The Rank of Vietnamese Catholic Missionaries - the Personal and Education Problem

Abstract

The rank of missionaries is the pillar of the Catholic Church. The recruitment and education of the body of authorities in the Catholic Church of Vietnam has been therefore the concern not only of the Church but also of the Vietnamese State. Up to before 1975, while the rank of Catholic missionaries in South Vietnam had conditions to develop itself, the rank of Catholic missionaries in North Vietnam was in a difficult situation owing both to subjective and objective reasons. The shortage of missionaries in North Vietnam was due before all else to the compulsion toward Catholic missionaries and believers to go South after the Geneva Agreement in 1954. The shortage of missionaries had dragged out some decades until after 1975. Not until the new line of the Communist Party of Vietnam on religious problems was the shortage of missionaries overcome. The article cites many concrete figures on the rank of Vietnamese catholic dignitaries from the past to the present time, the process of education and ordainment, as well as the problem the present Vietnamese Catholic Church has to resolve. Full text in Vietnamese Religious Studies 2005/5 pp.35-42