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LETTER OF ARCHBISHOP GIOAN BAOTIXITA PHAM
MINH MAN OF SAIGON ARCHDIOCESE TO REVEREND NGUYEN TAN KHOA,
ACTING PRESIDENT OF PRO-GOVERNMENT UNITED COMMITTEE OF VIETNAMESE
CATHOLICS
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Ho Chi Minh City, December
25th, 2002
Reverend Nguyen Tan Khoa
Acting President of United Committee of Vietnamese Catholic
Delegates to The Fourth Conference of Catholics to construct and
defend the Nation.
Dear Catholic ladies and gentlemen,
I sincerely would like to thank you, the Reverend President, who
had sent the letter inviting me to attend the Conference. First,
I like to wish you and the Delegates health and peace in Jesus Christ.
Due to my Church responsibilities I could not join you in the Conference.
I like to use this letter to offer some thoughts to the Delegates
in relating to our.
Serving people is the ultimate objective of all organizations and
social institutions (Refer the Resolution of the Sixth Communist
Party Conference). This assertion makes citizens become the goal,
the aim, and the focal point of all cultural, economic and social
activities of our people. Does this assertion try to insist that
the above statement is the basic principle, which creates demands
and critical requirements that needs to be met in our current social
situation to construct a more human society in Vietnam? Those critical
requirements include two main tasks:
I- Gradually wiping out current crippled problems in our society.
II- Developing human values to help our citizens live increasingly
comfortable, live "independently, freely and happily"
and live deservingly with their human values.
I- Gradually wiping out current crippled problems in our society:
1- Wiping out the first biggest disability of losing human values.
Losing human values is losing people's dignity. This phenomenon
has been created and become worse at alarming rates in our society.
- The consumerism has been pushing people in the network of shallow
and artificial satisfaction.
- Labor forces have been organized to obtain maximum profits without
improving workers' living conditions and enriching workers' human
values.
- There is a reverse between means and goals: People which originally
had been goals of development, have been converting to become means
for production.
- Freedom has been considered the rights to do anything for some
people who like and do anything they emotionally consider profitable
to them, to his group instead of doing things by which their conscience
allow them to do for public interests, for the benefits of our current
and future generations. When separating freedom from human values
freedom becomes selfish wills and sudden inspiration of some people
who have power. Instead of providing "peaceful residence and
happy employment" to all citizens, such freedom creates and
piles up serious unfairness in our society.
2- Wiping out second major crippled problem of unfairness mechanism
and losing people's human values.
"Beg and Give mechanism" is a standard mechanism of injustice
and losing people's human values. Followings are supporting reasons
for my point:
- "Beg and Give mechanism" converts citizens' legitimate
rights into managed privileges on which the government secure in
their hands and turn around to give them back to citizens under
forms of permissions. "Beg and Give Mechanism" wipes out
citizens' freedom rights and converts the Government of People,
from People and for People to the Big Boss who secures in their
hands citizens' constitutional rights and gives out those rights
to people upon their selfish emotion and their sudden inspiration.
- According to news reporting agencies, "Beg and Give Mechanism"
is the main cause to lose 50% of state-wide National Revenues (NV)
and then lose additional 50% of that NV's balance in public utilities
projects. It means a small group of government officials, who have
power and social connections, obtain 75% of public funds (among
that 75% , 50,000 billion Vietnam Dong was appropriated for construction
projects). More than 70 million people are only given 25% of the
yearly National Revenues.
- This sad reality creates severe unfairness and injustice of incomes
distribution in our society and increases the gaps between the rich
and the poor among our Vietnamese people. Therefore, the systematic
corruption is a major obstacle to the economic development in our
nation and the enrichment of human values.
II- Enriching the human values to make our society more human-oriented.
1- Enriching human values and people's dignity requires all organizations,
all institutions and everybody in every social contact to pay attention
to respect people as central points of all cultural, economic and
social interrelations. It means people need to be developed and
enriched in all materialistic, spiritual and psychological aspects
to build up human values and dignity. Our current educational system
apparently only focuses to teach students professional knowledge
rather than developing students' human values. This educational
approach runs the risk of creating baseless, mentally handicapped
and awkwardly disable people for our country.
2- Developing society and promote people on the foundation of Truthful
ness:
A society is considered to be in functional order and favorable
to human dignity when it is built on the foundation of truthfulness.
Basic truthfulness in people relations is that everybody is equal
in their human values. This truthfulness requires abolishing all
forms of discrimination and differential treatments. Forms of Totalitarianism
need to be banned. Untruthfulness needs to be rooted out. Lying
and cheating currently have been spreading with severely negative
impacts in our society and on our people.
3- Enriching the interdependent spirit between communities and people.
The interdependent spirit only can be built up upon the foundation
of respecting people themselves and their rights. The legitimate
independence and self-determination of all organizations need to
be respected. Moral values in our cultural tradition also need to
be honored. The interdependent spirit also requires ones to see
far beyond their selves, their organizations and their groups to
achieve stable development and long-term development of people,
families and the society.
4- Enriching the interdependence between social organizations:
- The interdependence and unification only can be achieved when
all social organizations work in the spirit of mutual interdependence.
The interdependence is a characteristic of a society in which the
superior organizations do not interfere in the internal affairs
of subordinate organizations and revoke the subordinates' authorities
and independence. However, superior organizations provide subordinate
organizations with all favorable conditions to help them easily
coordinate their activities with other organizations.
- In an interdependent society, all citizen, all religious or non-religious
communities, regardless of social classes, are free to offer their
initiatives to work, develop, enrich individuals, families and enforce
the national legal systems. The interdependence does not allow an
organization or social communities, even the highest organizations,
such as the Government, to gain monopolized power on top of our
people. Additionally, monopoly is the road to Totalitarianism, Dictatorship,
and Officialdom, Everything under State Control, Suppression and
Injustice. These are the serious social vices which destroy the
human values and hinder the development of the Nation.
The above-defined interdependence is a solid foundation to build
up a democratic society, a Government of People, from People and
for People. Without this foundation, the Government becomes suppressing
dictatorial systems of machines and the People from their positions
as owners of the Nation become blind and unwillingly "tools"
to serve those systems of machines. That reversion has destroyed
human values and decomposed our society.
5- Developing people's awareness and willingness to participate
in community services:
First, community services are necessary conditions to exercise the
freedom rights of citizens to enrich human values. Therefore, functions
to serve community services require the Government two things:
(a) Create conditions to guarantee for all citizens, all social
organizations to have freedom which is appropriate to human values
and necessary for the development of our country.
(b) Wipe out unfair legislations and administrative measures which
are contrary to our traditional moral and ethical standards. "Beg
and Give Mechanism" is an example of these unfair legal systems.
Over a million abortion cases every year is a bad example of immoral
administrative measures and the horrible resulting consequences
have been happening. Therefore, the future of our People is quite
gloomy and uncertain.
I am strongly convinced that the Vietnamese Catholics have been
expecting the Delegates to contribute their positive efforts to
the construction and defense of our Nation in accordance with appropriate
Catholic guidelines, conscience and beliefs, which are critical
factors, that enrich our Vietnamese people's internal and cultural
strengths. I sincerely wish you a New Year with your new plans and
new accomplishments.
Gioan Baotixita Pham Minh Man
Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City
English version: Vincent Viet Si, San Jose, CA. USA |
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