Mary In Vietnamese Piety And Theology

Mary In Vietnamese Piety And Theology:

A Contemporary Perspective

Peter C. Phan
The Catholic University of America

Not unlike the Filipino Catholics, whose Catholicism’s Iberian roots shared much in common with those of Vietnamese Catholicism, the Catholics of Vietnam may be said to be a “pueblo amante de Maria” – a people in love with Mary.¹ Indeed, foreign visitors, especially from the West, have often been impressed, perhaps even bemused, by the Vietnamese Catholics’ deep devotion to and external cult for the Mother of God. This essay on Mary in Vietnamese piety and theology will first briefly trace the roots of Marian devotion in Vietnamese Catholicism and sketch its major characteristics. Next, information will be provided on some important Marian apparitions and Marian sites that serve as the focus for Vietnamese Marian piety. Lastly, some suggestions will be offered toward constructing a Vietnamese Mariology.²

Vietnamese Marian Piety: Historical Roots And Characteristics

Needless to say, Marian devotion entered Vietnam for the first time with Catholic missionaries in the early seventeenth century.³ Its characteristics and practices were those prevalent in these missionaries’ Catholicism which was late-medieval Iberian Christianity.⁴ Most missionaries to Vietnam in the first half of the seventeenth century were Portuguese Jesuits, with a few Italians, Japanese, and French (among the latter was the most outstanding figure of the history of the Vietnamese mission, Alexandre de Rhodes, who however was a citizen of the Papal State of Avignon).⁵ The reason for the overwhelmingly Portuguese presence was that at that time Vietnam, as part of China and Macao, along with India, Malacca, and Japan, was under the Portuguese padroado.⁶ These Portuguese missionaries, just as the Spanish ones, brought with them their own brand of Iberian Catholicism wherever they went to evangelize, whether in Latin America or in Asia, and transmitted it to their converts.

It is generally recognized that this Iberian Catholicism was pervaded with what is now termed religiosidad popular, in which devotion to Mary assumed a prominent place.⁷ Furthermore, Iberian Christianity was largely “Popular Catholicism,” in the sense that it was the form of faith believed and practiced by the common folk, and not that of the intellectual and hierarchical elite, and displayed a predilection for the visual, the oral, and the dramatic as the means of communicating the Gospel.⁸ With regard to the place of Marian devotion in this popular Catholicism, Richard Kieckhefer writes: “Relics, shrines, and pilgrimages, feast days, hymns, motets, legends, plays, paintings and statues, patronage of churches and monasteries, sermons, devotional treatises, visions, theology – in all these areas Mary was not merely present but vitally important.”⁹

To this first Iberian layer of Christian spirituality was added another, French in flavor. When Alexandre de Rhodes was sent back to Rome in 1645 to request for more personnel and material assistance for his society’s mission in China, he conceived the bold idea of having a hierarchy established in Vietnam, with bishops appointed as “vicars apostolic,” directly responsible to the Propaganda Fide, to bypass the Portuguese padroado. His plan was well received by the Propaganda Fide, which had been founded in 1622 to undertake Christian mission independently from the padroado system, and de Rhodes was charged with recruiting candidades for the episcopacy. In 1652 de Rhodes left for Paris where he found three priests worthy of the episcopacy. Eventually, in 1659, over the strenuous protest of the Portuguese crown, François Pallu (1626-84) and Pierre Lambert de la Motte (1624-79) were appointed vicars apostolic “in partibus infidelium,” for Tonkin and Cochinchina respectively.¹⁰ Desirous to extend mission work to secular clergy, and not to let it restricted to religious, the two bishops founded a society dedicated to mission, especially for Asia, known as Société des Missions-Étrangères de Paris (MEP). Though Pally was not able to come to Vietnam, his companion de la Motte and a large number of missionaries of MEP labored in Vietnam from the seventeenth century to 1975, and have left an indelible mark on the character of Vietnamese Catholicism, and by extension, as will be shown later, on Vietnamese Marian piety.¹¹

The third significant influence on Vietnamese Marian devotion was exerted by the return of the Mendicant Orders and the coming of new religious congregations, both male and female, all bringing with them their distinct forms of Marian devotion. The Dominicans from the Province of the Most Holy Rosary in the Philippines, whose devotion to Mary, especially with the practice of Rosary recitation, is well known, came back to Tonkin in 1676, and several dioceses were eventually entrusted to their care.¹² From the Philippines, too, Franciscans returned, especially to Cochinchina, in 1719, to carry out their mission. Among the new comers, two male religious congregations merit special mention on account of their strong influence on Vietnamese Marian devotion. The Redemptorists came to Vietnam from Canada in 1925 and through their highly successful preaching in novenas and retreats and their widely circulated periodical Our Lady of Perpetual Help, spread devotion to Mary under this title. The Salesians of Don Bosco came to Hanoi in 1952 and through the education of poor youth, promoted their devotion to Mary Help of Christians. Among the female religious orders, of special significance for Marian devotion were the Chanoinesses de Saint Augustin (also known as Couvent des Oiseaux), the Daughters of Charity, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, and in particular, the indigenous congregation called Lovers of the Cross (Amantes de la Croix), founded by Pierre Lambert de la Motte in 1669.

Lastly, an indigenous male congregation, whose very name is indicative of its Mariology and spirituality, deserves special notice, namely, the Congregation of Mary Co-Redemptrix. Founded by a Vietnamese priest, Fr. Tran Dinh Thu, on April 4, 1941, on the feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to honor Mary as collaborator with Christ in the work of redemption through her sufferings, it was approved by Rome on December 15, 1952. After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, some 170 priests and brothers left Vietnam and were settled in Carthage, Missouri, U.S.A. Every August, to celebrate the feast of the Assumption, the congregation organizes days of prayers in honor of Mary at its headquarters in which some 50,000 Vietnamese participate.

