Ngô ?ình Th?c

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Pierre Martin Ngô ?ình Th?c (Vietnamese pronunciation: [?o ?î? t?ùkp]) (6 October 1897 - 13 December 1984) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Hu?, Vietnam and a member of the Ngô family who ruled South Vietnam in the years leading up to the Vietnam War. He was the founder of Dalat University.

While Th?c was in Rome attending the second session of the Second Vatican Council, the 1963 South Vietnamese coup overthrew and assassinated his younger brother Ngo Dinh Diem, who was president of South Vietnam. Th?c was unable to return to Vietnam and lived the rest of his life exiled in Italy, France, and the United States. During his exile, he was involved with Traditionalist Catholic movements and consecrated a number of bishops without the Vatican's approval for the Palmarian and Sedevacantist movements. As a result, he was excommunicated by the Holy See and later reconciled with the Vatican a number of times.

Video Ngô ?ình Th?c

Family

Ngô ?ình Th?c was born in Hu? to an affluent Roman Catholic family as the second of six sons born to Ngô ?ình Kh?, a mandarin of the Nguy?n dynasty who served Emperor Thành Thái during the French occupation of Vietnam.

Th?c's elder brother, Khôi, served as a governor. Khôi was reportedly buried alive by the Vi?t Minh right after the August Revolution in August 1945 for having been a mandarin of the French-controlled Emperor B?o ??i's administration. Three other brothers, Di?m, Nhu and C?n, were all politically active. Di?m had been Interior Minister under B?o ??i in the 1930s for a brief period, and sought power in the late 1940s and 1950s under a Catholic anti-communist platform as various groups tried to establish their rule over Vietnam. Di?m led a coup, overthrowing the emperor and becoming president of South Vietnam in 1955. Di?m, Nhu and C?n were all later assassinated during the 1963 South Vietnamese coup.

Cardinal François Xavier Nguy?n V?n Thu?n (1928-2002) was Th?c's nephew.

Maps Ngô ?ình Th?c

Career in Vietnam

At age twelve, Th?c entered the minor seminary in An Ninh. He spent eight years there before going on to study philosophy at the major seminary in Hu?. Following his ordination as a priest on 20 December 1925, he taught at the Sorbonne. He was selected to study theology in Rome, Italy, and returned to Vietnam in 1927 after having been awarded three doctorates from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in philosophy, theology, and Canon law. He then became a professor at the College of Vietnamese Brothers in Hu?, a professor at the major seminary in Hu?, and Dean of the College of Providence. In 1938, he was chosen by Rome to direct the Apostolic Vicariate at V?nh Long. He was consecrated a bishop on 4 May 1938, being the third Vietnamese priest raised to the rank of bishop.

In 1950 Di?m and Th?c applied for permission to travel to Rome for the Holy Year celebrations at the Vatican but went instead to Japan to lobby Prince C??ng ?? to enlist support to seize power. They met Wesley Fishel, an American academic consultant for the U.S. government. Fishel was a proponent of the anti-colonial, anti-communist third force doctrine in Asia and was impressed by Di?m. He helped the brothers organise contacts and meetings in the United States to enlist support.

With the outbreak of the Korean War and McCarthyism in the early 1950s, Vietnamese anti-communists were a sought-after commodity in the United States. Di?m and Th?c were given a reception at the State Department with the Acting Secretary of State James Webb, where Th?c did much of the talking. Di?m also made links with Cardinal Francis Spellman, the most politically influential cleric of his time. Spellman had studied with Th?c in Rome in the 1930s and became one of Di?m's most powerful advocates. Di?m managed an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome with his brother's help. Spellman helped Di?m to garner support among right-wing and Catholic circles. As French power in Vietnam declined, Di?m's support in America, which Th?c helped to nurture, made his stock rise. B?o ??i made Di?m the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam because he thought Di?m's connections would secure funding.

Di?m's rule

In October 1955, Di?m deposed B?o ??i in a fraudulent referendum organised by Nhu and declared himself President of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vietnam, which then concentrated power in the Ngô family, dedicated Roman Catholics in a Buddhist majority country. Power was enforced through secret police and the imprisonment and torture of political and religious opponents. The Ngôs' policies and conduct inflamed religious tensions. The government was biased towards Catholics in public service and military promotions, as well as the allocation of land, business favors and tax concessions.

Buddhist unrest and downfall of Di?m

In May 1963, in the central city of Hu?, where Th?c was archbishop, Buddhists were prohibited from displaying the Buddhist flag during Vesak celebrations commemorating the birth of Gautama Buddha, when the government cited a regulation prohibiting the display of non-government flags at Th?c's request. A few days earlier, Catholics were encouraged to fly Vatican flags to celebrate Th?c's 25th anniversary as bishop. Government funds were used to pay for Th?c's anniversary celebrations, and the residents of Hu?--a Buddhist stronghold--were also forced to contribute. These perceived double standards led to a Buddhist protest against the government, which was ended when nine civilians were shot dead or run over when the military attacked. Despite footage showing otherwise, the Ngôs blamed the Vi?t C?ng for the deaths, and protests for equality broke out across the country. Th?c called for his brothers to forcefully suppress the protesters. Later, the Ngôs' forces attacked and vandalised Buddhist pagodas across the country in an attempt to crush the burgeoning movement. It is estimated that up to 400 people were killed or disappeared.

