One Dragon, Two Doves

At this place I must confess that some of my own long-cherished views were actually the result of my ignorance. I have always admired the multi-talented Matteo Ricci and his manifold achievements, thus I thought his contributions to the cultural exchanges between East and West are unique or at least very rare among missionaries in Asia. After reading this book I came to realize that the achievements of Fr. de Rhodes actually surpass those of Matteo Ricci in some ways, because the most basic foundation for cultural dialogue and exchanges is in fact the communication and integration of the script.

Many Chinese people believe that the following slogan is true: “One more Chinese Christian convert means a Chinese less!” (Duo yige Jidutu, shao yige Zhongguoren!) I have always doubted this phrase: Was Ma Xiangbo not a Chinese? Was Yan Yangchu not a Chinese? Was Lin Yutang not a Chinese? Was Sun Yatsen not a Chinese? This book reminds us that a further fact should make us suspicious of the phrase above: During the Peace Conference of Paris in 1919 the Chinese delegates protested the pressure from the Allied Forces and Japan and refused to sign the convention, and those two delegates who refused to sign were actually Christians, namely the Catholic Lu Zhengxiang and the Protestant Gu Weijun (Wellington Koo)!

When we reflect on this book we will also discover that sometimes “one more Christian” will mean one more loyal friend of China, for example, Fr. Vincent Lebbe who loved China more than his own fatherland, and who resisted the French government for the sake of China. Fr. Lebbe also fought against the Japanese on the side of China. Sometimes “one more Chinese Christian convert” will mean one more outstanding Chinese personality. For example, if Su Xuelin and Yu Bin were not Christians, their talents and achievements would probably not have been so brilliant and so admirable!

For the past 2,000 years the relations between China and Vietnam were so intimate and manifold and yet so complicated – in some periods the two nations were almost united or had a tributary relation, and in other periods they were inimical to each other and even fought wars. Let us not talk about the distant past. In a rather recent period there were many Vietnamese “boat people” who found shelter in Hong Kong, and this became a rather serious problem for the administration of Hong Kong. When I was in Hong Kong in the year 2000 I also witnessed the different reactions to the canonization of several hundred Catholic Chinese and Vietnamese saints by the curia in Rome, and I was very touched by the event.

If now I can see that this ground-breaking work comparing the historical developments of the Catholic Church in China and in Vietnam is published in Hong Kong, I am deeply moved again, and I want to express my gratitude to the author and to the publishing house. Let us thank them for their comparative historical perspective, their efforts, and their thoughtful research!

Carlyle, Pennsylvania
2021

Michael Nguyen, SVD

Before the arrival of Christianity Vietnam was a polygamous society. A man, if his wife failed to bear him a son, could marry another woman in order to ensure the continuity of the family line. In other cases, if the financial situation allowed it, a man could also marry several wives. However, since Christianity was introduced to the Vietnamese people, this cultural practice was challenged by the Christian teaching regarding the law of marriage. Christianity was persecuted in Vietnam for nearly three centuries. The church teaching against the practice of polygamy was one of various reasons that led to this protracted persecution. Vietnamese society eventually changed its marital norm from polygamy to monogamy.

Not only in the field of architecture but also in the realm of literature Christianity inspires the Vietnamese. The famous poet Hàn Mặc Tử is a figure that fits this category. Hàn Mặc Tử in his own Vietnamese poetic style composed the two inculturated poems, “Ra Đời/Nativity” and “Thánh Nữ Đồng Trinh/Our Lady the Holy Virgin.” Inspired by these two accounts, the Infancy Narratives and the Annunciation, Hàn Mặc Tử sophisticatedly wrote these two poems that profoundly reflect the Vietnamese mindset in the Romanized script.

Before Hàn Mặc Tử, Alexandre de Rhodes and his Vietnamese assistants already laid the first stones for the road to the Vietnamese contextual theology through the invention of Ngắm Đứng/Standing Meditation which is commonly practiced during Lent. Using the musical tones of the Vietnamese operas, Chèo or Tuồng, Alexandre and the team composed Ngắm Đứng or the 15 Stations of Cross which enable the Vietnamese faithful to meditation on Jesus’ passion in their familiar chanting music.

Vietnam and China share with each other not only the border but also the culture. Under more than 1,000 years of influence from her northern neighbor, Vietnam embraced and adopted the core teachings of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism into her own Indigenous religion. This phenomenon did not happen to Christianity. Christianity entered Vietnam in 1533 and blossomed after the arrival of the Jesuits of whom Francis de Pina and Alexandre de Rhodes are famous figures. Christianity enjoyed fast growth, as Rhodes recorded in his diary the number of 300,000 Vietnamese Catholics in 1650. However, this religion soon faced nearly three centuries of persecution because its religious core was contradicting the core of the Vietnamese Indigenous religion, that is, ancestor veneration. Christianity was indeed named as a false religion/tả đạo by the Vietnamese emperors. The two words tả đạo were carved on the faces of the Vietnamese Catholics arrested by the Vietnamese mandarins. Nevertheless, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Christianity continues to enter the territory of the Dragon-Vietnam, challenges negative elements of the culture, and in turn contributes its own values to enrich the values of Vietnamese society.

Divine Word College
Epworth, Iowa
September 2021