Servant of God Marcel Văn (1928–1959) is a key reference point in a spirituality for abuse victims, advocates, and an ecclesial community in an abuse crisis. I’ve written on this often. At the same time, the little Vietnamese brother knew the horrors of domestic abuse. So, both to expound on a Christian attitude to abuse in this environment and to understand Marcel’s attitude and actions in one domain of abuse (in the household) so as to better understand them in another (in the household of God), I offer this little post at this time.

Even if you know the main contours of Văn’s life, much of this material may be new to you. These stories aren’t found in his autobiography. To truly appreciate the great lengths that Marcel will go to to fight abuse, we have to read his notebooks and his letters—and some of his spiritual director’s as well.

In sum, though, we can say that when he is confronted with situations of domestic abuse, Marcel tries to help out the victims, enacts daring plans to remove them from situations of harm, asserts the rights of victims not to reconcile until it is safe, and acts to prevent the abuse from (ever) happening (again).

Escape from Ngăm Giáo to Hanoi

In 1948, Marcel was a professed religious of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer and assigned to the monastery in Hanoi. During the last days of April and the first days of May, he took a trip to his hometown of Ngăm Giáo, on the roads between Hanoi and Hạ Long Bay. The purpose of the trip was to retrieve his younger sister Tế and bring her back to the capital, where she could get appropriate schooling. There’s a long account of this trip in Marcel’s notebooks (OWV 880–923).[1] What matters for present purposes, though, is the brother’s discovery. His eyes were opened to how the village and his family in particular had progressed—or regressed—in the years since he’d left for the Redemptorists.

For a decade already, Văn’s immediate family had been poor (A 163–167).[2] When his older brother Liệt became blind, Văn’s father took the news badly. He took to gambling, smoking, and drinking. His relationship with these vices was on and off. But by April 1948, the situation had become dire. What used to be neglect and unfulfilled duties had escalated. Now things were in a situation of full-on domestic abuse. Marcel goes so far as to say that, had his mother “wished it, she would have had a thousand reasons for a legal separation” (To his father, Jun 1948).[3] To be very specific and to give but one example that highlights an underlying problem and pattern, we can note that, when drunk, his father threatened to kill his mother (To Fr. Boucher, 1 Jun 1948). And not just that. On previous occasions, his father hurt Liệt (To his father, 6 Oct 1946) and beat his mother (A 164–165; To his father, 12 Apr 1948). It is not known if he also inflicted violent physical harm on Marcel’s younger brother Lục, who had an intellectual disability. But I’m not betting on no.

Marcel figured out how bad it all was. Perhaps based on his experience with abuse in clerical institutions or because of the psychological wounds inflicted on him when his parents wouldn’t believe how bad the living situation at the presbytery had been, he decided that things needed to change. He staged what we might today call an intervention. But it was a pretty dramatic one.

First, though, Marcel discussed everything with his confessor, spiritual confidant, and friend, Fr. Antonio Boucher. Together they were able to hatch a plan.

Marcel went again to Ngăm Giáo at the end of May. This time his trip’s purpose was to secretly prepare his mother, two brothers, and remaining sister for departure to Hanoi. Once the preparations were complete and while Marcel’s father was still in the dark, Fr. Boucher and another Redemptorist brother drove a car to pick them up (To Fr. Boucher, 1 Jun 1948). This was no small thing. The area was on the verge of war. Văn’s account of his first journey refers to the threat of Việt Minh along the way (OWV 899–900, 919–921). Soon after, terrorism (To Father Boucher, 22 Jan 1949) and landmines (To Tế, 31 Jul 1949) entered the picture. At any rate, while the danger was real, the journey was secure. The four family members were taken back to Hanoi and safely housed in the city. Marcel’s father was left alone in the home. This was the first thrust.

The second was an epistolary stab. Marcel took up “harsh words” with his father, not the least including a threat to denounce his own father—and have nothing further to do with him nor to be known by his name—if no purpose of amendment could be reached (To his father, Jun 1948). Marcel’s intention was to say that he was utterly ashamed. This is strong enough language in any culture. In a Confucian one, it was devastating. The little Redemptorist didn’t leave things at that, though. He held out hope for a new path. To facilitate conversion, he set up a retreat for his father to reflect on his life (To his father, 12 Apr 1948; To his father, Jun 1948) and proposed to the parish priest a formula of repentance that his father must accept (To Fr. Nguyễn Đức, 6 Sep 1948). His father wasn’t rejected.

In the meantime, however, until sufficient progress could be made, Marcel and Fr. Boucher made certain that the entire family was out of the patriarch’s reach. They even confiscated a significant fraction of the assets. There was no dependence on the aggressor and oppressor. In short, Marcel’s mother, brothers, and sister were made both physically safe and financially secure.

Marcel did everything that he could to attain his goal, and it succeeded. After much hesitation, his father made a retreat with the Redemptorists, and all became reconciled only after complete reassurance that there had been genuine repentance and that eyes were in place to ensure that things remained safe; Marcel himself accompanied the family home (To Fr. Nguyễn Đức, Oct 1948; To Father Nguyễn Đức, 19 Nov 1948). His father’s conversion was slow but long-lasting (From Fr. Boucher, 10 May 1950; From Fr. Boucher, 21 Sep 1950).[4] The plan, in the main, worked. Action for victims and the prevention of future abuse were achieved.

