(June 04, 2011) Seven Catholics priests have been elected to Vietnam’s national assembly
and provincial councils, according to official results of the voting conducted on
May 22. At least 20 priests won election to local “people’s councils.” The participation
of priests as candidates for election provoked a lively debate among Catholics in
Vietnam. Canon law forbids priests from holding office “if it means sharing in the
exercise of civil power.” In an open letter to the Vietnamese hierarchy, several priests—including
Father Nguyen Van Ly, a prominent dissident who has spent almost 15 years in prison—argued
that membership in Communist ruling bodies falls into that proscribed category, since
these organs exist to legitimize and carry out decisions of the Communist Party. “It
is clear from Church teachings that no true Catholic can ever be a Communist, or condone
Communism,” the letter said. Despite the criticism, Father Tran Manh Cuong of the
Ban Me Thout diocese, and Father Le Ngoc Hoan of Bui Chu won their bids for membership
in the national assembly. However, the priest whose candidacy raised the greatest
public outcry, Father Phan Khac Tu of Saigon, was defeated in the polls. Father Phan
Khac Tuc is the editor of Catholics and Nation, a magazine that was founded in 1975
with support from the Vietnamese government, and has frequently criticized the Vatican.
He is also vice-chairman of a Committee for Solidarity of Vietnamese Catholics, a
group apparently modeled after China’s Patriotic Catholic Association. He has boasted
that during the war against the US he ran a clandestine bomb factory out of his parish
church