PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Concurrent Session A1 / Bauer South, Room 25 / Friday.2009.Aug.7 / 9:45 AM

Trangdai Glassey-Tranguyen, University of California, San Diego:  vietamproj@gmail.com

Catholicism has taken different shapes and directions in the Vietnamese Diasporas, particularly owing to conditions in the site of resettlement, the level of Vietnamese immigrant concentration, and the faith life in the local society. But why the U.S. and Sweden, one allegedly religious-based and theother non-religious? By bringing together the two sites that are ostensibly opposing, I show that the faith formation that Catholic Vietnamese experienced at home plays a key role in how they suture and further their faith practicesin the diasporas.

In particular, I look at how the liturgy and prayers are both continued and renewed in these two sites. One instance is the revision in the congregation’s responses during mass, which is implemented in Little Saigon but not in Stockholm. While several reasons contribute to this gap, one main reason stems from the fact that in Stockholm, the Vietnamese Catholics only get to celebrate mass in Vietnamese once a month, hence making it impossible and ineffective to change the liturgical texts. Yet, because of the very conditions in which Vietnamese Catholics in Stockholm practice their faith, they are able to maintain certain practices, such as certain traditional prayers, and the atmosphere in which masses have been celebrated in Vietnam.

The question of center and periphery is important here, especially because Stockholm is deemed too far out in the Vietnamese diasporic terrain while Little Saigon rightfully assumes the role of its Mecca. Still, I argue that because the Vietnamese Catholicism in Little Saigon has been influenced by American way of faith, it takes on a very distinct culture. Such is not true in Vietnamese Stockholm, as well as in other parts of Europe. If the Vietnamese language is the connecting thread in the diasporas (that enables me to cross several language and geopolitical borders to conduct research across Vietnamese Europe and elsewhere), Catholic formation in 20^th-century Vietnam is then the connecting tissue of Vietnamese diasporic Catholicism. With this premise and from the vantage point of Little Saigon, Vietnamese Stockholm has a very different role in the faith aurality than the role it has in the socio-cultural arena.