The Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh – Folha de S. Paulo, October 9, 1977
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
According to a telegraphic news report published by Folha on the 6th of this month, the Archbishop of Saigon, Most Rev. Nguyen Van Binh, addressed the World Synod of Bishops, which is currently meeting in Rome (204 bishops present). The general theme of the session was methods of teaching catechism to children and adults. The prelate spoke on this theme.
Incidentally, Most Rev. Van Binh seems to call himself “Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh,” unabashedly accepting as a fait accompli the replacement of the city’s traditional name, Saigon, with that of the late North Vietnamese communist leader. As everyone knows, besides being an atheist, materialist, and communist—or rather, because he was all that—Ho Chi Minh was a cruel persecutor of Catholics. For a Catholic archbishop to agree to be called “Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh” is as astonishing as for ancient Rome, in a delirium of paganism, to have changed its name to “City of Nero” or “City of Diocletian.” And for a pope, from then on, to call himself no longer Bishop of Rome but “Bishop of Nero” or “Bishop of Diocletian,” two atrocious persecutors of the Church.
But let us move on, without further comment, in this era in which the accumulation of aberrations forces us to “move on” without further comment: Non ragioniamo di loro, ma guarda e passa (Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto III, v. 51), as Virgil advised Dante as they crossed the outer zone of hell, which housed the reprobates whom even Satan had not accepted into his dark kingdom of evil.
Let us listen to the “archbishop of Ho Chi Minh.” He addressed not only catechesis in his homeland but also how the conditions in his country, crushed under the heel of the communist boot, affected the teaching of the Catholic religion to children.
According to ecclesiastical tradition, one would expect Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh to teach children how true, holy, and beautiful the Church’s doctrine is. From there, he would logically show them that they must believe in it with their whole soul, love it with all their heart, and serve it with all the resources at their disposal. “Serve”: when it comes to the Church militant, the word includes fighting.
Again, under ecclesiastical tradition, the archbishop would teach them the diametric opposition between the Church’s doctrine and communist doctrine, thereby showing how false, evil, and hideous the latter is.
Thus, in today’s Vietnam, serving and fighting for the Church would mean serving the Mystical Body of Christ, which is persecuted, crushed, and gloriously reduced to the utmost anguish, yet shining in its unalloyed authenticity.
Millions of Catholics throughout the world would have risen to applaud Most Rev. Nguyen Van Binh if he had proclaimed at the Synod that this is his teaching and that he is preparing martyrs for today and crusaders for tomorrow. They would have knelt to contemplate him and to ask for his blessings and prayers. A breath of fresh air would fill our lungs, which are polluted by what Paul VI called “the smoke of Satan.”
How beautiful it would be to imagine a basement in Saigon, hidden from the police, where the archbishop speaks to children about Jesus Christ, yet ready to be dragged away to martyrdom at any moment. Someone knocks on the door. Who could it be? Not the police, since in communist countries they don’t knock—they break in. A group of men cautiously opens the door. They are heads of families seeking their pastor’s blessing, as they are about to leave Saigon for mysterious ports near the jungle, where their loved ones await. There, they will boldly sail the seas in light boats, searching for ports where freedom shines, and denounce to the world the horrors that communists are committing in their homeland. The archbishop raises his eyes to heaven and blesses them. A hushed prayer follows, and the intrepid sailors depart. Excited, the children watch the scene; some girls wipe away tears. Suppressing a sigh, the archbishop resumes his sentence: “As I was saying, this is how one must live, fight, and die for Our Lord Jesus Christ. The ever-effective prayers of His Most Holy Mother will give you the supernatural strength to do so…” Thus would speak an archbishop of Saigon.
However, this was not what the “Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh” said. In fact, he explained to the 204 Silent Bishops (oh, the Silent Bishops, non ragioniamo di loro…) that since it is “impossible to hide the differences between Marxism and Christianity from these children,” it is necessary to “explain these differences ‘not with an attitude of opposition’ to Marxism but in a sense of justice’ (oh, how convenient this is, how it avoids martyrdom, how it flees from glory, how it sinks into the paths of desertion!).
I don’t know how this poor prelate understands “justice.” I don’t know how one can be just before Herod or Pilate, Annas or Caiaphas, except by calling them Herod, Pilate, Annas, or Caiaphas. “Let your speech be: yes, yes; no, no,” the Divine Master taught (Mt 5:37).
Most Rev. Nguyen Van Binh, master of complacency, adds that to the current rulers of Vietnam, “we must show a new face, the true face of the Church” and “actively cooperate” with the government. I agree that the true face should be shown. The true face, regal and holy, of the traditional Church Militant. Not the “new,” bloated and vulgar face marked by that collaborationist Church’s subservient smile. One might almost say it is anti-Church.
“Reverend Tarcisio Agostini” from Italy spoke at the Synod of Bishops after the “Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh.” He attacked the governments of non-communist nations and revealed yet another face of the anti-Church: that of a demagogic shrew fanning the flames of social revolution.
In short, toward communists, collaboration, submission, and dialogue. Toward non-communists, injustice, vituperation, and incendiary fury.
Oh, how painful it is to say this. Ultimately, the collaborationist attitude of the sad “Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh” is nothing new to Brazilians. Voz do Paraná, a Catholic weekly newspaper in Curitiba (week of April 25 to May 1, 1976), published a full-page statement titled “The Church of Vietnam Is Willing to Survive,” which explicitly noted that it was “an article signed by the Southern Region II of the CNBB” (the official CNBB sector comprising the two archbishops and seventeen bishops of the state of Paraná).
The article traces the long history of communism in Vietnam, presented sympathetically as a “liberation” of the Vietnamese people. It ends with a statement from the same “Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh,” entirely in line with communism. The text from Paraná concludes: “Who knows if this Church from the far reaches of Asia may give us the first example of how the Church can exist and act effectively in its saving mission under a regime of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.'”
I’ve published this sad Vietnamese-Paraná document in my study, The Church Facing the Escalating Communist Threat – an Appeal to the Silent Bishops (pp. 87 ff.). Fifty-one thousand copies of this study were sold in our country. To date, the bishops of CNBB’s Southern Region II, whom I expected to come forward with an explanation of any possible misunderstanding about the article and a public condemnation of the South Vietnamese bishops’ collaborationist stance, have remained silent.