Di?m was overthrown and assassinated together with Nhu on 2 November 1963. Ngô ?ình C?n was sentenced to death and executed in 1964. Of the six brothers, only Th?c and Luy?n survived the political upheavals in Vietnam. Luy?n was serving as ambassador in London, and Th?c had been summoned to Rome for the Second Vatican Council. After the Council (1962-65), for political reasons and, later on, to evade punishment by the post-Di?m government, Archbishop Th?c was not allowed to return to his duties at home and thus began his life in exile, initially in Rome.

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Exile

Th?c moved to Toulon, France, where he was assigned a confessional in the cathedral until about 1981. He at least once concelebrated the Mass of Paul VI (the new rite of Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969) in the vernacular. One author claims Th?c served at the Mass of Paul VI as an acolyte several times.

Convinced of a crisis devastating the Roman Catholic Church and coming under the increasing influence of sedevacantist Catholics, Th?c consecrated several bishops without a mandate from the Holy See. In December 1975 he went to Palmar de Troya, where he ordained Clemente Domínguez y Gómez--who claimed to have witnessed an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary--and others, and the following month he consecrated Dominguez and four followers as bishops. In May 1981 Th?c consecrated a French priest, Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers, as bishop. Des Lauriers was a Dominican, an expert on the dogma of the Assumption and advisor to Pope Pius XII, and former professor at the Pontifical Lateran University. In October 1981, he consecrated two Mexican priests and former seminary professors, Moisés Carmona (of Acapulco) and Adolfo Zamora (of Mexico City). Both of these priests were convinced that the Papal See of Rome was vacant and the successors of Pope Pius XII were heretical usurpers of papal office and power. In February 1982, in Munich's Sankt Michael church, Th?c issued a declaration that the Holy See in Rome was vacant, intimating that he desired a restoration of the hierarchy to end the vacancy. However, his newly consecrated bishops became a fragmented group. Many limited themselves essentially to sacramental ministry and only consecrated a few other bishops.

Th?c may have performed other consecrations besides the five bishops at Palmar de Troya and the three sedevacantists in 1981. He is said to have consecrated two priests, Luigi Boni and Jean Gerard Roux, in Loano in Italy on 18 April 1982, but a Dr. Heller, of Una Voce in Munich, has said that Th?c was with him in Munich on that date. The bishops consecrated by Th?c proceeded to consecrate other bishops for various Catholic splinter groups, many of them sedevacantists. Th?c departed for the United States at the invitation of Bishop Louis Vezelis, a Franciscan former missionary priest who had agreed to receive Episcopal Consecration by the Th?c line Bishop George J. Musey, assisted by co-consecrators, Bishops Carmona, Zamora and Martínez, in order to provide bishops for an "imperfect council" which was to take place later in Mexico in order to elect a legitimate Pope from among themselves.

Th?c died at the monastery of the Vietnamese American religious Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix on 13 December 1984, at Carthage, Missouri, aged 87.

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See also

• Roman Catholicism in Vietnam

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References

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Further reading

• Borthwick, Mark (1998). Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3471-3. 
• Buttinger, Joseph (1967). Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled. Praeger Publishers. 
• Fall, Bernard B. (1963). The Two Viet-Nams. Praeger Publishers. 
• Gettleman, Marvin E. (1966). Vietnam: History, Documents, and Opinions on a Major World Crisis. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. 
• Halberstam, David; Singal, Daniel J. (2008). The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-6007-4. 
• Hammer, Ellen J. (1987). A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963. New York City: E. P. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-24210-4. 
• Jacobs, Seth (2004). America's miracle man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, religion, race, and U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950-1957. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3440-2. 
• Jacobs, Seth (2006). Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950-1963. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-4447-8. 
• Jones, Howard (2003). Death of a Generation: how the assassinations of Diem and JFK prolonged the Vietnam War. New York City: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505286-2. 
• Karnow, Stanley (1997). Vietnam: A History. New York City: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-84218-4. 
• Langguth, A. J. (2000). Our Vietnam: the war, 1954-1975. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-81202-9. 
• Maclear, Michael (1981). Vietnam:The Ten Thousand Day War. New York City: Methuen Publishing. ISBN 0-423-00580-4. 
• Moyar, Mark (2006). Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. New York City: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-86911-0. 
• Olson, James S. (1996). Where the Domino Fell. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-08431-5. 
• Sheehan, Neil (1989). A Bright Shining Lie. New York City: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-72414-8. 
• Topmiller, Robert J. (2006). The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2260-0. 
• Tucker, Spencer C. (2000). Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social and Military History. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-57607-040-9. 
• Warner, Denis (1964). The Last Confucian: Vietnam, South-East Asia, and the West. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. 

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External links

• Roman Catholic Hierarchy: Archbishop Ngô ?ình Th?c
• Episcopal lineages derived from Archbishop Ngo Dhin Thuc
• In Memoriam: Archbishop Ngô ?ình Th?c at the Wayback Machine (archived March 5, 2008) by Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers, O.P.
• Sedevacantist Declaration of Archbishop Ngô ?ình Th?c
• PDF Document of Einsicht, 1982; includes photographic documentation on many of Archbishop Th?c's consecrations
• "The validity of the Th?c consecrations" by Fr. Anthony Cekada in Sacerdotium, Spring 1992.
• A critical analysis of the invalidity of Bishop Th?c's ordinations and consecrations
• Fr. Stepanich O.F.M. on the Th?c-line consecrations
• Thucbishops.com - An online resource including theological treatises on the sedevacantist consecrations of bishops by Archbishop Th?c.
• Thuc Admitted He Withheld his Sacramental Intention 10 Times

Source of article : Wikipedia