[ Marcel Văn and Clerical Abuse | Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 ]

Marcel Văn is certainly most famous—at least around here—for his mission of “changing sadness into joy” or “changing suffering into happiness.” This, as I explained in Part 2 of this series on clerical abuse, is his Christmas grace of 1940. It emerges in the context of clerical abuse he suffered (Part 1). It is his primary means of survival and thriving. Leaving things here, though, would paint a far-too-incomplete picture. It makes it sound like Văn is passive and just lets abuse happen. He doesn’t.

Rebellion

Văn had experience of rebellion early on. The first stage of this occurs in his hometown of Ngăm Giáo. It was an intolerable burden to continue with all the abuse and the suffering Văn endured at the Catholic school that he attended. It was so unbearable that he wanted nothing more than the school’s destruction (A 109).[1] One of the earliest biographers astutely remarks at this juncture: “Isn’t that how we create rebels?”[2] Indeed… and Văn himself was not immune, for with the years and with compounding abuse, the impulse grows in him.

The next stage takes us to the presbytery of Hữu Bằng. A complete reading of the Autobiography is necessary to grasp everything that Văn and his friends live through and themselves do there. It will help establish yet more sympathy and understanding. I encourage the acquisition of this knowledge. But in light at least of the summary in Part 1, for the moment, consider what Văn and his friends do in response to all the abuse they endure, the trauma inflicted on them, and the moral injury that questions their relationship with fellow Christians and in particular ecclesiastical authorities, including but not limited to the parish priest, Father Nhã:

The parish priest again overwhelmed us with heavy work, but we decided to do nothing about it. Rather, we demanded to be treated according to the regulations for candidates to the priesthood. We demanded that the presbytery be purged of the gang of girls, otherwise, we would leave. The parish priest, through his intermediary the old catechist, asked us to lower our voices for fear that these serious accusations might be heard by some Christians, to his great shame. The catechist, once again using his imposing authority, threatened to strike us. But we were exasperated and shouted: “Down with the catechists!” (A 239–240)

This first rebellion was not especially spiritual, though any blame on that front lies, in Văn’s way of thinking, more with those who corrupted the atmosphere in the first place than with those who reacted (cf. A 113). We can be very sure that this is Marcel’s position because he applies it not just to himself but to catechists—who are clearly villains in Văn’s life story. Marcel says that “one cannot blame the catechists; it is necessary to lay the blame on those who have forged these arrows of carnal fire, to throw them” (OWV 820-a).[3] Indeed, “one can hardly blame the catechists, since, having always bad example before their eyes, they have only imitated it” (OWV 818). Even when it might be cathartic to blame his immediate oppressors, he always targets the evil that coincides with the most power and authority. That is where the deepest, most essential problem lies. Everything else is derivative. It is propagation of evil.

At any rate, in this rebellion, which was not entirely pure and free from self-will, there was some property destruction (A 255–256, 259), and there were threats made by the abused children to their abusers (A 244, 259). Văn even suggests, to the reader’s great surprise in an autobiography of someone whose cause for beatification has been seriously introduced, that, had things gone badly, homicide would not have been impossible (A 241, 260–261)—though this doesn’t quite seem likely.

Sadly, in fact, the rebellion also targeted the young women who frequented the priest’s house at night, with some blows and a liberal dousing of urine (A 244–250)—I say sadly, because in our understanding today, these women were surely victims of spiritual abuse themselves, for they could only have done these things if the priest took advantage of his position of power.

At any rate, it wasn’t a particularly spiritual rebellion. It may have been a “necessary” response to a chain of abuse. But it had a character to it that wasn’t all it could be, wherever the blame for that lies. Văn was himself aware of the simultaneous necessity and inadequacy of what he was feeling:

Afterwards I had the desire to be a revolutionary myself. I wished to fight to create a good future for the Church in Vietnam. I wished to reform the parishes, I wished that all candidates for the priesthood could enjoy real freedom in an ambience conducive to piety where they would be supported and assisted in a spirit of charity… etc. In brief, I longed for many, many things: to so arrange things that the parishes could really be called parishes which were one hundred per cent Catholic; where priests would stop abusing alcohol, stop beating people, etc. I was thus really finding myself in the role of a real missionary… However, on reflection, I asked myself if young revolutionaries in a situation like mine had ever attracted anyone’s attention. Then, overtaken by a feeling of helplessness, my tears began to flow once again. I was both hurt and outraged that no one was interested in getting a full knowledge of the facts of the lives of these children who, with sincere souls, were preparing themselves for the priesthood. (A 352–353)

Resistance

After this comes the Christmas interior experience that revealed to Văn the mission of changing sadness into joy. A short time later, having been visited by Father Nhã asking him to return to the presbytery, Văn initially refused. Then, praying before the altar of the Blessed Virgin at the parish church, he felt called to change his mind (A 456–458). Keeping the experience itself secret, he explained his reasoning to his mother as follows: “With God, I no longer fear anything” (A 459).

