HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (UCAN) -- A workshop on popular beliefs examined the special place of women in Vietnamese society as reflected in the number of goddesses in the Vietnamese pantheon and in Marian devotion.

Traditionally, the Vietnamese revere hundreds of goddesses, Hoang Gia Khanh, a former seminarian-turned-researcher, told Catholic women attending the workshop at the Vietnamese Martyr Saints parish in Ho Chi Minh City April 8.

According to the layman, this tradition is linked with women's important role in daily life in Vietnam. Besides their role as homemakers, Vietnamese women are also responsible for preparing offerings for worship.

Khanh traced this role to the ongoing influence of Vietnamese society's structure and cultural system "despite many changes in the last five decades."

He said that in the past, authoritarian kings and mandarins monopolized religious worship because they saw themselves as "Thien Tu" (sons of God).

Since people were not permitted to worship the official deities, they venerated any personality that inspired in them a sense of the sacred, and more importantly, care, affection and tenderness, he said.

Citing an example of popular belief, Khanh said that Vietnamese people venerate even persons who developed virgin lands for people's welfare. Such persons were honored at "dinh" or temples, and "mieu" or small shrines where female deities are venerated.

Since women are more receptive to what is holy and sacred, mothers are revered as caring persons, he said. Women often turn to female deities for help, he added.

He cited the Ba Chua Kho (storekeeper goddess) and Ba Chua Ngoc (a goddess of ethnic Cham people) as deities specially revered by people.

Anna Nguyen Thi Tinh of Thanh Gia parish told UCA News after the workshop that Vietnamese Catholics' special affection for the Blessed Mother can be traced to femininity being deeply rooted in their religious conscience.

"A correct understanding of popular beliefs would help Catholics adopt a new attitude vis-a-vis the way compatriots express religious convictions, which unfortunately has been often interpreted as superstition," she said.

Earlier, Khanh reported seeing two altars in one home -- one for the Blessed Mother and the other for the bodhisattva Kuan-yin, who, according to Mahayana Buddhist tradition, postponed her final entrance into Nirvana in order to alleviate the sufferings of others.

"I wish that more Catholics, not just this small group of women, can benefit from workshops on cultural themes like this," Marie Trinh Thi Xuan of Gia Dinh parish commented.

"The workshop helps us to look at ourselves and our way of bringing the Good News to others," Sister Marie Tran Thi Huong said.

"The spread of the Good News should be done step by step by using a language which is understood by ordinary people, in particular the poor, rather than communicating to them purely speculative and abstract concepts they are forced to internalize," the Daughters of St. Paul de Chartres nun added.

Khanh, 48, is known among Catholics for his work on Vietnamese and East Asian cultures as well as faith inculturation. He has translated into Vietnamese the works of some Asian theologians.

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