Losing my religion

“Behold the carabao,” my father used to tell us kids, “it’s healthy for a creature that has never been to church.” It took me a long time to realize that he was paraphrasing from the Sermon on the Mount — out of context, of course. Needless to say, Pa never went to church himself. I did because I had to (it was a school requirement), and even then I made sure it was old Father Astorga officiating; he was known for bypassing the sermon, and I believe I never once heard his take on the Gospel — or anything else for that matter. Clocking in at under 30 minutes, his masses had a devoted following.

I had no such luck with the Baptists. When I was in elementary, Pa’s parents somehow decided that eternal salvation lay outside of the Catholic church. (They could have used some convincing from Father Astorga, at any rate.) To our dismay, my sister and I found ourselves going to church twice on Sundays. Lola Aday was not someone you said no to. Besides, she was never stingy with her appreciation: at a time when our daily allowance was one peso (this was the late ’70s, take note), we were each fifty bucks richer after Baptist service.

It was money well earned. Those Baptist pastors — boy did they love to talk. The sermon alone lasted an hour, and just when you thought the service was over, there would be a recap. For someone whose interest in religion had more to do with iconography than the actual text (I was a collector of religious statuary), the dreary, austere interior of Lola’s church provided neither comfort nor distraction. To put it mildly, I was bored to death.

“You’ve never been to a Baptist baptism, have you?” my father would say. “Heh. They push your head under water. Then they ask, ‘Have you seen Jesus?’ You say no, they do it all over again. Until you say yes. It’s either that or drown.”

In fairness to Baptists, even then I knew this was not true. Still, it was around this time that I developed a sudden appreciation for outdoor activity. Except for when it helped me evade my grandmother, sports or physical games were of zero interest to me. I preferred to read — a hobby paid for, ironically enough, by Lola Aday’s dole-outs. Skipping Baptist service effectively spelled finis to my effort to collect every installment in the Hardy Boys series. It also hastened my introduction to the oeuvres of Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon, which comprised Tita Bebe’s anemic bookshelf (Tita Men was more of a Mills & Boon gal, her room so crammed with books as to be a veritable fire trap). If the sight of a nine-year-old reading The Carpetbaggers or A Stranger in the Mirror bothered my parents, they never let on.

I attended Catholic school (St. Joseph). It meant the obligatory Sunday mass and donating part of our lunch money to the starving children in Africa. And corporal punishment — what could be more Catholic than that? Two days into first grade I was looking up at the impaled Christ, my own hands stretched forward and knees bent at a right angle, as if seated — the infamous ‘sit-on-air’ position — punishment for skipping school the afternoon before (as God is my witness, I had a headache). It was my first encounter with Paciencia Macul, principal. Towering at four feet tall, she inspired more terror in our tender hearts than all the other teachers combined. I loved that woman, God rest her soul, even if it entailed several whacks of her trusty wooden ruler to convince me that I could not trim fingernails with my teeth and expect to get away with it. She was also deeply religious, and one look from her across the aisle could get us into a properly pious mood.

Secondary school was overseen by the Franciscan Sisters, who struck me as an enlightened bunch, i.e., they had a sense of humor. Most of them did, anyway. Some were funny without knowing it, like the dour Sister Helen, who foresaw my afterlife spent in torrid climes — all for troubling to answer what turned out to be a rhetorical question (“Did I say you could go out?” “No, but—” “You are going to hell, do you know that? Hell!”). The best of the lot was tomboyish Sister Anthony — high-school principal, dean of the College of Engineering, and handy with a pair of scissors (it was no use trying to outrun her when she meant to shear regulation-breaking hair; she wore sneakers for that). When I got a final grade of 69 in Christian Doctrine, she was less concerned with my imperiled soul than with my honors standing. “Why, it’s the easiest subject in the universe! You could have aced it with your eyes closed!” Actually, it had more to do with Christian Doctrine being first subject of the day, and a penchant for oversleeping on my part.

Sister Helen’s less-than-stellar example of Franciscan theology aside, my religious education left me relatively unscarred. Thanks to Pa, I was already a cracked vessel when the system got hold of me. By the time the nuns took their turn, the whole country was too caught up fighting the more manifest evil that was the Marcos regime, which sought to distract the restive public by doing away with the censors board and allowing sexually explicit films to inundate the market. It was a great time to be a teenager.

I graduated without honors, though. I don’t blame the good sisters for that. In fact, I often invoke my sketchy religious training to steer clear of discussing the finer points of theology. All I know is that Jesus tried to make things simpler by reducing the number of commandments from ten to two, for all the good that did. Ask Carlos Celdran — he went to jail for going to church.

Speaking of which, I have not been to church in years. The last time was for Lola’s funeral. She died a Catholic, by the way. My lolo was none too happy about that. “Ah, Andoy,” she had said, “go find your own salvation and I’ll find mine.” Just to be sure, Lolo had a Baptist pastor do his thing graveside, extending the ceremony by an hour. I elected to join some cousins behind the cemetery, where we absently contemplated the islands across the channel while pushing plumes of smoke into an oncoming wind. Somewhere in the distance a carabao grunted — contentedly if I had to guess. It really was a beautiful day.