From this brief survey it is clear that Marian piety in Vietnamese Catholicism has had a long history and different layers, and that, given its historical roots in Portugal, Spain and France, it is marked by most of the characteristics associated with the Marian cult in these countries. Before describing its major features it would be helpful to examine in some detail the late-medieval Mariology that was first presented to the Vietnamese Catholics by one of the most important Jesuit missionaries in Vietnam, Alexandre de Rhodes. One of the great achievements of the early Jesuit missionaries in Vietnam was to make use of the Latin alphabets and diacritical marks to transcribe the Vietnamese language, in addition to using the Chinese characters (chu nho) and the demotic script (chu nom). This Romanized script is now used as the national script (chu quoc ngu).¹³ The person most instrumental in perfecting and promoting this new script was Alexandre de Rhodes, and the first printed works in this script were his Cathechismus pro iis, qui volunt suscipere Baptismum, in octo dies divisus and his Dictionarium.¹⁴The catechism is entitled Cathechismus pro iis, qui volunt suscipere Baptismum, in Octo dies divisus. Phep giang tam ngay cho ke muan chiu phep rua toi, ma beao dao thanh duc Chua Bloi. Ope sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide in lucem editus. Ab Alexandro de RHODES è Societate Jesu, ejusdemque Sacrae Congregationis Missionario Apostolico. Rome, 1651. Henceforth: Cathechismus.

It is in de Rhodes’s Cathechismus that we have the earliest extant teaching on Mary in Vietnam. The author does not present Mary in a separate section of his catechism but weaves his presentation of the Mother of God into his narrative of the life of Jesus, beginning with the Incarnation. It is impossible to quote at length the passages in which de Rhodes mentions Mary here.¹⁵ Suffice it to say that de Rhodes mentions all the Marian dogmas, including Mary’s divine motherhood,¹⁶ her perpetual virginity,¹⁷ and even the Immaculate Conception¹⁸ (though not the Assumption). The full title that de Rhodes gives to Mary in Vietnamese, summarizing in a nutshell his Mariology, is: “Rat thanh dong than Duc Chua Ba Maria la Me Chua Troi,” literally: The Very Holy Virgin, the Noble Sovereign Mary, the Mother of the Noble Lord of Heaven.”

Furthermore, de Rhodes is not satisfied with a mere doctrinal presentation of Mary to the catechumens. He recommends that catechists follow their lecture on Mary with an act of devotion to her.

At this point, we should show a beautiful image of the Blessed Virgin Mary carrying her infant son Jesus, our Lord, so that people may adore him humbly by bowing their heads to the ground. First, a triple adoration should be made to the three divine persons in the one divine essence, thus confessing the mystery of the divine Trinity by this external adoration. The knees should be bent only once, to confess the one divine essence. The head should be bowed to the ground three times, demonstrating our adoration to the three divine persons, imploring each of them to forgive our sins. The head should be bowed once more to render reverence and adoration to the Lord Jesus Christ, man and mediator, humbly asking him to make us worthy to receive the fruits of his abundant redemption and to forgive all our sins.

Lastly, reverence should be shown to the Blessed Virgin by bowing the head to the ground once more, though we know that the Blessed Virgin is not God, but because she is the mother of God, all-powerful over her son, we hope to obtain pardon for our sins through her holy intercession.¹⁹

Several interesting points should be noted here. First, the passage presumes that there were at that time in Vietnam holy pictures of Mary (most probably brought in from Europe), and that de Rhodes’s preferred representation was that of the Madonna and Child, which indicates the inseparability between Christology and Mariology in his theology (as is also clear from the way he integrates his presentation of Mary into his narrative of Jesus’ life). Secondly, in a move reminiscent of Matteo Ricci’s attempt at inculturation, de Rhodes was concerned with adopting the typically Asian kow-tow to express the Christian sentiments of worship and reverence. Thirdly, in prescribing this gesture of profound reverence, de Rhodes was careful to make a distinction between the honor rendered to the Trinity and that rendered to Mary, even though the same gesture is performed for both. Fourthly, one of the reasons for the cult of Mary is her efficacious (“all-powerful”) influence over her Son through her intercession. Finally, in this cult what we ought to seek is not material benefits but spiritual ones (“pardon for our sins”).

In concluding his catechism, de Rhodes also mentions Mary’s presence during the Passion and death,²⁰ Resurrection and apparitions,²¹ and Ascension of Jesus,²² and at Pentecost.²³ In sum, we have in de Rhodes’ Cathechismus the basic contents of Mariology that would be presented to Vietnamese Catholics for the next three hundred years, until the Second Vatican Council enriched it further with newer insights.

As for the contribution of the Société des Missions-Étrangères de Paris to Marian devotion in Vietnam, it is well known that its founders had a deep devotion to Mary. François Pallu, before becoming a bishop, was an active member of the Marian association called “Société des Bons Amis,” founded by the Jesuit Jean Bagot with the express purpose of cultivating a special devotion to Mary. Later, in 1668, as bishop, Pallu demonstrated his deep love for Our Lady when he courageously defended his friend Henri-Marie Bourdon’s book entitled Le saint esclavage de l’Admirable Mère de Dieu, which was being condemned by Rome, paving the way for the work of Saint Grignion de Montfort.²⁴ Furthermore, both Pallu and Lambert de la Motte were greatly influenced by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle who promoted the practice of consecrating oneself as a slave to Mary and by St. Jean Eudes whose spirituality was deeply Marian.

As a consequence, there has been among the members of MEP a strong tradition of deep devotion to Mary, which was then transmitted to the Vietnamese Catholics.²⁵ There is no wonder, then, that the first official consecration to Mary in the history of the Vietnamese Catholic Church was done by Bishop Paul Puginier, a member of MEP, who consecrated his diocese of Hanoi and his personal ministry to Mary on the feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, on November 21, 1868. This practice of consecrating dioceses to Mary was later followed by many Vietnamese bishops. The most solemn act of consecration to Mary was however performed during the first National Marian Congress in 1959 during which Vietnam was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This consecration was repeated a year later on the occasion of the establishment of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Vietnam by Pope John XXIII.