Upon returning, Văn quickly realized that “the presbytery of Hữu Băng had now reached such a pass that it no longer deserved to be called ‘house of God.’ Yet why had God driven me to go back there and for what purpose?” (A 460) For three months, the young man prayed and fasted. Then October came. Quite out of his custom, he found himself avoiding others in a corner of the sacristy. There he had something like a vision, first of evil staining the world. Then, in the vision, he asked what he could do: “My God, what do you want me to do here?” He heard nothing in reply. But the cinematic vision shifted gears. He understood the beauty of purity and virginity. So he rushed off to the chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the church and vowed there to give Mary his virginity. This was a second great grace: “On leaving the church, I began to run and jump in all directions like the white foam that dances at the foot of the waterfall” (A 461–464).

This grace, which seems distinct from the Christmas experience of the mission of transformation of suffering into joy, causes Văn to think. He starts drawing conclusions. He examines the world around him, not to endure and be resilient in a psychological sense, but to act on the world in turn:

I began to reflect again, from that day onwards, on how to find the means of resisting these examples of bad behaviour. Was this not the new mission that God wished to confide to me and for which he had prepared me during the previous several months? (A 464)

Văn continues, telling us: “I was the first to stand up and protest” (A 466). It was primarily his “demeanour” that made the wrongdoers uncomfortable (ibid.). Testimony was his arm of choice. Moral conviction was his superweapon. This didn’t just show itself in his actions. His words took up the same tack. When questioned why he was leaving a situation that was objectively wrong and harmful, he said simply but directly: “I am going because I feel uncomfortable” (A 467). Ultimately, when he wasn’t allowed to simply withdraw, he did oppose rough speech with rough speech (A 467), but I feel like he’d been put in a corner. Then again, maybe it is too much to expect perfection. Just as changing suffering into joy is a process of conversion and transformation, so too may be the process of changing rebellion into resistance. That doesn’t make it any less of a grace.

Next, once his individual position was clearly established, Văn applied himself to a communal enterprise of resistance. He held meetings in the yard and in the forest with the younger ones to establish the “Angels of the Resistance,” named in honour of their Guardian Angels. Here in his narrative, Văn supplies many details, including how his election as leader came about. It was determined that the methods of the Angels of the Resistance were to be mostly silent, largely consisting of denying things asked for that ran against the rules and foregoing any participation in conversation that would do harm, and the members themselves were to be expressly and entirely nonviolent (A 468–471).

The resistance is motivated of course by a sense of justice, an indignation at how they are being treated. You can’t have rest, you can’t have peace without justice, for “justice and peace are always two of a kind” (OWN 9.22). Yet true as this is, Văn sees still deeper. He knows that just as there is no peace without justice, there is no justice in human experience without love:

Above all it was necessary to maintain a spirit of charity. Charity had disappeared entirely from the presbytery. It was our duty to re-establish it. (A 471)

Once he and his friends begin their plan of action, the effects spread, as good is of its nature diffusive and tends to spread, and the change became visibly manifest:

In less than three weeks these children who formerly had been timid, dirty, lazy, and quarrelsome, had become gentle, caring, clean, and very energetic. They had become elite soldiers in the “Angels of the Resistance” company. During the same period, the influence of the good spirit, of the company had moved beyond the walls of the presbytery to reach right to the school and even to the little Crusaders [i.e., a Eucharist-focused lay association] of the parish. (A 472–473)

During this period, the closest to violence that Văn comes is putting out his hand to grab the end of the cane being used by a catechist to beat him, after he has been hit by blows and then placed himself between the teacher inflicting the blows and some younger students (A 488–489). Despite his battered physical condition, which was severe, he did not report this to the parish priest, and exhorted his younger companions to not make much of this. Even so, by the end of the afternoon, the entire village of Hữu Bằng knew of the affair (A 490, 492). This spread further and further, with some people threatening to beat up the perpetrator of such a crime, so Văn made the request that no one lay a hand on the old catechist (A 493–494). Exhausted, upon finding the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, he cried out, “O Mother, this is my victory. Suffering is my victory…” (A 491) In sum, even though they were two distinct graces, the grace of resilience manifested in the grace of resistance. They were distinct but not unrelated. It doesn’t seem possible for Văn to have lived the second without the first.

