Churches: A Call to Suffering

In one of Saigon’s toughest slums, near the city’s docks and up a narrow alley past teeming soup stalls, Mr. and Mrs. Neil Brenden of Minneapolis operate a center for teaching sewing and other skills to teen-age girls, a day nursery for children of working mothers, a Boy Scout troop among urchins. The Brendens, both Lutherans, arrived in Saigon last year under the auspices of Viet Nam Christian Service, a relief agency jointly sponsored by Lutheran World Relief, Church World Service, and Mennonites. The couple symbolizes the largely unsung efforts by U.S. churches to respond—as they have done in all wars—to the human suffering that is the unwanted but inevitable result of the Viet Nam struggle.

In all, 26 volunteer agencies, most of them U.S.-and religious-based, are contributing actively to the relief of the Vietnamese, to the tune of millions a year. Largest of the religious agencies in scope of operation is Catholic Relief Services, a charity sponsored by the U.S. Roman Catholic hierarchy, which is funded through an annual collection taken up in every American parish and supplemented by a Thanksgiving Day clothing drive. Last year CRS dispatched cash and material gifts worth $11.5 million to South Viet Nam, where the agency supports such projects as 200 schools, 30 hospitals, 77 orphanages and ten old-folks homes. Operating independently of CRS is another Catholic organization, Caritas International, the Vatican’s worldwide relief agency, which since 1965 has sent to Viet Nam more than $3,000,000 worth of aid, from food to fishnets.

Bread & Leprosy. Principal agent for Protestant relief work is Viet Nam Christian Service. Launched in 1965, V.N.C.S. supports 73 foreign workers, ranging from doctors to home economists, will spend more than $500,000 this year to operate some 60 projects, including the supplying of 6,500 loaves of bread every day to supplement a Saigon school-lunch program. Some Protestant groups also support their own private assistance programs. The Seventh-day Adventist Welfare Service will spend $268,700 this year to operate, among other endeavors, a 38-bed hospital and a school of nursing. The conservative Worldwide Evangelization Crusade sponsors the Happy Haven Leprosarium in Danang.

Although undertaken in a spirit of Christian altruism, church-run relief services have not escaped criticism. Some American Catholic critics of the war were shocked to discover that CRS has for two years been helping distribute U.S. surplus food to families of South Viet Nam’s 700,000-member local militia, at the request of General William Westmoreland. Defending the arrangement, CRS officials pointed out that the low-paid militiamen are often away on duty and unable to provide sufficiently for their families. Because of the well-established Roman Catholic structure in Viet Nam, CRS is able to ensure that the food reaches the villages far more effectively than could Government agencies, such as AID.

No Politics. Religious Samaritans in Viet Nam are largely dependent upon U.S. military assistance to get food and medicine to those they hope to aid. Nonetheless, most of the church-sponsored volunteers seek to be studiously neutral in their attitude toward the war and its outcome. “We are social workers and Christians and, as such, do not get involved in political questions,” says Neil Brenden. “We’re here to do a job.” Adds Father Robert L. Charlebois of Gary, Ind., Viet Nam director of CRS: “We are here on the invitation of the government of Viet Nam to help needy people. We don’t care how their need has arisen as long as they are truly in need.”