What was the Catholic Church's opinion of Diệm's South Vietnam?
score:8
The Vatican's opinion of Diem's regime, in public, seems to have been one of 'no comment' judging by the lack of public statements. In private, Diem may have initially enjoyed at least some support from the Vatican. Later, the Vatican distanced itself from Diem due to the unpopularity of the Vietnamese leader in his own country.
According to Wikipedia, referring to the period 1950 to 1954,
Diệm spent most of the next four years in the United States and Europe enlisting support, particularly among fellow Catholic politicians in America and Vatican officials. Diệm's success with the latter group was helped by the fact that his elder brother Ngô Đình Thục was the leading Catholic cleric in Vietnam and had studied with high-ranking priests in Rome.
Diem was initially strongly backed by Francis Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, who was very anti-communist and close to Pope Pius XII. It was Pius XII who approved the Decree against Communism in 1949 so it is feasible that he also supported Diem.
However, it seems that Diem's harsh policies towards Buddhists and the high level of corruption may have been a source of embarrassment to the Vatican for, in a 1963 issue of the Catholic Weekly,
it is noted that: "Archbishop Thuc later told reporters in Rome that the Vatican had ordered him to keep silent about his activities and the affairs of his country while he was outside Vietnam.”
The relationship between Diem and the Vatican seems to have already been strained - he had opposed the Vatican's choice for Bishop of Saigon, preferring instead the aforementioned Thuc, his brother.
Both John Cooney, in The American Pope (on Spellman), and especially Avro Manhatten, in Vietnam: Why did we go? claim that the Vatican was deeply involved in supporting Diem but both books are controversial to say the least. See comments here (Cooney) and here (Manhatten), for example.
Other sources:
The Catholic Church in Sydney & the Vietnam Conflict by C.F.Bowers
Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation by Charles Keith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem_presidential_visit_to_the_United_States
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/22/how-the-60s-transformed-t_n_735766.html
Upvote:1
President Ngo Dinh Diem was a Catholic and brother of the traditionalist Catholic Archbishop Thuc. Diem governed according to Catholic principles, even legislating laws more in accordance with Catholic teaching. He was one of the several assassinated by the CIA coup right before the Vietnam War began. Some consider Diem a martyr much as some French consider King Louis XVI a martyr.
The Vietnam War began over a dispute between the government, run by Catholics (some even say it was nepotism), and Buddhists. Diem enacted a law that said a religious group had to petition the government first before being able to fly a flag for a religious holiday. Diem's brother Abp. Thuc celebrated his 25th anniversary of his episcopal consecration civically and with great pomp, but thereafter the government denied the Buddhists the ability to fly their flags on their religious holiday (6 May 1963), and the Buddhists became violent in protest (hence the memorable pictures of violent Buddhist self-imolations / suicides). Thereafter, there was a CIA coup to assassinate Diem (2 Nov. 1963) because, as Johnson later said, Diem was unfit for governing Vietnam. A few million Catholics regrouped into one region of Vietnam.
Diem had a love-hate relationship with the U.S. and France. France was a colonizer, but France's withdrawal from Vietnam left it unstable. The U.S. could've helped with stabilizing it, but it doesn't seem assassinating Diem helped.
At its core, the Vietnam War began as a religious war of Catholics vs. Buddhists.
Diem had an audience with Pope Pius XII, as mentioned in Miller's Misalliance p. 38.
According to this, in 1966
Pope Paul VI addresses 150,000 people in St. Peter’s Square in Rome and calls for an end to the war in Vietnam through negotiations. Although the Pope’s address had no impact on the Johnson administration and its policies in Southeast Asia, his comments were indicative of the mounting antiwar sentiment that was growing both at home and overseas.
from my answer to the Christianity StackExchange question "What was the stance of the Roman Catholic Church on the Vietnam War?"
More post
- 📝 'Sub rosa' council meetings
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union take the risk of deploying missiles to Cuba, which precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- 📝 Were there any Muslims left in the Indian side of the Punjab after the 1947 riots?
- 📝 How did Lincoln legitimize the constitutionality of his Emancipation Proclamation?
- 📝 What is this medal ribbon? WAAF
- 📝 Who were those Vietnamese translators?
- 📝 Rationale for mounted infantry?
- 📝 How has it happen, that Soviet Union, after the win in WW2 did not took German technologies?
- 📝 Index of importance / economic value various minerals during the Industrial Revolution
- 📝 What are the origins and history of shaking, trembling, jerking, contorting, collapsing, fainting and similar manifestations in Christianity?
- 📝 Did China ever consider a phonetic writing system?
- 📝 Why is the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima so much more infamous than that of Nagasaki?
- 📝 When did the Roman empire start to hire Anglo-Saxon mercenary troops to protect Britain?
- 📝 Did Erwin König Exist?
- 📝 What was the source of "presidium" as used by the Soviets?
- 📝 How old is the idea that humans have 360 joints?
- 📝 Did the US government officially apologize for Indian Removal Act and Native American Indian genocide?
- 📝 What is the oldest recorded cat name?
- 📝 Have the Pyramid Texts been translated into German?
- 📝 What uniform is in this picture?
- 📝 Did New Imperialism differ in nature from earlier Imperialism?
- 📝 What types of Poison gasses were used in World War 1?
- 📝 Why did Henry III of England give his sons English names, other than naming them after his favourite saints?
- 📝 Why do some painted portraits show the subject pointing?
- 📝 How many Bolsheviks were Jewish?
- 📝 Is there any historical evidence to support the existence of the Patriarchs outside of the Old Testament?
- 📝 Were any tactical missiles used during the 1971 Indo Pakistan war?
- 📝 Were early accounts of ancient child prostitution accurate?
- 📝 Was there ever any doubt which side the USA would join?
- 📝 Was slave labor used in rebuilding the White House?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What was the Catholic Church's opinion of Diệm's South Vietnam?
- 📝 What was the Victorian opinion of the American Revolution?
- 📝 What was the contemporary German public opinion on the Herero Genocide?
- 📝 What was this small state in the south of France in 1789?
- 📝 What was the staple food of the natives of South East Asia before rice?
- 📝 What was Poland's involvement in the Vietnam War?
- 📝 What was the South actually afraid Lincoln or Congress would do that precipitated the Civil War?
- 📝 What was the most recent Catholic coronation ceremony of a king?
- 📝 What was the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Carolingian emperors?
- 📝 What was the contemporary popular opinion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty?
- 📝 What was the role of the Catholic church with regard to the Holocaust?
- 📝 What was the Catholic Church trying to do in Spain in the 1930s?
- 📝 What was the route for ships from England to South Africa in 1840?
- 📝 What was the wealth distribution in US antebellum North / South
- 📝 What was the death toll of non-Americans in the Vietnam War?
- 📝 What was the Romans or Roman Empires opinion on the Vikings?
- 📝 What was the opinion of Hitler regarding p**nography?
- 📝 What was G. K. Zipf's opinion of the Nazis?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 What was the historical context of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution?
- 📝 During the breakup of the Soviet Union, on what basis was citizenship granted or withheld for each of the fifteen new republics?
- 📝 What was the typical peasant's diet like in Europe during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 Why was capturing the south of Okinawa necessary?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 What was the status of Arab Christians during the crusades?
- 📝 What was the religion of the Arabic people before conversion to Islam?
- 📝 What was the purpose of Nazi extermination camps?
- 📝 What was the internal Soviet reaction to the moon landing?
- 📝 What was the function of the walls of Jericho?
- 📝 What was the pound (unit of weight) initially equal to?