A Melding of Faith and Culture

At 65, retiree Joseph Toan Tran is navigating the last, lonely phase of his life. His wife is sick, infirm with heart problems and unable to leave the house. The only thing that soothes Tran are the rituals of his faith, bulwarks that he finds among the dark pews and the stained glass of the largest Vietnamese and Catholic center in the country.

Every week, he finishes his household chores and heads over to Santa Ana to find solace in the sanctuary of the Vietnamese Catholic Center, where he dips his hands in cool holy water, crosses himself and sits to pray.

For Tran, the distinctive building with its red-tiled roof melds his culture with his faith. It’s his focus of comfort and community.

Like Tran, hundreds of transplanted Vietnamese in Orange County consider the center to be a home away from home. They refine their English-speaking skills there, go to family parties and reunions, celebrate holidays and attend worship services.

“It’s good to see friends there and worship God with them,” Tran said. “We share something very special together.”

Raised in Saigon, Tran has been nurtured in the rituals of Catholicism since he received his first rosary beads as an infant. Now, they are the spine of his lifelong faith.

When he moved to Orange County 10 years ago to rejoin his relatives, including his mother, he immediately hooked back up with the Catholic community.

His English was sketchy, he said, and the center allowed him to articulate his spirituality in his native tongue--something he desperately needed after the stress of moving thousands of miles to Southern California.

“It’s easier to express your feelings about God in Vietnamese,” he said. “I don’t think my English vocabulary is good enough to express my faith in God.”

As an immigrant, he juggled myriad problems in his new country. But the center eases his worry of mastering English. Organizers planned an extensive library in the center, a repository of history, culture, art and political books about Vietnam--all in Vietnamese.

Worship services at the center also are officiated in Vietnamese, although a slew of English-speaking classes are taught weekly by volunteers from within the community.

It was the Vietnamese community, more than 200,000 strong in Orange County, that pulled together the $5 million it took to build the dramatic four-tiered building with its upturned corners carved into fierce dragons.

The center--which took a decade to build--blends ancient Chinese temples and Catholic missions and is the largest structure in North America built in the style of traditional Vietnamese architecture.

“The center is a tremendous tribute to an immigrant community that they were able to accomplish that,” said Msgr. Lawrence J. Baird, spokesman for the diocese. “It demonstrates the significant presence that they now have in Orange County.”

Diocese officials said that about 10% of Catholics attending Mass in Orange County are Vietnamese--a number that had steadily increased for the last decade.

The diocese has responded by increasing the number of Vietnamese-speaking priests; there are now 24 of them among the 158 diocesan priests.

Although there are individual parishes in the county that serve the Vietnamese community, the center is their spiritual clearinghouse. Sitting on four acres right off Harbor Boulevard, it’s a testament to the burgeoning Vietnamese population and its commitment to faith.

“The center is an icon,” Baird said. “It’s a center of spiritual gravity for the Vietnamese community in this country.”

The chapel, called the Shrine for Martyrs, is dedicated to the Vietnamese Catholics who were canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988. Laid with red carpet, the chapel walls are lined with bright stained-glass windows depicting disciples and saints.

Beside a bubbling waterfall, terraced rows of flowers and smooth stones, the courtyard is anchored by a white stone statue of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. But this Pieta is special to the community because mother and child were carved with Asian faces.

It’s the familiarity of faith, culture and language that draws so many people to the center, said Quy Hoang, the center’s secretary.

“Sometimes, we would like to imagine the Christ in a Vietnamese body,” said Hoang, who recently published a book about speaking in tongues. “It’s a blessing.”

For Tran, that blessing is manifested in the dark wooden pews and the love of his community, where he can give his worries over to God and pray for his sick wife and the health of his children.

“I trust in God. I put my faith in him,” he said. “Believing in God is the best thing for me in the world.”