Sister Duong Pham, LHC, has large dreams for her future as she works on her PhD dissertation at Oblate School of Theology. She hopes to teach in a Catholic university someday in her native Vietnam. Next year, if her dissertation is approved and she graduates as expected, she will be the first member of her congregation to earn a PhD in Spirituality.
She comes from a very devout family. Her two sisters now belong to the same religious order, the Sisters of the Lovers of the Holy Cross. She also has three brothers: an English teacher, an engineer and a seminarian to be ordained next year for the Archdiocese of Hanoi.
Sr. Duong currently sees at least two possible universities where she could teach in South Vietnam, but she also is anxious to share what she has learned about the history of her order’s spirituality with the nearly 9,000 sisters of her order and the order’s lay volunteers.
She has earned a BA in education from St. Norbert College in Le Pere, Wisc.; a BA in religious studies from Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.; and an MA in theology and ministry from Boston College.
However, it was OST that opened a completely new, vast landscape of spirituality for her. She is in her fifth year of PhD studies.
Sr. Duong likes OST’s small size and friendly atmosphere. “I received my earlier degrees from large universities, but OST is more like a family. I feel warmly welcomed here. Everybody knows everybody, and we say hello to each other.
She discovered that her congregation’s spirituality is one small part of a much larger field. “I didn’t have the chance to study spirituality and theology in Vietnam. I want to go deeper in the field of spirituality. None of our sisters has a PhD in spirituality. I will be the first,” she explained.
“I took several courses in spirituality here – especially French spirituality,” she continued. “That opened my eyes and my heart to all that we were already living. We didn’t know that our spirituality was part of a much larger discipline of spirituality. We didn’t have the opportunity to access the roots of Christian spirituality in general and the spirituality of our congregation.”
Her proposed dissertation has many components: the 16th-century Catholic Reformation, the “golden age” of the French church, how the French culture related to the Vietnamese culture in the 17th century, Confucianism and women in the 17th century, how both French Christian spirituality and Vietnamese Confucianism influenced the founding of her congregation, and how those values impact today’s sisters and lay associates who live the spirituality in their daily lives, she said.
Sister Duong is one of four Vietnamese women religious currently studying at OST. The others are Sr. Ha Dinh, a Dominican; Sr. Thach Nguyen, a Missionary Sister of Charity; and Sr. Cecilia Thuy Nguyen. a member of the Community of Charity and Social Services.