Lastly, other forms of Marian devotion were either strengthened or introduced into Vietnam by the Mendicant Orders and other religious congregations. Mention has already been made of the recitation of the Rosary, a distinctive Dominican practice, and of the widespread devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a specialty of the Redemptorists, and to Our Lady Help of Christians, a specialty of the Salesians of Don Bosco.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been rightly called the Marian Age of the Catholic Church; this is true also of the Vietnamese Church. With the coming of new religious orders into Vietnam during these two centuries, new “Our Lady”s and new Marian devotions were introduced. Of the many new “Our Lady”s, the ones of La Salette, Lourdes, and Fatima, for obvious reasons, are the most popular. The practice of honoring Mary during the month of May with flower-offerings, songs, and dance, and during October with the recitation of the Rosary is widely adopted. The practice of wearing medals, scapulars, and rosaries is widespread, as well as pilgrimages to several Marian sanctuaries (e.g., Bai Dau, Gia-Vien, and Binh Trieu) and processions. Marian associations such as Legio Mariae and the Blue Army were also instituted and were extremely active. Indeed, a plethora of Mariological writings were either translated into or composed in Vietnamese, and all things Marian in France, Canada, and Portugal were imported into Vietnam and well received. In due course Marian devotion began to influence Vietnamese Catholic literature, arts, architecture, music, and philately.²⁶

Before moving on to Marian apparitions in Vietnam, it would be helpful to summarize the main characteristics of Vietnamese Marian piety. It is first of all traditional in the sense that it is deeply rooted in the teachings of the Church regarding Mary. De Rhodes’s explanation of the Marian dogmas, in particular Mary’s divine motherhood, perpetual virginity, and Immaculate Conception (and after 1950, the Assumption), served a solid basis for Vietnamese Marian piety. Secondly, it is also traditional in the sense that it has inherited most if not all Marian practices of the West as these were imported into Vietnam by various waves of missionaries, beginning with the Portuguese Jesuits, followed by the Spanish Dominicans and Franciscans, then by the French MEP, the Canadian Redemptorists, the Italian Salesians of Don Bosco, and other male and female religious orders. Thirdly, Marian devotion is popular, in the sense of being widespread and well practiced by the common Catholic folk for whom Mary serves as the gateway to God. Fourthly, though “popular” (that is, practiced by the people), it is enthusiastically endorsed and encouraged by the hierarchy as well, especially though the official consecration of Vietnam to our Lady. Fifthly, though imported from the outside, Marian devotion has sunk roots into the Vietnamese soil, as testified by Marian congregations founded by the native clergy such as the Congregation of Mary Co-Redemptrix.

Marian Apparitions And Marian Sites

Like many other countries, Vietnam claims to have had Marian apparitions. So far there are two locations where our Lady is said to have appeared, La Vang and Tra Kieu, the former by far the more famous of the two.²⁷ Compared with other Western apparitions, such as Lourdes and Fatima, there is no historical documentation for these two apparitions but only unverifiable oral tradition, Furthermore, our Lady did not appear to identifiable individuals (e.g., Bernadette Soubirous or Lucia, Francesco and Jacinta) but to a large group of anonymous people, nor was there a doctrinal message conveyed (e.g., Mary’s Immaculate Conception) or a spiritual practice recommended (e.g., reform of life, recital of the Rosary, and devotion to the Heart of Mary). Both alleged apparitions have one thing in common, namely, our Lady is said to have appeared during the persecution of Catholics and promised them maternal protection.²⁸

1. Our Lady of La Vang

The years 1798-1800, under the reign of King Canh Thinh (1792-1802), were very hard for Catholics. The king suspected that his opponent Nguyen Anh was being assisted by the French bishop Pigneau de Béhaine (d. 1799), who had recruited French officers and arms to help Nguyen Anh re-establish his dynasty. Fearful that Catholics would collude with his enemies, the king ordered them to be killed as a preventive measure. La Vang was a small Catholic village, with about 150 inhabitants, about 80 miles north of Hue, the ancient capital, in the Quang Tri province.²⁹ There are two accounts, one Catholic, the other Buddhist, of why the village became a Marian site.³⁰

According to the Catholic version, during Canh Thinh’s persecution, several Catholics from the near-by parish Co Vuu, fled to La Vang. There, in spite of severe sufferings, they gathered every evening under a banian tree to recite the Rosary. One evening, according to the tradition, a lady of great beauty appeared to them, clad in white and surrounded by light, holding the Infant Jesus on her arms, with two charming boys holding a torch standing at her sides. The lady walked back and forth several times in front of the Christians, her feet touching the ground. Even the non-Christians who were there saw the vision. Then the lady stopped and addressed them in a sweet voice: “My children, what you have asked of me, I have granted you, and henceforth, whoever will come here to pray to me, I will listen to them.” Then she vanished.

The Buddhist version, called “the Pagoda of the Three Villages,” runs as follows. There were three villages near La Vang, namely, Co Thanh, Thach Han, and Ba Tru. The Buddhists there heard that a lady called Thien Mu [literally: The Heavenly Lady] had appeared in La Vang under the banian tree (which is considered a sacred tree) and that those who went to pray there were miraculously healed. During the persecution of Catholics under Emperor Ming Mang (1820-1840), the Buddhists took over the place and built a pagoda in honor of the Buddha. The night after the dedication of the pagoda, so the story goes, the leaders of the three villages had a dream in which the Buddha appeared to them and told them to remove his statue from La Vang, because, he said, there was a lady more powerful than he occupying the place. The following day they went to the pagoda and saw that the Buddha statue and its ornaments had been moved outside and so they brought them in. Again, that night they had the same dream and received the same message. As a result, the Buddhists donated the pagoda to the Catholics who converted it into the first chapel of Our Lady of Lavang.³¹

