REQUIEM: AN INDIGENOUS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CATHOLIC LITURGY IN VIETNAM (A case study of Lộc Hòa parish, Tây Hòa commune, Trảng Bom district, Đồng Nai province)

Abstract

This text uses the view of the historical Particularism to explain the indigenous characteristic of Vietnam Catholicism through the ancestral worship. The western Catholic culture has no custom of ancestral worship like the Vietnamese culture; however, it has the traditional liturgy as the Requiem Mass offered for the repose of the souls of the dead on the 2nd of November. In Vietnam, this rite is not only a celebration for the repose of the dead, but it also absorbs the native mentality of the soul, the afterlife, the relationship between the living people and the dead through the ancestral worship custom of the Vietnamese. This indigenization process has turned a Catholic liturgy into a rite characterized by the Vietnamese culture. It is one of the important rites of the Vietnamese Catholics; this is not only manifested through the amount of believers who have attended this Mass, but it is also realized through the awareness, thoughts of the believers towards the ancestral worship