Vietnam's Commission for Religious and Ethnic Affairs Vice-Chief, Nguyen Thanh Xuan, has stated that his government "has no intention to return any properties to the Catholic Church or any other groups of religion".Xuan's statement last week in an interview with Radio Free Asia has been viewed by Catholics as a significant setback from the Vietnam government's commitment to return some key properties seized for decades back to the Church, VietCatholic reports.
Xuan irritated Catholics further stating that the Church had been a "grand landlord" before the communist takeover of North Vietnam in 1954, and later of South Vietnam in 1975.
In his own word, Xuan used a self-invented term "Ða Ch Nhà Chung" which literally means to describe the Church as a grand landlord who acquired much of the land to get rich and live luxuriously on the "blood, sweat and tears" of poor tenants.
"It's a distortion of history in order to vilify the Church and justify the ongoing injustice of confiscation, persecution, oppression, and exclusion," said Fr Joseph Nguyen from Hanoi.
"Most of 2250 Church properties seized by the government were buildings the Church used for worshipping, education, or various charitable activities including hospitals to provide health care for the poor," he continued.
"Up to 1962, Vietnam had been a missionary country in which foreign missionaries and local clergy mobilised all means available to them for serving the poor and through their charitable activities set themselves as true witnesses of the Gospel which they wanted to proclaimed. "
"The Church in Vietnam has never used its land as a financial resource or to live luxuriously. In fact, the Church in Vietnam has not been profited from renting or selling of any piece of properties in dispute."
"The term ‘Ða Ch Nhà Chung' is therefore an insult - a crass, immoral insult - to the Church and Vietnamese Catholics," he added.
Labelling Catholic leaders as landlords was a tactic frequently used by Vietnam government in the 1950s to seize Church properties, terrorise bishops, priests, religious and faithful, and ultimately alienate them from the public. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to us or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that we agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Source (AN)
SV (ED)