What historical validity is to be attached to both accounts is impossible to determine. The Vietnamese hierarchy has not officially pronounced on the historicity of Mary’s apparition at La Vang. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Vietnamese Catholics regard La Vang as a sacred land. In 1901 a small chapel was built there and was blessed by Louis Casper, bishop of Hue, during a solemn procession in which, somewhat incongruously, a statue of the French Notre-Dame des Victoires was honored.³² Since then, every three years there has been organized a pilgrimage to La Vang, except when impeded by war. In 1924 a larger sanctuary was built to replace the chapel, now too small for the huge crowd. In 1959 it was raised to the rank of minor basilica by Pope John XXIII and became the national Marian center of pilgrimage. Under the current communist government, travels to La Vang have been severely restricted. Nevertheless, the bicentennial commemoration of Our Lady’s apparition at La Vang in 1988 was attended by a huge number of Catholics, from both North and South, with Cardinal Phan Dinh Tung, archbishop of Hanoi, presiding as the Special Legate of Pope John Paul II.

2. Our Lady of Tra Kieu

In 1885 the Vietnamese Catholic Church was inflicted with another wave of persecution. After the death of Emperor Tu Duc (1883), a pro-royal movement called “Can Vuong” was initiated by the young emperor Ham Nghi, who acceded to the throne in 1884, to fight against the French colonial power. The movement practically ended when Ham Nghi was arrested by the French in 1888 and exiled to Algeria. It was composed mainly of court officials sharing Ham Nghi’s liberation program. Another movement called “Van Than” (literati), many members of which joined the Can Vuong movement, instigated a campaign of “binh Tay sat Ta,” literally, destroying the West and killing the false religion,” code words for the French and the Vietnamese Catholics respectively. Tra Kieu, a small village of some 900 inhabitants, in the province of Quang Nam, south of Hue, had a tiny parish.

According to the account given by M. Geffroy,³³ on September 1, 1885, the parish with its pastor Father Bruyère was surrounded by the Van Than army who however did not attack until the following day. The Catholics were desperate, outnumbered three to one, and with very few weapons. Father Bruyère urged them to place their confidence in Mary by putting a statue of Mary on the table with a candle on each side. While the young men went out to fight, old people, women and children recited the Rosary. The Van Than army, despite its overwhelming force, was held at bay for several days. Frustrated by their defeat, the Van Than decided to bring in canons and began shooting at the church. However, all their canons, to the Van Than’s consternation, missed their easy mark. A military mandarin later confessed that he saw a beautiful lady, dressed in white, standing on top of the church, and that he tried to hit her with the canons but always missed. The soldiers kept saying aloud for two days that this lady stood on top of the church and that try as they might, they could never hit her.

On September 21, the Van Than decided to carry out a final assault on the parish. The Catholics, on their part, decided that the best defense was offense, in spite of great risks because of their numerical inferiority and lack of weapons. They made a sortie and attacked the Van Than troops who were occupying the two hills overlooking the village. Again, according to M. Geffroy, the Van Than used elephants to attack the Catholics, but the animals refused to move. The riders explained that the elephants were terrified because there were thousands of children, dressed in white and red, coming down from the bamboo trees, and were marching with the Catholics toward them. Then one of the Catholics shot and killed one of the literati in charge of the Van Than troops, which caused them to run away in total disarray. The Catholics attributed their improbable victory to the protection of Mary.

As with La Vang, there is no way to validate the Van Than’s vision of the lady dressed in white and standing on top of the church to protect it and of troops of children dressed in white and red coming down from the bamboo trees to join forces with the Catholics at Tra Kieu. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese Catholics did not hesitate to attribute to Mary’s miraculous intervention their victory over their enemies whose number and weapons were overwhelming. In 1898 a chapel was built in Tra Kieu, dedicated to Mary Help of Christians, and in 1959 and 1971 pilgrimages to this Marian sanctuary were organized with a large number of participants.

Mary, The Mother Of Mercy: Toward A Vietnamese Mariology

As with any theological treatise, Mariology underwent an extensive reconstruction as the result of Vatican II’s aggiornamento.³⁴ Questions were raised about its fundamental approaches (e.g., Christological, pneumatological, and ecclesial). Certain Mariological dogmas have been targeted for revision (e.g., Mary’s virginity). Feminist theology has made an extensive impact on reconfiguring Mary. Ecumenical dialogue has made its contributions as well. Recent developments in Trinitarian theology related Mary more intimately to the Trinity. In addition, the role of Marian devotional practices has been re-examined in a much more positive light.³⁵

Cut off from the theological world, since 1954 for the North and since 1975 for the South, Vietnam has not been able to keep up with recent trends in Mariology. Despite Vatican II’s reforms, Vietnamese Catholicism, especially in the North, has remained immune to necessary changes and developments, not least because of the oppressive economic and political situation of the country. In particular, with regard to Mariology, Vietnamese theology of Mary has remained the “Mariology of Privileges,” as is clear from the theological orientations implied in the name of the indigenous Congregation of Mary Co-Redemptrix mentioned above.

Nevertheless, Vietnamese history and culture do offer very useful resources for constructing a Mariology that is both harmonious with the biblical and theological traditions about Mary as critically retrieved in contemporary scholarship and meaningful to the Vietnamese people. Here I can only paint a theological portrait of Mary in very broad strokes, and what emerges is not the Vietnamese Mariology but only one of the many ways of imagining Mary in accord with certain trends of the Vietnamese culture.

1. As is clear from the above narratives, Mary’s alleged apparitions at La Vang and Tra Kieu occurred both in the context of persecution, which is very different from that of other major Marian apparitions such as those at Lourdes and Fatima. Mary appeared at La Vang and Tra Kieu as a protective mother, full of love and mercy for her suffering children. She had no message containing the threat of apocalyptic divine punishment if the Vietnamese people did not repent, nor did she require them to do anything in return for her favors. On the contrary, out of gratuitous and merciful love, she liberated them and promised to listen favorably to those who would pray to her. In other words, she is the figure of pure mercy and compassion. She suffered with and protected the Vietnamese Catholics because they suffered.