A further aspect to stop and ponder about the second grace, that of resistance, is that it was not individual but communal. Văn asks: “Is there a greater happiness in this world than the unity of hearts?” (A 480; cf. Ps 133:2) When he has to leave for a time with the (now largely reformed) parish priest, in order to be free from retaliation of the catechist in the priest’s absence, he cautions his fellows Angels of the Resistance to keep a low profile but above all to remain united in their mutual support (A 495).

He knew that time was on his side. He has rather the same kind of intuition as Pope Francis, telling us that time is greater than space (Lumen Fidei 57; Evangelii Gaudium 222–225). In Văn’s words: “I realized, on reflection, that the tactic of an immediate riposte was never very profitable” (A 500). He gains more by waiting it out. It’s the logic of resistance, rather than rebellion.

This logic he applied even in his absence. He reflected on the fact that, despite their entirely nonviolent and largely non-confrontational resistance, his young companions were wounded interiorly and exteriorly. At the same time, the perpetrators felt themselves in a deadlock, their hearts unchanged. Things had gotten better. But more needed to be done.

Văn came up with something new. Of course, he himself only thought outside the box as he was temporarily away from the box itself, on a mission outside Hữu Bằng with the parish priest. With an appropriate distance between him and the problem, he found a potentially profitable new path. It involved a quieter, even less confrontational dismantling of the problematic aspects of the situation. As he implemented them, some of the necessary steps in his new tactic made Văn uncomfortable. Among these, we can particularly note his newfound cushiness with the people who had beaten him, but he endured it to get to the heart of the problem and attack it at its root, rather than remain aloof and with the tension outside him, sitting there, rather than inside him and working at the solution from within. Even what our author describes as “the frontal attack” was “done as gently as words of friendship whispered into the ear” (A 507).

A parallel might here be drawn to an incident in the Conversations. Marcel has read a book in which the translator put the pronoun tao into the mouth of the Lord. Vietnamese has a different use of pronouns for not just different persons of speech, but also for their relationship and hierarchy. Marcel finds tao too haughty for Jesus to use. On his own initiative, he wrote through the word in the community’s book (Conv. 584)![4] This could be taken as analogous to an act of rebellion. Yet Jesus has to teach him the analogue of the grace of resilience (because his rebellion hasn’t been transfigured as resistance):

If everything were in keeping with your wishes, what would you look for to produce roses of love? So, the word tao, far from being harmful, is also useful for you. Do not get angry any more. That is my business and not yours; there is no need to get angry. (Conv. 587)

Marcel needs to “produce roses of love,” that is, change sadness into joy. He isn’t being asked to fix the book. He isn’t being called to take a stand publicly. You can’t alter someone else’s conscience by force. Marcel’s task for the moment is to bear it, really know the suffering, but convert it into happiness for the sake of the Cross. In this situation, too, there is evidence of two distinct graces. The impulse to effect external change comes early to Marcel. He needs to learn the other grace again. It is the same order as with resistance and resilience in the abuse crisis he faced.

We can likewise find something similar happen during his time with the Redemptorists at Saigon, the community where he had an abusive confessor and superior. This was a period of extreme inner turmoil (A 878–881), but Marcel’s response to the abuse was emphatically not rebellion. He may have had interior difficulties, but he never rebelled like in the earlier phase of his life before the grace of Christmas 1940 and the grace of October 1941. Rather, his solution was to stubbornly stick to the agreed-upon Rule and Constitutions. It forced his abusers’ hands. Father Antonio Boucher summarizes the time in Saigon as follows:

The Brother spent two years there, always diligent in the exercise of the rule, always available to his superiors and ready to be of service on every occasion. He knew how to please God and his confreres whom he edified by his conduct. He made visible progress in love of God and neighbour. (SH 36)[5]

Obviously, this is whitewashing what the confessor and the superior did to him, as well as minimizing the spiritual and psychological death throes that we can find in the Autobiography and Marcel’s correspondence from the period.[6] Yet if Father Boucher’s version has any grain of truth, it’s that Marcel was resistant, and he was successful. The same general grace is at work—indignation at abuse, commitment to promises, resilience, resistance. What was established at Hữu Bằng matures and bears fruit. He moves rebellion further along the way to resistance. He makes “visible progress in love of God and neighbour.” He doesn’t capitulate to detrimental forces either without or within.

