The New Policy of the Vatican and the Changed Attitude of the Catholics

During the same period of time as political unrest was going on in South Vietnam, there was a great change in the Roman Catholic Church which helped the Catholics to adjust themselves to different conditions and situations more effectively. This was the result of the Second Vatican Council which was held in Rome at Vatican City from 1962 to 1965 (B.E. 2505-08). Among the decrees and declarations passed by the Council, the Declaration on (the Church’s Attitude toward) Non-Christiap Religions promulgated on Oct. 28, 1965 is worthy of special mention here. The Declaration accepts all non-Christian religions for whatever is good and just in them. It says that in the advanced religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism the Church rejects nothing that is true and holy1 and it reproves discrimination based on race, colour, social status, or religion. The Secretariat for Non-Christians was then founded for the essential purpose of promoting contact and dialogue between Christianity and other religions.

Since the Council, the attitude of the Christians towards Buddhism and the Buddhists has greatly changed. This is evident in Thailand where the policy of cooperation and assimilation has been adopted to replace hostility, aggressiveness, contempt and harsh verbal attacks on the Buddhist teachings. Catholic priests and nuns are instructed to adapt Christian life to the Thai environment and to adjust themselves to local culture, Today, it is natural to see a Christian priest paying respect to a Buddha-image or a Buddhist monk; Christian nuns attending a merit-making ceremony or listening to a sermon in a Buddhist monastery-hall; a bishop, in a layman’s suit, participating in a social work programme of Buddhist monks; or a Buddhist monk invited to teach a meditation lesson to Christian nuns in a convent, all unseen sights and impossibilities two decades ago.

The following passages from the Bulletin of the Secretariat for Non-Christians2 will make clearer the idea behind the change:

“Even in India, the native land of the Buddhist religion, Buddhism was killed by the renewed expansion of Hinduism.”

“In the countries upholding its faith, Buddhism has shaped the customs, the mentality and the culture of the people.”

“But for more than a thousand years Buddhism in the Asiatic countries has stagnated in a state of habits, and at times seemed like an old garment belonging to ages past to be thrown away as soon as the people developed the conscience of changed times.”

“In the early periods of the history of Buddhism, Buddhist missionary enterprises were zealous, extensive and efficacious, to the extent of winning almost the whole of Asia to the doctrine of Buddha. Then these activities ceased altogether. Now the Buddhists are thinking of picking up missionary activity again.”

“What will our Christian attitude be, faced as we are by the rebirth and expansion of Buddhism.”

“In the face of Buddhist expansion our attitude will be friendly, tending to co-existence and to collaboration. This attitude is also the fruit of the ecumenical spirit of the Second Vatican Council and of the institution of the Secretariat for the Non-Christian Religions.”

“It was a surprise for everybody when the Buddhist monks of Vietnam protested last
year in a sensational and cynical manner against the Catholic oppression.”

“We are always grumbling that the faithful of other religions in Asia refuse to
recognise us, putting us in the ranks of colonizers, oppressors and hated by the people. However, we too have many times disparaged Buddhist practices and beliefs as superstitions and outer darkness.”

“Our missionary activity is to make ourselves known by the followers of Buddhism. This activity today calls for a renewal of method in composing the catechism, in teaching it and in the means of social communication ...a good knowledge of the religion of Buddha is necessary.”

“The first collaboration can be that of arousing the religious spirit in the youth (of the country), resisting the influences of materialism and positivism.”

“The second collaboration we can have with the Buddhists is that in the field of social activities which aim at the building of one’s own nation and in the field of charity.”

“Among the populations with a backward economy there are very many social works in favour of the poor which may and must be undertaken by our missions and by the Buddhist monks. A collaboration in this field, exercised with prudence and patience, can produce good fruits.”

“But the most profitable collaboration will be the work which our experts will carry out with the texts and with the Buddhist books so as to absorb the good elements into the local Christian culture.”

“In the Buddhist countries, in order to make its own cultural garment, the Church can and must take on the good elements of the Buddhist tradition and transform them giving them a Christian meaning so as to adapt them to the life of the followers of Christ.”

“In the moral field many precepts of the religion of Buddha do ample justice also to Christians ...”

“In the ascetic field we have to make a great effort to learn from the Buddhist school the hopes, the inclinations and the ascetic psychology of the local peoples in order to construct Christian ascetics...”

“The practice of the Buddhist contemplative life has, through the centuries, fascinated many sages of China and Japan... Why could not this (Buddhist) exercise be inserted into our meditative and contemplative life with a fitting and prudent change?”

“The whole of Buddhism is based on the four truths: sorrow, the causes of sorrow, the destruction of sorrow and liberation from sorrow. Why could not the spreading of the Gospel of Christ be summed up also in these four truths? The true sorrow of Man is sin. Jesus came to liberate Man from sorrow-sin.”

“In this cultural collaboration, positive and constructive, the way to the foundation of the Catholic Church in the Buddhist countries is opened ... When the Gospel of Christ has penetrated the cultural life of the people, then the Church is founded in the midst of that people.”

“So, in the face of the Buddhist expansion, which is not an expansion of conquest but an internal renewal, the Catholic mission will seek a friendly co-existence and a constructive collaboration.”