It is perhaps this figure of Mary as the embodiment of divine mercy that powerfully attracts the Vietnamese, Catholics and non-Christian alike, to her. It is well known that the Buddha is often presented as a man of infinite compassion for suffering humankind, and that it was out of this compassion that he taught the Eightfold Path that would lead humans out of suffering and toward enlightenment. Three of the four divine attitudes or virtues (brahmavih~s) that the Buddha stresses as necessary to achieve Buddhahood or enlightenment have to do this quality of mercy and compassion: mett~, sometimes translated as “friendship,” is a selfless, universal, all-expansive love; karun~ is compassion for all living beings in their suffering, with no sense of superiority over them; and mudit~ is an altruistic joy in the success or welfare of others. In particular, karun~ is not an emotional sympathy, a mere feeling of pity, or a helpless vicarious suffering for others but compassion that leads to positive action on behalf of one’s fellow sufferers.

In Vietnam, where mah~yan~ Buddhism is prevalent, the virtue of karun~ is highly stressed, as equal to wisdom (prjñ~). It is in this tradition that we have the figure of AvalokiteÑvara, a bodhisattva whose infinite compassion for suffering beings makes him/her postpone his/her own freedom from suffering and delusion until he/she can save all other beings from suffering as well. This is not the place to discuss the historical origins and the different manifestations of this extremely popular Buddhist figure, in India as well as in China, Japan and Korea.³⁶ Suffice it to point out that in Vietnam, as well as in China, Japan and Korea, there is the female figure of Kwan-Yin (in Japan: Kannon), much beloved not only by Buddhists but also by the general populace. She is thought to be like mother, sister, friend, and queen, always listening to the cries for help (the word “Kwan-Yin” means “regarder of sounds,” i.e, the voices of the suffering). She is the first bodhisattva to whom lay people turn in time of trouble, and whom they seek to worship in gratitude for blessings received. Her statue is displayed in all Buddhist pagodas as well as in Taoist temples. In Vietnam, she is represented as a woman holding a child and crushing a toad with her right foot.³⁷

Given this cultural and religious context, there is no wonder that the Vietnamese Catholics readily see in Mary the figure who embodies divine compassion and mercy and who is always ready to assist them. Love of and devotion to Mary as the Mother of Mercy, for Vietnamese Catholics, is a natural extension of their love of and devotion to the merciful Quan Âm Thi Kính.³⁸ Interestingly, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Dives in misericordia on God the Father, describes Mary as the “Mother of Mercy” who has “the deepest knowledge of God’s mercy. She knows its price, she knows how great it is. In this sense, we call her the Mother of Mercy: our Lady of Mercy, or Mother of Divine Mercy.”³⁹

Furthermore, this Mariology echoes well the concerns of feminist theology which sees in Mary a Jewish woman who makes “an option for the poor,” and whose “Magnificat” is a magna carta for the liberation of humans from all forms of oppression, especially those of patriarchialism and androcentrism.⁴⁰ This view is confirmed by Pope John Paul II who, in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater, sees Mary’s Magnificat as an expression of her love for the poor: “The Church’s love of preference for the poor is wonderfully inscribed in Mary’s Magnificat .... Drawing from Mary’s heart, from the depth of her faith expressed in the words of the Magnificat, the Church renews ever mor effectively in herself the awareness that the truth about God who saves, the truth about God who is the source of every gift, cannot be separated from the manifestation of his love of preference for the poor and humble, that love which, celebrated in the Magnificat, is later expressed in the words and works of Jesus.”⁴¹

2. The second component of a Vietnamese Mariology is the issue of power. From the accounts of the two Marian apparitions in Vietnam it is clear that Mary’s merciful interventions were powerful and effective. The beleaguered Vietnamese Catholics were delivered from their persecutors. Mary showed herself a merciful mother, but not a weak one. Mercy, as has been said above, is not a mere sense of pity or a sentimental sympathy (suffering-with). Rather, it moves the compassionate person to action. Mercy without powerful action on behalf of the suffering is empty and demeaning. Conversely, power without mercy, which “has the interior form of the love that in the New Testament is called agape,”⁴² runs the risk of turning into dictatorship.

This figure of a powerful woman has much to recommend it to the Vietnamese people and is well represented in Vietnamese history and culture. This may explain why Marian devotion is also widely popular with Vietnamese men. It is true that Confucian morality, which was imposed on the Vietnamese by the Chinese during their thousand-year long domination, is heavily patriarchal and androcentric. Women in a Confucian society are bound by “Three Submissions” (tam tong): when a child, she must submit to her father; in marriage, to her husband; in widowhood, to her eldest son. Their behavior is to be guided by Four Virtues (tu duc) that are designed to restrict women’s role to the sphere of domesticity: assiduous housewifery (cong), pleasing appearance (dung), appropriate speech (ngon) and proper conduct (hanh).⁴³

Daily life and history in Vietnam, however, present a far different picture. Vietnamese history is replete with female political and military leaders, among whom the most celebrated and beloved are the Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, who led a revolution against the Chinese in A.D. 42.⁴⁴ Another famous female leader is Trieu Au, who led an uprising against the Chinese in 248 A.D.⁴⁵ Indeed, historians have argued that in the earliest Vietnamese society, called the Lac or Dong Son civilization (from the seventh century B.C. to the first century A.D.), women occupied a high position.⁴⁶ Legally, Vietnamese women, compared with their Chinese counterparts, were in a far more favorable situation, accorded as they were many important rights.⁴⁷ In family life, women exert a far greater authority than their husbands; in fact they are called noi tuong [internal general]. The contributions of women to Vietnamese “high” culture are also notable, especially in literature.⁴⁸

Needless to say, given the central position of women in Vietnamese culture and history, in spite of the deeply ingrained Confucian patriarchialism and androcentrism, the figure of Mary as a powerful woman has profound implications for the struggle of Vietnamese women for equal rights and full human dignity. A Mariology that highlights the powerful role of Mary as a woman, together with her mercy and compassion, will be appealing to Vietnamese women and men.

