Saint Vincent Phạm Văn Dương

Vincent Phạm Văn Dương was born in 1821 in Kẻ Mèn, Thái Bình province. He married and had three children. Like most people in the area, he farmed rice to support his family. Besides that, he was given the job of collecting taxes in the village.

Collecting taxes was not easy. He had to go from house to house, meet each person, record each payment. He had to be honest so that the people trusted him, and accurate so that the mandarins found no fault. A man who could do that job must have been tactful and well respected in the village.

Every day Dương lived between two worlds: on one side the fields, his family, the church of Kẻ Mèn; on the other the tax ledgers, the mandarins’ orders, his duty to the authorities. For many years the two worlds lived peacefully together.

In August 1861, Emperor Tự Đức issued the edict to disperse the Catholics. At the end of September that year, Dương was arrested with many other faithful and taken to the village of Mỹ Nhuệ.

The mandarin knew he worked for the village. They used that very fact to pressure him: a man who collects taxes for the state should set an example all the more by obeying the king. Step over the cross.

Dương did not deny his duty. He answered clearly and calmly:

“I always obey the orders of the king and the mandarins in what is right, but as for forcing me to abandon the worship of my God, I cannot obey the king and deny my God.”

Those are not the words of a rebel. They are the words of a decent citizen who respected the law of the land, but also knew where the law of the land must stop. He did not oppose the king. He simply could not betray God.

He was imprisoned, beaten and tortured for nine months at Mỹ Nhuệ. At home, his wife and three children had to manage the fields on their own, not knowing when their father would come back. The children grew up without their father beside them.

Many times they pressed him to step over the cross. Many times he refused.

On June 6, 1862, Vincent Dương was burned alive. On that same day, other sons of the Kẻ Mèn area, Peter Đinh Văn Dũng and Peter Đinh Văn Thuần, were also burned.

The faithful buried his body near the place of his martyrdom. Later, his remains were reburied at the church of Saint Vincent in Kẻ Mèn, the church that bears the name of his own patron saint.

He was beatified on April 29, 1951, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is June 6.

Today, Vietnamese Catholics are still often urged to live as “good citizens and good believers”. Vincent Dương lived that more than a hundred and fifty years ago. He fulfilled his duties to his village and his country. He accounted honestly for every coin of tax. But when they demanded that he place his loyalty to the king above God, he knew how to say “no” courteously and firmly.

His three children perhaps did not inherit much land. But they inherited a sentence that has lost none of its worth.