Another family story

Marcel also worked for the prevention of abuse in the story of his Uncle Thảo. It seems that this man was responsible for “a very serious fault that he would have committed with a niece, that is to say the daughter of his sister.” Aware of what had happened to one of his cousins, Marcel became concerned for his own sister, for the uncle had recently gone to Đà Lạt—which is where Tế, who was in her late teens, was (To Fr. Boucher, 15 Jul 1951).

Văn wrote to Tế immediately, informing her of the “truly depraved… act which shames all the relatives” and suggesting that they “break off all relations with him” at least until the truth of the matter has been clarified (To Tế, 15 Jul 1951). The same day, he contacted Fr. Boucher, who was also at Đà Lạt at that time; in his letter, he is circumspect about his uncle’s reputation, but he “ask[s] God to make the truth clear so that we may know what to think of it” (To Fr. Boucher, 15 Jul 1951). In turn, Fr. Boucher monitored the situation and assured Marcel that Tế had succeeded in cutting this uncle out of her life, and he seems to have believed the veracity of the reports that Marcel had heard, for he regarded Thảo as a “scoundrel” (From Fr. Boucher, 29 Jul 1951).

Marcel, however, was not too assured. This was largely because he heard nothing; the mail was slow. So, he sent off another letter asking after Tế (To Tế, 29 Jul 1951). Fortunately, Tế was, it turns out, quite safe. But Marcel, from his monastery in Saigon, was not about to allow domestic abuse to happen if he could help it. He was someone fine-tuned to its evil and prepared to jump into the fray for the benefit first of the victims and also so as to honour and restore the dignity of the perpetrator.

Ora pro nobis

While yet in this life, Marcel saw himself as a soul offered for others. However much he longed to die and be with the Lord, he could also say: “I do not wish for this end to come before I have drunk just to the dregs of the chalice of bitterness” (To Fr. Boucher, 26 Aug 1951). In his last free months, he said that it was still “necessary for me to pass through darkness, so that the rays of divine love may penetrate to the depths of the souls of numerous sinners plunged in the horror of the dark night” (To Fr. Boucher, 25 Dec 1954). The limit had not been reached. It was likely beyond what most of us can imagine.

Under arrest for four years, in one Communist prison and re-education camp after another, Marcel gained an enormous opportunity to lay up treasures in heaven. In one camp, he spent five months in a dark, isolated cell; in another, eighteen months (To Tế, 17 Nov 1955; cf. SH 41).[5] He died of painful disease. He suffered immensely.

This suffering was not an empty, worthless reality. Marcel knew how to suffer and convert it into love in the heart of the Church. He believed that “each soul consecrated to [God]” has been “confided a special mission which begins first in this world, to then continue in heaven” (OWN2.29). In the prayer-notes known as his Conversations, this gets reiterated for Marcel’s own case. It is said that he will have a similar heavenly mission to St. Thérèse, supporting souls on earth to know and spread God’s love (Conv. 251–252-1, 253).[6] He will, like her, bring a shower of roses to the earth from heaven (Conv. 108).

This has many applications. Many of them are quasi-intercessory. In a notebook, for example, Marcel wrote, “My death will be life for a great number of souls” (OWN2.54), explicitly thinking then of the national life of Vietnam. In correspondence, he further singles out some people to become beneficiaries of his attentions from heaven: his father (To his father, 6 Oct 1946),[7] particular friends (To Sáu, 25 May 1947; cf. From Fr. Boucher, 8 Jun 1950), the Redemptorist novices (To Fr. Boucher, 22 Aug 1950), cub scouts (To Fr. Dreyer-Dufer, 8 Aug 1946), one of his abusers (To Fr. Maillet, 8 Aug 1946),[8] his spiritual director (To Fr. Boucher, 10 Dec 1950; To Fr. Boucher, 7 Sep 1952; OWV 780).

This being the case, one would hardly expect little Văn to hold back for the abuse victims he has shown to be dear to him. Indeed, he says as much. Writing to those who have also endured the same abusive presbytery as him, he assures them: “Your Marcel will help you still more when he will be in heaven” (To his young friends at Hữu Bằng, 14 Jul 1946). If them—then surely others who share in their condition, those who are victims of abuse along structures of power and authority in the Church, those who are like those in his own family whom Marcel saved from situations of domestic danger and their after-effects while he was yet in this life. He always was the little saint who could.

[1] OW = Marcel Van, Other Writings, trans. Jack Keogan, Complete Works 4 (Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018).

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

[3] To = Marcel Van, Correspondence, trans. Jack Keogan, Complete Works 3 (Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018).

[4] From = Dominique Joly, Je cherche une Source d’eau vive. Essai sur l’accompaniment spirituel du frère Marcel Van par le Père Antonio Boucher, à travers leur correspondance. Lettres inédites du Père Antonio Boucher (Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2020).

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

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

[7] In fact, however, Văn died the year after his father.

[8] Likewise, though, Fr. Maillet died before Marcel (cf. From Fr. Boucher, 21 Sep 1950).