Destroying faith

>> Taking advantage of faith, inciting

(Baonghean) - For more than two weeks now, I have been continuously following the news about the incident that occurred in My Yen parish, Nghi Phuong commune, (Nghi Loc) and I see that the actions of some parishioners are not right. Here, I do not want to mention their actions, but only talk about the behavior of Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop when issuing "General Letters", "Communications", "Reports"... and giving interviews to some overseas stations.

I think Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop's argument is very bad and not true. For example, the Bishop called the police's arrest of Ngo Van Khoi and Nguyen Van Hai illegal because the reason the police were beaten and arrested by parishioners on May 22 was because they prevented parishioners from attending the solemn mass. I have been to "Trai Gao Shrine" twice and know about the number of people attending as well as the atmosphere of the holidays here. Extremely crowded and extremely "hot".

With the number of people at the ceremonies at Trai Gao, 50 policemen in full uniform standing in the way would be “swallowed up” by the parishioners, let alone 5 policemen. Therefore, there would never be a case where only 5 policemen (in plain clothes) would be “foolish” enough to prevent parishioners from attending the ceremony. Or, when talking about a series of incidents where parishioners organized large crowds to surround the Nghi Phuong commune government headquarters to detain officials, force them to write commitments, cause trouble, and resist law enforcement officers… Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop often blamed the government, while at the same time showing himself to be a responsible dignitary who only wanted “dialogue”.

But I don't think so! For example, the actions of the parishioners on September 3-4 were clearly extreme, violent and illegal, but the head of the Vinh Diocese's Bishop's Office never stepped in to stop them in time. I think that if they are good religious dignitaries, responsible to the parishioners, responsible to society, then regardless of the right or wrong reasons, more than anyone else, they should be there to disperse the crowd of parishioners when things first started to happen. Therefore, I was very surprised and wondered, on the afternoon of September 4, when the "hail" was aimed at the people on duty, what were the dignitaries doing when the Vinh Diocese's Bishop's Office was only a few kilometers away from Nghi Phuong commune?

There is one thing I find strange, everyone knows that overseas radio stations like BBC, RFA, RFI… specialize in criticizing Vietnam. If he is a person responsible for the people and the country, why does Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop “trust” and “rely on” those radio stations to talk nonsense?

This morning, I read Nghe An Weekend Newspaper and really liked the article “Harmony within the legal framework to care for people together” by author Truong Cong Anh. I liked the most the part: “… When performing official duties, government officials act in the name of the State, in the name of the regime; when performing “pastoral duties”, religious officials act in the name of Buddha, God, in the name of the church. However, it must be affirmed that all acts of acting in name must be based on compliance with national law, otherwise, such acts of acting in name are just impersonations. Impersonations will destroy both faith and holy faith…”.

I think, if Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop continues to act as he is now, his actions in the name of the church will become impersonation as author Truong Cong Anh wrote. And thus, it will destroy the holy faith of the parishioners towards him and further, create a suspicious and unsympathetic view towards what he is exploiting to preach...

Binh An (Hung Phuc Ward, Vinh City)