Ranting from AJCU - EAO Annual Meeting 2008

Still another rambling from last AJCU-EAO Annual Meeting. This time, I’m going to rant on the very first session of the meeting, presentation of GC 35 result. Father Bambang from ATMI Solo presented his understanding on it, putting the emphasis on the 4F, which are Fire, Frontier, Fidelity, and Friendship. Those points were quite interesting and inspiring though, with the tagline to summarize it saying “Fire in our hearts, Frontier is the mission, Fidelity is the cause, and Friendship is the way.”

Hmm, talking about the fire and frontier, it really is inspiring. Fire burning within the heart to start the frontier. But, I’m not writing to preach upon those. It is so not me to preach something that I didn’t do. Some parts of his paper are the main point of discussion here in this article. It tickled me so hard, pondered my mind quickly, and banged my soul to pieces. It was under the sub-heading “Religion in the Post-Modern World”.

“The Renaissance and sociologist in the forties, made a hypothesis that religion will slowly disappear. Contrary to that prediction, in the post-modern society, religion way of lives still exists and can grow in the framework of secular government system. Religion and religious lives still give the important foundation where the collective and personal identity can be formed. This becomes a source of extraordinary energy to motivate common action. The Renaissance, which brought the demystification of the world, has reached its limits. Indirectly, what is the most essential in religiosity comes to surface in our age, as an irreplaceable horizon, which can even embrace the most secular.

(Yep, I’ll give my comment directly per paragraph between brackets. Can’t deny the fact that religion is still considered important, though it doesn’t rule every aspect of life. GOD! I can’t imagine my whole life being controlled by those strict rules. I mean, there are some good points in religion, but giving my life all to those dogmas? You gotta be kidding me! Giving my life all to God is okay, but to Dogmas??? Get real, dude! Dogmas are man-made. And, I believe with all my heart, that God didn’t spend His time to construct strict rules, like how we should pray, when should we pray, what should and shouldn’t be eaten, what tools to use, and blah blah blah….. Call me heretic if you want, but for me rules are made to break. Place as many rules around me, and I’ll find a way to break it without anyone accusing me guilty. Wait, that’s so Jesuit, isn’t it? Hehehehe… kidding!)

“In the modern society, religion is practices in the context of technical, rational, science based, and communication media focused environment. Those are not the main problem. The most dangerous threat to religion is the individualism which grows together with modernity. It is the very problem which is fought against by fundamentalist movement, or better expression: the “counter secular” movements. Individualism makes religion lost its unifying social role. The trend is to treat religion like supermarket, where rituals, myth, and mysticism, as well as dogma can be chosen as individual likeness. The pure individualistic and market oriented approach creates a spirituality which is incomplete and without commitment.”

(DAMN! This is the very point which strikes me in heart, pierced my soul and shattered it to million crunches. I put logic in every ritual that I had to follow, analyze those in many angles. I started to hate the unity, hate the fact that I’m going to meet many people in churches. Hate seeing people that I considered as hypocrites, placing religion above GOD Himself. Especially after the incident with that BITCH named FEA. Yep, I finally write her real name. Still can’t forgive her for that, way too deep, brainless girl. Wew, I ranted again….. Sorry guys. Back to topic, I went studying other religions, even those paganisms. I was into Kabala, Buddhism, Hinduism, and lately, I studied Druidism. Am I just a customer in the market? My real reason for avoiding going to mass all this time is this boredom towards the long ritual as well as the annoyance of people who place rituals and dogmas as something strict as nail.)

Here comes the most surprising fact. Despite those rants and ramblings I had above, I did consider entering the scholastic! Marvelous!!! What could be funnier?