3. The third component of a Vietnamese Mariology is interreligious dialogue. It is most interesting that in the Buddhist version of the origins of the Vietnamese devotion to Our Lady of La Vang it was the Buddhists who, at the Buddha’s behest, voluntarily offered their pagodas to the Catholics who turned it into a Marian shrine. The relations between Buddhists and Catholics were apparently very amicable. Furthermore, according to this account, the statue of the Buddha was, as far as we know, not smashed as an idol but simply moved to another place. In addition, in the Tra Kieu story, our Lady was not seen by the Catholics of the village but by the “pagans” who attacked them. In M. Geffroy’s account of the Tra Kieu incident, it is explicitly said that the Catholics saw nothing. Ironically, it was only through the testimony of the “unbelievers” that the “believers” knew that Mary had appeared and defended them! In a certain sense, Vietnamese Catholics owe their devotion to Mary to the “pagans,” at least at Tra Kieu.

Vietnamese Catholics form but a minority of Vietnam’s population of 75 million (approximately 6 to 8 percent). Dialogue with the followers of other faiths (mainly Buddhist, Confucianist, Taoist and some other indigenous religions) is not a luxury but an absolute necessity for Vietnamese Catholics. Indeed, it is an essential component of Christian mission in Vietnam, along with inculturation and liberation. This triple dialogue has been recognized by the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences to be the mode of Christian mission in Asia.⁴⁹

Given a number of common traits between Kwan Yin and Mary, it is natural that Mariology can serve as a fruitful starting point for an interreligious dialogue in Vietnam. Of course, a facile identification between the two figures is to be rejected. But that both of them allow us to imagine God as a loving, merciful, compassionate, saving, protecting, liberating Father/Mother for all the Vietnamese people, irrespective of their religious traditions, and that all Vietnamese are thereby called to promote a society of love, mercy, compassion, and freedom, this is beyond doubt. An authentic Vietnamese Mariology cannot but be an incentive for this interreligious dialogue.

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1. On the Filipino as “pueblo amante de Maria,” see Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Catechism for Filipino Catholics (Manila: Word & Life Publications, 1997), 16-17. Filipino Catholicism and Vietnamese Catholicism were both initiated by Iberian missionaries. Furthermore, missionary contacts between the Philippines and Vietnam occurred as early as 1583. Spanish Franciscans – Fathers Diego d’Oropesa, Bartolomeo Ruiz, Francisco de Montilla, and Pedro Ortis and Brothers Diego Ximenes, Francisco Vilarino, Miguel de Santiago, and Cristoforo Gomez – came to Vietnam from Manila in 1583, but stayed there only for a few weeks. The following year Father Bartolomeo Ruiz returned with a companion and stayed for two years. The Spanish Dominicans arrived in Manila in 1587 and a year later founded the province of the Most Holy Rosary. In 1596 Father Diego Aduarte, of this province, together with Father Alonso Ximenes and Brother Juan Deça, came to Vietnam and were well received by the local authorities. Unfortunately, on September 2 of the same year, a fight broke out between the Spaniards and the local population, and the Dominicans had to leave and return to Manila. In later years the relationship between the Filipino Church and the Vietnamese Church became extensive and profound. See Pablo Fernandez, Dominicos donde nace el Sol: Historia de la provincia del Santísimo Rosario de Filippinas de la Orden de Predicatores (Barcelona: Taleres graficós Yuste, 1958); Louis-Eugène Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse, vol. 1 (Paris: Challamel Ainé, 1885); and Marcellin de Civezza, Histoire universelle des Missions franciscaines (Paris: Librairie-éditeur Tolra, 1899).

2. While popular writings in Vietnamese on Mary abound, which is itself evidence of the popularity of Marian devotion in Vietnam, scholarly studies in Vietnamese Marian practices are relatively scanty. One helpful unpublished dissertation that treats of Vietnamese Marian devotion is of Martin Le Ngoc An, “La Dévotion Mariale au Viêt Nam,” S.T.D. dissertation, Facoltà Pontificia Teologica Marianum, Rome, 1977. See also older works such as Joseph Terrès, “Le culte de la Sainte Vierge au Tonkin Oriental,” in Compte-rendu du Congrès marial à Fribourg en Suisse, du 18 au 21 août 1902, 2^nd vol. (Blois: Imprimeire C. Migault, 1903), 141-65 and F. Parrell, “Le culture de Marie au Viêt-nam,” Bulletin de la Société des MEP, 2^nd series, 71 (1954): 657-61. Because potential readers of this essay most probably do not read Vietnamese, no reference will be made to writings in Vietnamese.

3. On the history of early Catholic mission in Vietnam, see Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes & Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998). Older works that are still valuable include Henri Chappoulie, Aux origins d’une Église. Rome et les Missions d’Indochine au XVIIè siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1943, 1948); Adrien Launay, Histoire de la Mission de Cochinchine (1658-1823). Documents Historiques, I, 1658-1728 (Paris: Anciennes Maisons Charles Douniol et Retaux, Pierre Téqui, successeur, 1923); and Nguyen Huu Trong, Les origines du clergé vietnamien (Saigon: Tinh Viet, 1959). For a history of Christianity in Vietnam, see Peter C. Phan and Violet James, “Vietnam,” in A Dictionary of Asian Christianity, ed. Scott W. Sunquist (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2001), 876-80.

4. On medieval Iberian Christianity, especially with regard to Marian devotion, see Richard Kieckhefer, “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 89-93 and W. A. Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); idem, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton Univewrsity Press, 1981).