Assessment

I think that we can understand a bit of the universal Christian teaching that lies behind what Văn recounts of his lived experience. First of all, it is plain that Marcel believes that he has a moral right to stand up for himself. Humility and meekness don’t require him to become a punching bag. Elsewhere, he mentions “people incapable of guarding their rights” (OWV 805), which evidently implies that there are rights which it is, well, right to defend. Second of all, he teaches something intrinsically psychological, not just moral. There are not just moral rights but psychological needs.

In the external forum, Văn realizes a change in his activity. He starts rebellious against evil and pain. He has real, justifiable indignation, hurt, suffering, turmoil, trauma, moral injury. There are two distinct periods, and in fact Văn is still initially partly unconverted to his new paradigm even once he enters his second phase. There is an ongoing process of conversion. He must continually take what I have called rebellion and transform it into what he himself, in naming the “Angels” company, called resistance. Schematically, there’s this movement:

Yet it is not the only movement at work. In fact, it’s not the most foundational movement in Văn’s experiential theology of abuse. If we try to isolate the external action of Văn on his abusive surroundings, we will fail. As a reading of the texts demonstrates, Văn continually deepens his conversion to resistance by deepening his conversion to the grace of transforming suffering into joy. The grace of October 1941 chronologically follows the grace of Christmas 1940, and his reflection on the exigencies of the first grace leads him to deeper and deeper forms of time-based resolutions of, rather than space-based, instantaneous reactions to, the abusive situations in which he is immersed. So, the earlier grace looks like this:

And these two schematics should not be left independent. I combine them like this:

Or maybe I can simplify it as follows, knowing that the grace of changing suffering into joy just is psycho-spiritual resilience:

You can imagine it however you want. But I think of it—because I am a chemical engineer by training—like a catalyst. The process of changing sadness into happiness is a catalyst in the process of changing rebellion into resistance. You can’t have the second without the first, or at least, if you try to, it will take eons longer to get things going. Yet I treat a process itself as a catalyst, not the “joy” or the “suffering,” because I think Marcel thinks about time and processes. He doesn’t think that “joy” as a thing or “suffering” as a thing is going to affect any change in his behaviour. Only grace and his behaviour itself will positively affect his behaviour. There may be a better way to sketch this than what I’ve come up with. But whatever that way is, it needs to show that the first grace continually speeds up and deepens the second. And it needs to show that process affects process. There’s no solid, stable, static thing that determines process, at least in Marcel’s thinking.

That the two processes are connected should come as no surprise. As mentioned in Part 2, resilience is a psycho-spiritual face of something in the moral realm: the cardinal virtue of courage. But of course, the action that Marcel takes to enact resistance, too, depends on courage. In fact, for someone as naturally timid and weak as him (A 4, 9–10; Conv. 441, 523), these kinds of actions must have taken extreme psychological force. Either that force is rebellious and ultimately unintegrated, or it is properly virtuous and integrated into a genuinely spiritual life. No matter what, though, the force, the energy, the propulsion must have been needed in abundance. This, again, is good material for reflection regarding the heroic status of the virtues of Văn. He demonstrates exceptional courage, which cannot be explained naturally, and he reflects on this in a spiritual, theological way, which again cannot be done without considerable grace. At any rate, one of the main virtues required for resistance is courage, and this connects it to resilience, which is a psychological counterpart of courage under circumstances of shock, pressure, or deformation. It is no surprise that Văn’s two processes are related.

