The Missionary Work of the <i>Société des Missions Étrangères de</i> Paris and its Catechists in Vietnam

Abstract

The catechists were involved in various activities; they belonged to the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) in a province of North Vietnam called Tonkin, and they were not limited to the ordinary functions of simple preachers of catechism. After the dissolution of the Society of Jesus in the latter half of the 18th century, with authorization from Rome, the hierarchy and functions of the MEP catechists developed in a range of unique ways in the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin.The Tonkinese Christians always paid their respects to the highly-ranked catechists who were literate not only in Christian dogma and rites, but also in the world of the traditional Sino-Vietnamese classics. It was the catechists who gave moral education to these Christians and connected them with the non-Christian villagers by means of their intellectual influence in the local communities of North Vietnam.However, in the view of European missionaries and Tonkinese priests, the catechists had never broken free of their hierarchically determined position as followers or simple servants and became increasingly entrenched in this position from the end of the 18th century onwards.The gradual tendency for catechists to be subordinated to their superiors became more widespread with the increase in their numbers and the accomplishments of the local clergy system in the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin.By the early 19th century, most low-ranked catechists had already become almost mechanical in their actions. They worked in the “Maison de Dieu” of each parish, which offered food, clothing, education, and shelter to displaced people and refugees from the civil wars and famines caused by natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Candidates for such catechist work were not primarily motivated by religious reasons.Though the catechists in the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin seem to have lost their early high status, they continued to act within Christian communities as indispensable intermediaries between European missionaries or Tonkinese priests and local Christian villagers. Their role cannot be considered negligible when we consider the tenacity and flexibility of Vietnamese Christian communities, which survived severe persecutions perpetrated by the Nguyen dynasty under the French military invasion in the mid 19th century.