5. On Alexandre de Rhodes, see Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis, cited in note 3.

6. On the padroado system in Asia, see Henri Chappoulie, Aux origins d’une Église, vol. I, 42-54; António da Silva Rego, Le Patronage portugais de l’Orient, aperçu historique (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1957); Adelhelm Jann, Die katholischen Missionen in Indien, China und Japan:Ihre Organization und das portugieische Patronat, vom 15. bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1915); and Teotonio R. de Souza and Surachai Chumsriphan, “Padroado,” Dictionary of Asian Christianity, 623-27.

7. As Richard Kieckhefer puts it, “If there is any principle that applies to Marian devotion in the later Middle Ages, it is that of accumulation. Virtually anything that could be said, sung, displayed, or thought in Mary’s honor found its place in the mélange” (“Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, 89).

8. On “Popular Catholicism,” see Orlando Espín, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 69-71.

9. “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, 89.

10. For brief biographies of de la Motte and Pallu, see Dictionary of Asian Christianity, 231-32 and 633-34 respectively.

11. Ten MEP (two bishops and eight priests), who had been martyred in Vietnam, were canonized on June 19, 1988.

12. Eleven Spanish Dominicans (six bishops and five priests), who had been martyred in Vietnam, were canonized on June 19, 1988. The Vietnamese have 96 canonized martyrs and one blessed. They were killed between 1644 and 1883. Thirty-seven were priests (26 secular, 11 Dominicans) and 60 were lay (one of whom a woman). Clearly, at least from the point of view of martyrdom, the Dominicans have had a significant impact on Vietnamese Catholicism. On martyrdom in Asia, see Francis X. Clark, Asian Saints (Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, 2000).

13. For a brief explanation of these scripts, see Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis, 28-35.

14. The dictionary is entitled Dictionarium annamiticum, lusitanum, et latinum ope Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide in lucem editum ab Alexandro de Rhodes è Societate Jesu, ejusdemque Sacrae Congregationis Missionario Apostolico (Rome, 1651). The dictionary is composed of three parts: the first part, with a separate pagination (31 pages) is an essay on Vietnamese grammar, entitled Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis brevis declaratio; the second part is the dictionary proper, entitled Dictionarium Annamiticum seu Tunchinense cum Lusitana, et Latina declaratione; and the last part, unpaginated, entitled Index Latini sermonis, is an index of Latin words followed by the numbers of the pages in which they occur in the second part.

15. For the most important passages, see Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis, 264-271.

16. “The Lord of heaven chose to take flesh from her who is at the same time truly the mother of God and a virgin. Her name would be Mary” (Mission and Catechesis, 264). “The Blessed Virgin was chosen by the Sanctissima Trindade to be the true mother of God, and the only Son of God, true God, would have to take flesh from her flesh” (ibid., 265).

17. “Thus, the most holy Mary Mother of God is a virgin before, during, and after parturition, and she who remained intact after parturition did not experience any pain during parturition” (Mission and Catechesis, 269).

18. “After receiving this happy message, the spouses [Joachim and Anna] in their humility gave thanks to God with all their strength and they gave birth to a daughter, a flower of virginity, conceived, according to the teaching of many doctors, without the sin that Adam transmitted, because God, who would come into the world to restore the human race, had chosen her as his mother before the ages” (Mission and Catechesis, 264).

19. Mission and Catechesis, 270-71.

20. “At the foot of the crux of the Lord Jesus stood his deeply anguished mother, the Virgin Mary. She witnessed all this, her soul so afflicted with incredible pain at the death of her only and beloved son that she was almost lifeless” (Mission and Catechesis, 289).

21. “The Lord Jesus raised from the dead appeared in all his glory first of all to the Virgin his mother who had been crushed by unspeakable sorrows at the atrocious death of her only and beloved son. He gladdened her with a heavenly consolation proportionate to her sorrows” (Mission and Catechesis, 293). Needless to say, this statement is rooted in de Rhodes’ personal piety, and not in the Gospel account of Jesus’ apparitions.

22. “He [Jesus] led his disciples out of Jerusalem and departed for Mount Olivet. He said goodbye to the Virgin Mother and the others with tender and loving words; then he raised his hands and blessed them” (Mission and Catechesis, 294-95).

23. “After the Lord Christ had ascended into heaven, the apostles and the other disciples, together with the Virgin Mother and other pious women, altogether about 120, returned to Jerusalem, entered the room where the Lord, before bidding them goodbye, had eaten the coena with his disciples, and remained together in prayer, as the Lord had commanded” (Mission and Catechesis, 295).

24. See Jean Guennou, “Monseigneur Pallu et la Sainte Vierge,” Bulletin de la Société des MEP, 2^nd series, 80 (1955): 433-38.

25. See C. Cesselin, “La Société des Missions-Étrangères et le culte de la Très Sainte Vierge,” in MARIA, Études sur la Sainte Vierge, vol. 4, ed. Hubert du Manoir (Paris: Beauschesne, 1956).

26. For a discussion of the influence of Marian devotion in these areas, see Marin Le Ngoc An, Le Dévotion Mariale au Viet Nam, 264-350.

27. There is another Marian sanctuary in the parish La Ma (literally, Rome) in the south of Vietnam, some fifty miles south of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). This site in honor of Our Lady of La Ma is not due to an apparition of Mary, however, but to an alleged re-appearance of the faces of our Lady of Perpetual Help and Jesus on a wooden faded picture which had been lost in a river. The discovery of this miraculous event by Mr. Nguyen Van Hat and his 14-year old son occurred on October 7, 1950.

28. For a detailed account of these two apparitions, see Martin Le Ngoc An, La Dévotion Mariale au Viet Nam, 225-54.

29. The word La Vang may have two meanings: (1) a loud shout and (2) the name of a tree (lá v|ng) whose leaves are medicinal. The first meaning refers to the custom of the village’s inhabitants of making loud noises to chase away roaming tigers and other animals; the second to the medicinal tree that grows abundantly in this area.

