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HIM Emperor Bao Dai of Vietnam
   Today, Vietnamese Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, face a similar situation as their forefathers faced in the days of the Communist Revolution. The current Socialist Republic of Vietnam continues to oppress the Christian Faith and embraces a culture of atheism and hatred of all religion. Protestants are forbidden to worship at all, a law which particularly persecutes the Montagnard minority, and the state sanctioned Catholic Church remains a puppet of the Communist Party, cut off from full communion with Rome and outside of the authority of His Holiness the Pope. As long as Christians in Vietnam continue to be persecuted and continue to suffer under an oppressive atheistic regime the Vietnamese Christians in the rest of the world, and the Community of the Faithful of all nations, cannot sit idly by and not take action. Independence and true religious freedom must be restored to Vietnam and there is only one legitimate force, which commands Christian allegiance in this peaceful campaign for restoration. This is the same family who opened the doors of Vietnam to the servants of Christ and evangelization in the first place during the Tay Son persecution: the Nguyen Imperial Monarchy and the patriotic forces supporting a constitutional monarchy in Vietnam.
   Although there will never be a perfect government, and though no political philosophy is inherently flawless on its own, Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the teaching of the Popes all point to monarchy as the form of national leadership which Christians should support.
    Saint Peter, writing to the Romans, instructed Christians, "Have respect for everyone and love for our community; fear God and honour the emperor" (I Peter 2:17, Jerusalem Bible). Scripture records that God provided a traditional king to rule over every nation and even the King of Persia, who was a Zoroastrian who did not worship God, was still called God's anointed by virtue of his office as king. In Proverbs 24:21 the Scripture likewise commands, "Fear God, my son, and fear the king, do not rebel against either of them;" (Jerusalem Bible). The Holy See has also made its feelings clear many times to the Christian community on the subject of monarchy versus republican government. Pope Gregory XVI wrote to the Bishops of Poland:
"We are taught most clearly that the obedience which men are obliged to render to the authorities established by God is an absolute precept which no one can violate, except if by chance something is commanded which runs counter to the laws of God or of the Church...By observing these admonitions the first Christians, even during the persecutions, deserved well of the Roman emperors themselves and of the security of the state. 'Christian soldiers,' says Saint Augustine, 'served an infidel emperor: when it came to the subject of Christ, they recognized no one except Him who is in Heaven. They distinguished between the eternal Lord and the temporal lord, but also were subject to the temporal lord because of the eternal Lord"
   These words were written on the occasion of the Polish revolt against the Orthodox Emperor of Russia. However, even before that time, during the anti-royal and anti-Christian French Revolution Pope Pius VI, in 1793, wrote very plainly that monarchy was, "the best of all governments" and had been wrongfully and illegally abolished and the "most Christian King, Louis XVI...condemned to death by an impious conspiracy". Certainly, the position of the Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church could not be made any more clear or simple on the subject of monarchy than that.
    Even many years later when Pope Leo XIII urged the Catholic monarchists of France to accept and work with the republic, he did so only in an effort to use the republican system as a means of restoring the legitimate monarchy. He told the Bishop of Montpellier, "If you follow my advice, you will have 400 Catholic deputies in France and you'll establish the monarchy. I'm a monarchist myself". The advent of Communism marked the expression of the most extreme dangers of the republican system and made the Church and monarchies around the world their primary enemy. In every case, from Spain to Vietnam it was the monarchist cause that the Church supported.
His Holiness Pope Pius VI
   In the "Communist Manifesto", which was followed by everyone from Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro to Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, Karl Marx attacked all religion as something that enslaves rather than liberates. He called it, "the opium of the people". Therefore, in every country where Communists have come to power the Christian Church, and all religions have suffered greatly. And so, in every instance the Church has supported the cause of tradition and freedom against the forces of Communism. In fact, the founder of the Feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius XI, said, "No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist". In Vietnam we can also particularly see the truth in the words of the famous American ArchBishop Fulton J. Sheen who said, "So much of what people call atheism is not so much the negation of God as the deification of the ego. All atheists believe in God, but the god is themsleves". The Communists are not truly as atheist as they claim, but have replaced the worship of God, Buddha and the other faiths with the national cult of Ho Chi Minh who they have elevated to god-like status through indoctrination and military force.
    For Vietnamese Christians today, just as in the early days of Bishop Behaine and Emperor Gia Long or of Emperor Bao Dai and Empress Nam Phuong, the choice is clear. Both the teaching of the Church and the logic of history point to the traditional monarchy, restored in a democratic constitutional form as the only answer for the suffering of the Vietnamese People at the hands of the Communist Party today. The Imperial Nguyen Dynasty extends a hand of friendship and cooperation to all Christian communities asking for their continued support in the effort to drive out the Communist regime and restore the Nguyem Imperial monarchy to the Vietnamese throne so that the nation might be put back in order and freedom and toleration restored to the people of all religions.