PASTOR'S CORNER

Dear Friends,

In September, we had a visit from the Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of Hanoi to Orange County at the invitation of Bishop Brown.  This event was to celebrate the formal establishment of relations between Hanoi and Orange as “sister dioceses.”  Creating such a relationship means greater interaction, the interchange of resources and ideas.  Certainly, Hanoi will benefit from on-going and intensified fund raising which will continue here in our Diocese to help build up the church infrastructure.  Soon we will be hosting a number of seminarians who will study here with us and then return to Vietnam for ordination.  The Diocese of Orange will benefit from that long history of testing and persecution of the Vietnamese Church which has produced an astonishing loyalty and maturity in today’s Vietnamese Catholics.  One need only look at the continued growth here and at home of the Catholic faith among the Vietnamese and the numbers of young people who continue to joyfully enter religious life and the priesthood.

While here, Archbishop Kiet enjoyed two weeks of visiting our Diocese and the many nationalities and cultures that make up our Church.  It was also time to reconnect with the faithful among whom were many familiar faces and old friends.

On returning to Vietnam, the Archbishop landed in the middle of a series of protests being held in his diocese and around the country against the government.  Years ago, the government had pledged to return stolen properties back to the Church, and recently the government had assured the Vatican that it was ready to take new steps toward restitution.  Since then, however, the government has demonstrated quite the opposite. 

On land that was once the former Vatican embassy, the government has decided to raze all the original buildings and erect a people’s park.  This, even though the Diocese can demonstrate that she is the legal owner.  One man went on Vietnamese television and accused the Bishops of interfering.  He identified himself as a Catholic, but when asked what his name was, he gave the name of a Catholic man who had died two years before! 

Another man who was critical of the Church on television was confronted by a group of Catholics.  He admitted that he was a beggar who had been given money by the government to say the things he said.  Now that’s sad.

So the struggle continues.  The Church waits for Communism to show us a different face.  But the situation is always the same whether it was years ago in Russia or today in China, Cuba or Vietnam.  And for those countries that seem lately enraptured by Communist ideology, like Venezuela, one only has to look at the recent past to put into balance any of the positive contributions of this broken system against the societal disaster that it has wreaked everywhere it has been employed.

Keep Archbishop Kiet and the Catholics of Hanoi in your prayers.  This battle is far from over, and there is so much at stake.

Fr. Al

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