Following is the translation of the letter by Father Chan Tin to 
Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung of the Vietnamese Catholic Church, 
commenting on the recent Politburo's Directive on Religions and the 
problems the  Church is facing under the communist regime. 

Father Chan Tin, along with his long time colleague Nguyen Ngoc Lan, 
is well known for his outspokenness against social injustice under 
any  governments, including that of the former South Vietnam. 

Father Chan Tin's letter to Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung is now 
circulated widely in the underground press in Vietnam, especially in 
light of the  upcoming visit of the United Nations' Envoy on 
Religions,  Abdelfattah Amor, October 19-28, 1998. 

-------------------------------------- 

Vung Tau, July 10, 1998 

Respectfully sent to: 

Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung  

Chairman of the Vietnamese Bishop Council 

 My Dear Cardinal, 

On the 49th anniversary of the ordaination of my Cardinal and us, the 
three brothers, on June 06, 1998, I telephoned to join you in 
offering thanksgivings to God. [On that occasion], you invited me to 
Hanoi for a visit but I could not accept the invitation because I 
was teaching a class for new followers and because the wounds on my 
legs and arms have not healed completely. These wounds came from the 
traffic accident "they" intentionally caused when brother Nguyen 
Ngoc Lan carried me [on his motorbike] to Tan Son Nhat to attend the 
funeral of Nguyen Van Tran. Mr. Tran died at the age of 84, with 60 
years of Party membership, and also was our close friend in the 
struggle for human rights and the freedom of the press in Vietnam. 

I am now visiting Vung Tau for a few days. I would like to take this 
spare time to write to My Cardinal some of my deep concerns after I 
read the Politburo's directive on how to deal with religions, issued 
on July 02 this year. 

First of all, when discussing the current condition of religions [in 
Vietnam] and the task of dealing with religions, the Politburo 
wrote: "Religious believes are the spiritual need of a section of 
the population. The Party and the State issue and implement a 
uniform policy of respecting people's freedom of religion, freedom 
not to believe, and freedom not to join religions". I want to 
clarify that it is not the need of just a section of the population 
but rather of the vast majority of the population. Those that bear 
no religious belief are of a small minority. And since it is the 
spiritual need of the vast majority of the population, the Party and 
the State should have created favorable conditions for people to 
enhance these spiritual values. They should have respected the 
religions so these entities can help build the spiritual lives of 
the followers. In real life, however, the Party and the State are 
causing a lot of barriers to restrict religious activities and make 
the training of clergies much more difficult. They also choke 
religions by limiting the number of recruits for priesthood. For 
Catholics in Saigon Diocese alone, about 250 priests have passed 
away since 1975, but the State allowed only 150 new priests to be 
ordained. I voiced my complaint in a letter to Cardinal Etchegarey 
on September 07, 1989 that "Real freedom of religion must obviously 
include the Churches' right to freely select teachers and students 
for religious training." 

Nevertheless, today, seminary training is placed under all kinds of 
restrictions, such as the limit on the number of students, the 
requirement that subjects all selected students and teachers to 
State's approval, etc. Currently, in Saigon, we have one class of 50 
religious students for 10 dioceses in the South. The length of the 
cycle is 6 years. [We are] not allowed to take in new students every 
year. The next recruiting will not take place until the end of the 
current class. In terms of numbers, each diocese sends to the 
training seminary 5 students. During the 6 years, out of the five, 
[on average] two wants to withdraw from the program; one does not 
look good in the eyes of the State; one does not meet all the 
standards of the Church. There usually is only one out of five 
[reaching graduation]. 

In the same 6 years, quite a few priests pass away due to old age, 
illness, and accidents. Please refer to Chan Tin's file "Speaking 
for Other Human Beings", TIN Paris, 1993, page 27. From 1975 to 
1989, no training class was allowed in the entire country. From 1989 
to today, there has been a small change, but that change is next to 
nothing. A bishop wrote after the annual meeting of the Vietnamese 
Bishops Council in October 1997: "The Vietnamese Bishops Council has 
only 39 members. Most are in old age and poor health. The situation 
is not much better for the priests because training and ordainment 
has been disrupted for years". As for the training seminaries, the 
same bishop wrote: "The Vietnamese (Catholic) Church once had tens 
of main and minor seminaries. Today, we have just 6 main seminaries 
for the whole country with a total of 752 students. The facilities 
are too crowded while the training staff is old and scarce. For a 
long time, the Bishop Council has asked in vain for the permission 
to open 2 more seminaries" - Tin Nha (News from Home), issue 31, 
page 13. 

