The brand of Catholocism practiced in the local villages seemed quite different

From Once a Warrior King by David Donovan.  Page 119.  I was sort of aware of the diversity of Vietnam but wasn't fully attuned just how many strands of cultural differences there were until reading this account.

Catholicism had come to Vietnam during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the church community continued to grow during the years of the French colonial administration. The Vietnamese most exposed to European influences were those who worked for or with the French authorities, and it was these people who most easily adopted the religion of their colonial overseers. Both French and Vietnamese priests and missionaries went out of the major cities and into the villages. As a result many rural villagers were also converted to Catholicism. Still, when the French left Vietnam, Catholicism was largely the religion of the urban upper class, the educated businessmen, the teachers, and the able government administrators. The people in the villages were primarily Buddhist or one of the other native sects. Thus there was a long historical association between Catholicism and political power that often caused the adherents of the native religions to feel left out of the political process. This unfortunate situation, the new versus the old, the European idea versus the traditional, formed a social lesion that would never completely heal and would eventually lead to open sores.

The welding of a European religion onto an Oriental society is done only with a difficulty not usually appreciated by most Westerners. Buddhism and Confucianism permeated Vietnamese culture just as Judeo-Christian thought provides the warp and woof of our own. Buddhism gives Oriental cultures a sense of timelessness not found in Western thought. Confucianism instills a respect for family, a reverence for ancestors, and an emphasis on an individual’s harmony with the society around him.

Practically every house in my village had a small spirit house perched on a pole out in front. Grains of rice and smoldering joss sticks were placed in the spirit houses as ever-present offerings to whomever or whatever was keeping track. The local shades and vapors had to be kept appeased lest they repay irreverence with mean tricks and hard times. One had to be in harmony with the spirits as well as the neighbors.

Most houses also had a tall flagstaff out front, and on religious holidays everyone would run up a flag. The flags were of all colors, but red and yellow, the traditional colors for happiness and good fortune, predominated. On these special religious days the flapping colors and freshly painted spirit houses could turn even the most drab village into a bright place with a festive air.

The brand of Catholicism practiced in the local villages seemed quite different from the religion observed in the West. The Vietnamese Christian was hard pressed to totally eliminate Buddhist and Confucian thoughts from his religious life. They were too relevant to the way life was lived. Many Catholics in our village shared in some of the traditional, yet pagan, practices of their non-Catholic neighbors. Making an offering or a sign of respect to the local spirits usually just seemed to be the prudent thing to do.