ACHIEVEMENTS AND FRAGMENTATION
From early 1927
till the end of the 1930s, despite financial shortage as well as hardships in
the woods being reclaimed, the newly established Caodai Holy Assembly in Tây
Ninh province gradually managed to win lots of very significant achievements,
to name a few in unchronological order:
- establishing
and promulgating a number of laws;
- establishing an
elaborate administrative system from the Holy See through provinces and
districts to villages and hamlets;
- systemising and
standardising rituals;
- publishing a
number of fundamental scriptures, books and booklets on Caodaism;
- organising
training courses for dignitaries and non-dignitary officials;
- establishing a
free elemetary school for children;
- establishing
the first holy house in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), and then founding La Mission Étrangère du Caodaïsme (The
Foreign Mission of Caodaism) in the capital;
- establishing
the first holy house in Hà Nội, etc.
Nevertheless, a
process of fast growth could not help avoiding contradictions and conflicts
which gradually emerged inside the Tây Ninh Holy Assembly. During the 1930s, the
utmost of such disagreement resulted in some separations from the Tây Ninh Holy
See and finally a few Holy Sees and Holy Assemblies were founded in some
provinces far from Tây Ninh. Besides, a couple of Caodai congregations which
did not detach themselves from the Tây Ninh Holy See became Holy Assemblies
with their own Holy Sees in Central and Southern Vietnam .
In the years from
1935 through 1972, a number of noble and enthusiastic efforts to unite all
“fragments” of Caodai religion were not successful eventually. Nowadays,
therefore, the actual situation affecting Caodaism is that the religion still
lacks its sole Holy Assembly and its millions of adherents remain in need of
their one and only Holy See.
HUỆ KHẢI
