Digging into dark secrets, there came light

I think I've always been fascinated with the dark secrets of Catholicism. I wanted to find an angle for my blog entry about the Gospel of Judas, that fine piece of documentary-cum-expose shown by National Geographic before the Holy Week. Initially, I asked myself, why do I feel so compelled to write something about it? Then some impish alterego voice in my head chided: "Wrong question. The question is: why are you becoming obsessed with things like this lately?" And as I tried to recall my fascinations as far back as I could, I realized (and defended against that impish voice) that it's not an obsession-come-lately. It has always been there.

Back in grade school, I remember going to the Guadalupe minor seminary for a recollection activity. A confidante-classmate and I broke away from the group during our free time and prowled the seminary, went into the obscure and darker areas, half-hoping to discover something or be freaked out by -- oh, I dunno -- a ghost(?)

Then there was television. Around the same time, I remember repeatedly watching this horror/thriller movie shown in the afternoon. (It could be on RPN-9.) The movie was called "The Sentinel," it's about a secret order who manage the succession of hermits, who become "guards" in an apartment building that was actually a portal from which all evil could invade the human world. I might have seen it more recently, and I'm quite sure I watched it like I've never seen it before.

In high school, that period of heart-wrenching identity crisis, I got involved with the "born again" movement. Much less because of my loss of faith in the Catholic church but more because of finding "healing" from my identity crisis via a more personal relationship with the Christ. Strange logic, strange times, and a very strange me actually. I was very ravenous about reading one book, the title which escapes me now. It's about the Catholic church being the prophesied "whore of Babylon." There was a chapter there that reduced many of the Roman Catholic church's rituals and artifacts into numbers, and all of those cited amounted to 666.

In college, I seemed to have lost passion for anything spiritual. That sounded empty, I dunno, I could have been empty. And I could have lost trust in myself in being able to reconcile spirituality with corporality. There simply were no clear answers. I rejected spirituality. Later in college, and into my early days of working "rackets," I was fortunately too busy and too restless to take some time off and think into these things.

The late nineties was worse, in retrospect. I lost my advertising job thanks to the Asian financial crisis. Mom started a small business and I worked for her: there were days that I earned less than a peso. Because I had nothing much else to do, I went back to attending Sunday mass. It felt good to actually do something, if not for just acting or going through the motions of the mass rituals. Eventually, but by no means clearly distinguishable by time, place or event, I again sort of got fascinated with Catholicism, including all its pa-grandiosity. Maybe because of friend gregg who had lived a monastic life once, no, make that twice. Or maybe because I'm growing old. *Insert pregnant silence here* No definite answers there.

Then the Da Vinci Code broke the silence of the Catholicized norm. Or that's how some people think... it was because of that book that people warmed to questioning again. Someone told that to me actually, I don't remember who, it might be eon. My growing interest for digging the roots of Catholicism was spurred by the popularity of the book and the intrigues that it created. Ano ako, faddist?

I'm quite sure that I began to reconsider my displaced spirituality after I attended a workshop organized by Health Action Information Network (HAIN); "Defending the Faith," it was called, and it was for workers in reproductive health (and by extension, HIV/AIDS, where I am at). It felt like falling off a chair while dozing when Mike Tan began talking about his own efforts at reacquainting himself with Christianity. I always get mesmerized with Mike's talks, especially those where he makes connections between facts and figures and socio-cultural values. But up until this workshop, I haven't heard him speak of matters of faith, particularly one that enabled him to disclose what I'd think is a very personal matter. (It was way too subjective-sounding for me to associate it with Mike.)

Having been demonized by certain groups and leaders, our passion for our work in RH and HIV/AIDS seemed to have alienated us from the Church. (Have you heard of DEATH as an acronym? Divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total population control programs, homosexuality, things that would allegedly threaten to end humanity.) I admit, I had the notion of our work and us having irreconcilable differences with the teachings of the church. But it should have not necessarily been so, it now seems. I learned about the Church having shifted several times in history in its position about sexuality and reproduction issues. I had fun doing that Mary of Magdala exercise, where we deconstructed all the previous (and heretofore unquestioned) characterizations of Mary Magdalene, the prostitute. I have never appreciated "The Church is the People" argument as much before until this workshop. At the end of all our discussions, we left with one personal resolve: discernment.

Which I think what has led me to my Internet search frenzy. It started with unearthing the now-Vatican-ignored beauty of Vatican II, searching for the gospel of Mary (much discussed about in the wake of the Da Vinci Code pop culture siege), landing at the gnostics resource site, discovering the Nag Hammadi library, getting the perspective of Jewish scholarship on the "New Testament," the forgeries in the gospels, the "Q," and so on and so forth. Gospel of Judas just came at such an opportune time in learning the skills of "discernment."

But what has the Gospel of Judas, the documentary, brought into all this excitement? For me, there were several. First, the gatekeeper known as Irinaeus or his "four winds, four corners of the world, four gospels" principle -- I was flabbergasted that we (i.e., the people) actually bought it. Second, the dynamism of early Christian movements -- how I wished Christianity could be once more as vibrant but this time with much more humane and civil regard for each other. Finally, the Christ characterization in this gospel -- Jesus was a different man, disarming and revolutionary in his time, I'd like to believe; in this text, this characterization was very clear.

I grew up discouraged from questioning. Millions of others over many, many years may have been as well. With the fortification of one -- uh -- brand of Catholicism, the light of the dynamic Christian faith discourse has been snuffed out. How disempowered people have become in face of such a monolith, no? Surely, there are so much more questioning to do (for example, "What about infallibility and all that?") As for myself, however, one thing can never be questioned anymore: I'm now aware/discerning and I shall never be unaware/unquestioning ever again.