Born to Be A Catholic?

I almost leaped with joy when one of my students in Rumah Bina submitted an essay outline with this topic: God does not equal religion. Rumah Bina Tolentino is a house for diocesan and OSA postulants. He started with an argument that most of us “inherited” our religions from our parents.

Yeah, tell me something that I don’t know, you might think. But hey for these people to whom religions become their most important identity, this is quite a thought. Their lives revolve around church activities. They address others according to their religions. You hear these remarks often: “Yes, that policeman is a Catholic” or “No, she is a Protestant”. Well yeah we might find similar situations in other parts of the world including the so-called the first world. People are even fighting in the name of religions.

But that student hadn’t gone that far with his outline when other students protested him right away. Some were so convinced that they become Catholic because they chose to. The class was soon debating the issue.

Oh really? Let’s see. I asked the class about their parents’ religions. These students come from the Christian / Catholic region of Indonesia namely Papua, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Mollucas Islands, and North Sulawesi. Out of 16 students, there were only 2 students whose parents were Protestants (not even Moslem). So, I asked them, “If you had been born in West Sumatra or West Java in Islamic families, would you have been Catholic?” Nah!

And by the way, have they really examined other alternative religions exhaustively before they decided to become Catholics? I doubt it. Not in a way that I think is sufficient to make the claim that they have done their homework before making that decision. I don’t think they had ever seriously considered Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or even atheism. Well, I don’t blame them. They are the children of their society. There is always a few who could go beyond or transcend their social settings. But most people don’t. It’s more convenient to accept the socially-handed-over beliefs, isn’t it?

Anyway, back to the essay. That student backed off. He canceled the topic. Apparently he got intimidated by his classmates’ reaction and scared away with the consequence of his writing if it was published in the diocesan monthly bulletin as I planned. I failed to convince him. I console myself with the thought that at least the class started thinking about the issue. Is religion divinely bestowed upon them regardless their geographic, social, political settings?