30. The oldest extant document referring to Our Lady of La Vang is an anonymous article by a missionary of MEP, “Notre Dame de La Vang,” Annales de la société des MEP 24 (1901): 273-77.

31. See M. Bernard, “La Vierge Marie au Viet Nam,” Revue du Rosaire 6 (1969): 162-90.

32. A painting and statue of our Lady of La Vang have been designed, reflecting the Vietnamese culture.

33. See M. Geffroy, “Une page de la persecution en Cochinchine,” Les Missions catholliques 900 (1886): 428-30. See also two earlier reports: “Sauvetage de 900 chrétiens de la province de Phú Yên (Cochinchine orientale),” Les Missions catholiques 870 (1886): 61-65 and 871 (1886): 75-77.

34. For a helpful analysis of contemporary trends in Mariology, see the annual reports by Eamon Carroll published in Marian Studies. See also the essays published in Ephemerides Mariologicae.

35. See Peter C. Phan, “Mary in Recent Theology and Piety: The View from the United States of America,” Ephemerides Mariologicae L (2000): 425-40.

36. For a presentation of AvalokiteÑvara, see John Blofield, Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977); Kuan Yin: Myths and Revelations of the Chinese Goddess of Compassion, ed. Martin Palmer, Jay Ramsay and Kwok Manho (London: Thorsons, 1995); Sandy Boucher, Discovering Kwan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); and Chun-Fang Yu, Kwan Yin: The Chinese Transformations of AvalokiteÑvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

37. Kwan Yin is known in Vietnamese as Quan Âm Thi Kính. There are different stories about this goddess of compassion. In Vietnam, the story runs as follows: Thi Kính, a re-incarnation of a man who still needed purification before achieving enlightenment, was a young woman wrongly accused of wanting to kill her husband. She left her husband, disguised as a man, and joined a Buddhist monastery. A young girl by the name of Thi Mâu, struck by the beauty of Thi Kính and thinking that she was a man, fell in love with her but her love was rebuffed. Disconsolate, she gave herself to a man and conceived a child. When the child was born, she carried him to the pagoda and accused Thi Kính to be the father. When Thi Kính saw the child, out of maternal instincts, she reached for him and cradled him. Her gesture was judged to be the confirmation of the accusation and she was sent out of the monastery in disgrace. For the rest of her life, she was despised by the village, but she took care of the child and bore her unjust sufferings in silence, with patience, and with compassion for all. At her death, people discovered that she was a woman in disguise, and realized the injustices done to her. During her funerals, the Buddha himself appeared to reveal that she was the boddhisattva of compassion who listens to the cries of distress of all beings. Thi Mâu, for her punishment, was turned into a toad. See Pham Duy Khiem, Légendes des terres sereines (Paris: Mercure de France, 1953), 25-29.

38. On the role of mercy in Christian theology, see Jon Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), especially pp. 15-26.

39. John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, 9.2. English translation in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. J. Michael Miller (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1996), 133.

40. On feminist Mariology, see especially the works of Elizabeth Johnson. See, for instance, “The Marian Tradition and the Reality of Women,” Horizons 12/1 (1985): 116-35; “Mary and the Female Face of God,” Theological Studies 50 (1989): 500-26; and “Mary, Friend of God and Prophet: A Critical Reading of the Marian Tradition,” Theology Digest 47/4 (Winter 2000): 317-25.

41. John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 37.3. English translation in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 392.

42. John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, no. 6.3. English translation in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 125.

43. See Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 52-53 and David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 190-99..

44. See Keith Weller Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 37-41; 334-39.

45. Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, 90: “The Vietnamese remembered Lady Trieu’s uprising as the most important event of the time. Her leadership appealed to strong popular instincts. The traditional image of her as a remarkable yet human leader, throwing her yard-long breasts over her shoulders when going into battle astride an elephant, has been handed down from generation to generation. After Lady Trieu’s death, her spirit was worshiped by the Vietnamese. We owe our knowledge of her to the fact that she was remembered by the people.”

46. See Keith Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, 13: “Women enjoyed a relatively high status in Lac society.... When the Lac lords eventually rose up against increasing Chinese influence, they were led by women. According to Vietnamese tradition, the children of Lac Long Quan and Au Co were divided into two groups, with half following their father back to the sea and half going into the mountains with their mother. This division of the children into two groups appears to reflect a bilateral family system in which inheritance rights could be passed on through maternal and paternal lines.”

47. See the important studies by Ta Van Tai, especially his “Protection of Women’s Civil Rights in Traditional Vietnam: A Comparison of the Code of the Lê Dynasty (1428-1788) with the Chinese Codes,” in Law and the State in Traditional East Asia: Six Studies on the Sources of East Asian Law, ed. Brian E. McKnight (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 37-72. For studies on the role of Vietnamese women in general, see Nguyen Huu Tan, “La femme vietnamienne d’autrefois à travers les chansons populaires,” Bulletin de la Société des Études Indocinoises , new series, XLV/1 (1970): 3-113; My-Van Tran, “The Position of Women in Traditional Vietnam: Some Aspects,” in Essays in Asian History, Past and Present, ed. K.M. de Silva et al. (New Dehli: Vikas Publishing House, 1990): 274-83; Stephen O’Harrow, “Vietnamese Women and Confucianism: Creating Spaces from Patriarchy,” in “Male” and “Female” in Developing Southeast Asia, ed. Wazir Jahan Karim (Oxford/Washington, DC: Berg Publishers, 1995), 161-81; Vietnam’s Women in Transition, ed. Kathleen Barry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); and Nguyen Van Ky, La société vietnamienne face à la modernité (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), 261-97.

48. Two female writers are often cited, i.e., Ba Huyen Thanh Quan and Ho Xuan Huong. There are of course legions of contemporary female writers.

49. See For All Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. Documents from 1970 to 1991, ed. Gaudencio Rosales and C. G. Arévalo (Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, 1002) and For All Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. Documents from 1992 to 1996, ed. Franz-Josef Eilers (Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, 1997).