In all this, the grace of changing suffering into joy is obviously the most important. It comes first in time. It affects the very processing of the second grace. It is indispensable. Yet it is not everything. The internal forum is greater than the external forum, but the external forum exists. It matters. It especially matters to those whose external forum is abusive and destructive. As Pope Francis has taught with magisterial authority, this external forum necessitates of us defense of our own rights:

We are called to love everyone, without exception; at the same time, loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think that what he does is acceptable. On the contrary, true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others. Forgiveness does not entail allowing oppressors to keep trampling on their own dignity and that of others, or letting criminals continue their wrongdoing. Those who suffer injustice have to defend strenuously their own rights and those of their family, precisely because they must preserve the dignity they have received as a loving gift from God. (Fratelli Tutti 241)

Accordingly, we cannot expect there to be no response to long-term systems of injustice:

When one part of society exploits all that the world has to offer, acting as if the poor did not exist, there will eventually be consequences. Sooner or later, ignoring the existence and rights of others will erupt in some form of violence, often when least expected. (FT 219)

Replace “poor” with “abuse victims” and the “one part of society” with basically everyone and everything else. There will be some kind of violence if we don’t do something. It’s inevitable. You may not like it, but it’s inevitable. That’s reality. Văn’s story teaches us exactly that. Recall the urine bombs—sadly directed in part at some women who were themselves victims of spiritual abuse. Recall the shocking suggestion that homicide may have once been a possibility. These facts are recorded in Văn’s story.

The way to overcome such a situation on the side of the spiritually, psychologically, physically, and socially oppressed is to transform rebellion into resistance, using in part the process of transforming suffering into joy. Whenever that doesn’t happen and to whatever degree it escapes human beings—and it escapes Văn from time to time, too, because the second transformation of rebellion into resistance is itself a process, a continual conversion, always incomplete and dependent upon more and more of the first transformation of sadness into joy—violence, in forms physical, social, or psychological, is inevitable. It’s necessary. There is an exigency to address the harm done. It’s a psychological need.

Of course, the need to find meaning and meaningful attachment is a real psychological need, too. And Văn’s answer to that need is to change suffering into joy with Jesus. But the existence of this need does not eliminate the existence of the other.

This, I think, is a highly profound experiential theology of not just abuse, but the abuse crisis. There are two processes here. Each is a grace. One depends on the other. The process of changing suffering into joy is, as Văn understands it, a necessary response to an exigency in the internal forum in the wake of shock, pressure, or deformation. Yet there is another exigency in the external forum, and this is met with either rebellion or resistance. There seems to be only one complete, holistic way to heal in both dimensions, and Văn has found it. He offers this to survivors. But for those on the outside, Văn’s message also is that, to whatever degree the process of changing suffering into joy remains unachieved, as processes tend to be this side of paradise, then so too must the process of changing rebellion into resistance remain unachieved, and that since one or the other of rebellion and resistance is an exigency of human nature, then we are going to get an inevitable degree of rebellion when grave systems of injustice go unchecked. Moreover, if you don’t get rebellion, you’ll get resistance, and if you push back enough against that, you of course risk pushing things into the state of rebellion that you dislike even more.

If this doesn’t challenge you, but at the same time tell you what you already knew in some vague way, then I suggest rereading and rethinking. Not only rethink what Văn teaches. But ponder again the shocking reality of where this theology came from and how long ago it was written, because this is something written in the early 1950s by someone with no more than an elementary-school education, in a mission country oppressed by colonialism and torn by war, about his experience of abuse in the ’30s and ’40s. Văn is the little doctor of the abuse crisis. He already had so much of it figured out, from his experience and the graces he received. His theology is profound, and his breaking down of things into two distinct processes tells the evangelical truth with clarity and simplicity. If you disagree, then we disagree. But for my part, I continue to say: Santo subito, dottere subito!

Photos in header: Marcel Văn at 12 years of age, parish church of Hữu Bằng

[1] A = Marcel Van, Autobiography, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 1; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2019).

[2] Marie-Michel, L’amour ne peut mourir. Vie de Marcel Van (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 63. Note, however, that the author of these words is himself a known abuser. Marie-Michel Hostalier has recently been laicized by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (cf. this communiqué of the Diocese of Valence) because of sexual abuse against adults (cf. “Le Père Marie-Michel Hostalier renvoyé de l’état clérical,” cath.ch, 16 Sep 2021). That the only relevant quote I have identified about creating states of rebellion comes from Hostalier’s pen says a deplorable amount about the state of affairs of the literature on Marcel Văn.

[3] OW = Marcel Van, Other Writings, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 4; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018). Additional system for abbreviations explained on page 14, e.g., OWN = notebooks; OWV = various writings.

[4] Conv. = Marcel Van, Conversations, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 2; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2017).

[5] SH = Father Antonio Boucher, Short History of Van (Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2017). References to section number, not page number.

[6] Marcel Van, Correspondence, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 3; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018), 317–443.