Ian Baltazar

Posted on 24. Oct, 2009 by Ian Figueroa Baltazar in Oplan Pepe

I was told I was “baptized” as an Aglipayan in my birthplace in Antique (my mother’s province), and was again “baptized” in a Roman Catholic ritual when my father moved us back to his hometown in La Union. My mother converted and became a devout Catholic and was an active officer in our local parish council. Though my father refuses to go to church, he never misses a Sunday weekly mass broadcasted on t.v. and often prays alone in private.

Long afflicted with polio since I was two years old, I never recovered the use of my two legs while my left arm was partly paralyzed. I went through school in a wheelchair with an aide to assist me.

It was during high school (I studied in a Catholic school) when I started asking questions about the flaws in the dogma of the Catholic Church. I was disgusted at how our religion class teacher had forced us to attend mass every Sunday and gave us demerits whenever we failed to. All students were required to make a personal weekly Sunday mass attendance card to be checked on Mondays by our religion class teacher and dreaded the moment when one was asked to stand and explain the reason why one failed to attend the mass. It was hellish and medieval – a rehash of the Inquisition. I found it absurd as one was miserably mocked and drowned with guilt from the theological chastising by the teacher. Later, I realized how this method of exacting blind obedience and faith could lead to losing one’s self-esteem and self-respect when some students eventually decided to lie about going to mass. They feared more the humiliation they would face from our Catholic Taliban teacher than from the punishment they would face in hell.

In the Catholic school where I attended, it has this tradition of herding students en masse to attend the sacrament of confession in the church where the parish priest would be waiting for every student inside the confessional booth. This ritual lasted the whole day depending on the quantity and severity of the “sins” the students confessed. It was really farcical since some students had to invent sins just to have something to confess of or else risked being castigated and bullied by the trigger-happy priest who loved to shoot his gun at the ceiling of his bedroom in the parish “convento” whenever he got drunk.

Among the doctrines of the Catholic Church I found ludicrous was its fanatical devotion to the “Virgin Mary” – Jesus’ mother. We were systematically indoctrinated on this dogma, taught to pray the rosary several times a day (novenas) and celebrated the whole month of October as the Month of the Holy Rosary. The Church spends and lavishes so much time, resource and attention on the “Virgin Mary” making Catholics unwittingly unaware that they’re already worshipping her at par with God! Also, on October of each year, we were asked by the parish priest and our school to donate, solicit and raise money for Catholic missionaries – they call this Mission Month. They issued and distributed specially printed and marked envelopes to every student and gave us quotas or amounts to raise for donation. Students who were able to raise and surpass their quotas were given special privileges like bonus grades, quiz exemptions and school breaks. It was turned into a mad competition where it went as far as sponsoring cookouts where every class of students contributed money for capital, took turns cooking and selling food or snacks within the school to raise “mission money.” Interestingly, even the capital was also later given away for donation. Some students skipped meals in school to save their allowance for their “mission contributions” thinking and believing it was their little way of sacrificing and offering something to God and the “Virgin Mary.” Of course, others do it for their self-serving obsession to win the competition. Others stole or lied from their parents to obtain money. The not-so-well-off students felt guilty they couldn’t give much and often marginalized by rich and zealous students who constantly showed off with their huge donations.

I have read the bible at an earlier age but was puzzled in our high school religion class or catechism when our teacher introduced us to the Old Testament then decided not to go far beyond Leviticus. She skipped chapters, cherry-picking verses while bombarding us a plethora of undecipherable Catholic doctrines. Later on, she gave more importance to the New Testament focusing on the gospels. My inquisitive mind wandered and started to ask questions secretly out of fear of being mocked and rejected by my classmates and teacher. Reading the bible left me disturbing thoughts. I was shocked to read a God so malevolent, sadistic, vengeful, misogynistic, genocidal and egomaniac. Honestly, for a time I used to justify my own vindictive and violent temperament arguing God had his own violent episodes too.

When I read Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in our Filipino Literature class, my rational mind was awakened. I started to doubt. Then I craved for more references and books on the history of the Church and other religions. I also sought the books Rizal and his fellow freethinkers read and wrote during their time. I was obsessed dissecting the Noli even read it several times to draw off every secular and anti-cleric ideas Rizal had written about. I read his other essays then managed to get my hands on the writings and ideas of Del Pilar, Lopez-Jaena, etc. I got interested with Voltaire, Diderot, d’Holbach, Hume, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, George Eliot and Robert Green Ingersoll… I became agnostic.

At the age of 17, I entered politics and convinced my parents to allow me to run for public office which they had very strong objections to due to my condition. In the end, I got my way and was first elected in the Sangguniang Kabataan or youth council. A few years later, I got elected for nine straight years as municipal councilor. During this time I never stopped seeking answers to my questions. I was angry and upset at the cycle of collusion between Catholic clerics and politicians in the forming of public policies on both local and top levels of our government. Secularism in our constitution is only a watermark that our government continues to ignore. The Filipino people are flanked on both sides by a pair of hungry wolves ready to tear them apart – on one side is the ever-arrogant, backward, sexually-repressive, hypocritical and profiteering Catholic Church while on the other is a government that formulates vague and deceptive policies to hide its plunderous, corrupt and inept condition.

In a country so steeped in religion and superstition, coming out in the open and declaring one’s self an atheist is not only suicidal but foolhardiness. Sometime ago, when I decided to finally discard the yoke of religion and took the path to atheism and secular humanism, it was sweet and victorious. I took it as an ultimate expression of freedom over ignorance and fear about our natural world and the universe as commonly espoused in the prejudices and superstitions of religion. It may sound utopian but I dream the day when all people become rational beings and understand and tolerate one another then someday there will be a world free from religion, bigotry, racism and conflict.

I enjoin all Filipino freethinkers to come out and renew the intellectual movement as we spread the light of reason among our people long groping in the dark. This is a challenge for us who live in a country and a world dominated by theists.

Tags: confession