The FABC Vision of Dialogue as an Appropriate Approach for the Catholic Church in Vietnam in Its Mission of Evangelization Today

This article presents dialogue as the FABC's characteristic approach to evangelization and examines its relevance for the Catholic Church in Vietnam, a minority Church shaped by a fraught history with the Communist government since 1945. After surveying the theology of dialogue in Vatican II, FABC documents, and Vietnamese episcopal statements, the author applies the FABC's "triple dialogue," with the poor, other religions, and cultures, to the Vietnamese context, and proposes adding "dialogue with the government" as a fourth, distinctively Vietnamese dimension needed to advance reconciliation, religious freedom, and the local Church's evangelizing mission.