My Cardinal, what I wrote in 1989 to Cardinal Etchegarey remain true 
today. They try to extinguish the Church by not allowing more 
seminaries to train priests and not allowing free recruit of 
students. 

With such restrictions, how dare the Politburo say: "The Party's and 
Government's religious policies responded to the people's proper 
aspiration, solidify their trust in the Party and the Government, 
and generate enthusiasm among religious followers ... Religious 
followers feel more and more reassured about their religious duty 
and wholeheartedly carry out the policies of the Party and the 
Government". How sarcastic ! 

Freedom to print religious books is absent, too. The State wants to 
impose a number of laws on religious book publishing. How strange it 
is for the atheists to control religious printing. How much do they 
know or understand about theology to control religious teaching and 
internal activities of all religions. 

The Politburo's Directive even brings up something totally opposite 
to the practice of religions. It said: "A number of people that are 
not clergies but still preach illegally". There is absolutely no 
(Church's) power that forbid followers to teach the faith to others. 
In fact, as far Christianity is concerned, teaching others is a 
must, a sacred duty of each believer. Everyone has to preach the 
Good News, not just the clergies. The State has no right to impose 
such restriction. The Bishop Council should raise its voice against 
that policy by the Party and the Government, who are now devising 
plans to implement that religion undermining policy. 

... 

Another important issue is the fate of the religious orders and the 
religiously-living groups. On this subject, the Politburo's 
Directive wrote: "The Government has regulations and detail 
instructions on the activities of religious orders and religiously-
living groups, [including] fund raising, financial activities, 
charities activities, and religious cultural-or-arts activities." [I 
think] the Superiors of the religious orders and religiously-living 
groups, and the Bishops Council must raise their voices and set the 
direction. These atheists must not misdirect and control the 
activities of the clergies who have devoted their lives to serve 
humankind, and Vietnamese people in particular. 

Beside the publicly-announced Politburo's Directive mentioned, there 
are other quiet orders sent down through the Central Committee on 
Religions. At the annual meeting of the Vietnamese Bishops Council 
in October, 1997, Mr. Le Quang Vinh, Head of the Central Committee 
on Religions, spoke lengthily on the Catholics Solidarity Committee 
... [H]e must have stood on some secret order from the Politburo to 
use such a superior's tone. The Communist Party wants to turn a 
number of priests and bishops into their lackeys through this 
Catholics Solidarity Committee. They know they cannot create an 
independent [Catholic] Church as in China, nor a state-owned 
[Catholic] Church. Their only alternative is to use these priests 
and bishops of the Catholics Solidarity Committee to drive the 
activities of the Vietnamese Catholic Church. They want to rebuild 
the fragmented Solidarity Committee into another state-owned church 
inside the Vietnamese Catholic Church. Their ambition, according to 
Prof. Do Manh Tri, is to save the Solidarity Committee at all cost, 
and use it to erode the Vietnamese Catholic Church from inside out. 

In his speech "The Vietnamese Communist Party Truly Respect and 
Guarantee Freedom of Religion", Secretary General Le Kha Phieu told 
heads of provinces, ministries, departments, and other central 
offices: "Our Party truly respect and guarantee the freedom of 
religion. Our people have the right to join, to switch, to withdraw, 
or not to join any religions. No power can block or violate that 
freedom". In reality, at these government offices, they do not 
respect freedom of religion at all. High-ranking officials and Party 
members are required to disown their Catholic belief. When the 
Secretary General said "People have the right to join religions", 
does he mean Party members and high-ranking officials are not people 
? What are they, then ? The Communist Party's policies on religions, 
therefore, remain unchanged. They still try to undermine religions. 
There has been no reform in this area. 

My Cardinal, those are the worries of this son of the Vietnamese 
Catholics Church and of many other sincere Christians. [We believe] 
the Cardinal and the Bishops Council need to raise their voices 
demanding freedom of religions in concrete terms, particularly on 
the Church's fundamental issues. I hope that those demands will be 
made public instead of just being sent quietly to the Government 
without for no results as in the case of the Bishop Council's letter 
in October, 1997. The reason for making them public is to raise the 
awareness among God's people [and encourage them] to join in the 
struggle for religious freedom. 

I wish My Cardinal good health, wisdom, and courage. Please grant me 
your blessing. 

Respectfully Yours,
Rev. Chan Tin
888 Ky Dong Street, District 3
HCM City