Inculturation for mission: The transformation of the French Notre-Dame des Victoires into Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam 1998

Abstract

The article discusses the indigenization of the French Notre-Dame des Victoires into Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam in 1998. It argues that the La Vang project was a missionary strategy employed by the church to engage in mission through dialogue with Vietnamese culture and religions in a postcolonial period. The article also demonstrates that because Vietnamese Catholics and Buddhists share their common practices and experience spiritual transformation through devotion to Mary and Guan-yin (the Buddhist female Bodhisattva), interreligious dialogue between Vietnamese Buddhists and Catholics will become more fruitful, given the discovery of significant commonalities between the two traditions. In addition, the transformation of the French Notre-Dame des Victoires into the image of a Vietnamese woman helps the Church rediscover Vietnamese cultural roots through which a contextual theology for the Vietnamese needs to be constructed and developed.