overflowing. It seems to me that in Europe after 2,000 years, Christianity will understand the message of the Gospel only with ever increasing difficulty.
As people who search for living water, many are now searching for new means of salvation. They live at the stream of living water but they can no longer drink from it.
What image would you use to describe the difficult situation of the Church in Vietnam?
I like to compare it to a vineyard, which stands there in winter, barren, without fruit. It has to be pruned and tied back. From the outside, it looks like a setback in our work. But from the inside, the vineyard is full of energy and ready to bring forth fruit in the new year.
What is the focus of Jesuit work in Vietnam today?
Right now we are much involved in the Spiritual Exercises. Many priests, sisters, seminarians, and other Christians are asking for that. During the Ignatian year [1990-91] we conducted a series of sermons in the then packed cathedral in Saigon. Afterward, everyone who could wanted to begin the Spiritual Exercises. Right now there are over 50 young men who would gladly enter the Society, but just in terms of physical space, it is impossible for us to accept all of these applications.
We are also working on some long-term agricultural development projects with various mountain people, members of the earliest ethnic groups to settle in Vietnam. We also now take care of three parishes. We would be very happy to return to teaching in schools in the future in the hope of improving the educational situation of our young people. But that is really impossible right now. Many of our Jesuits, after finishing their studies, have to wait, often for years, for state permission to be ordained.
So with our limited powers and opportunities, we all have more than enough to do.
Fr. Stefan Taeubner, SJ, from Germany, has worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service, ministering to Vietnamese refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia and Germany.