Gunnar’s Faith

February 21, 1989

Gunnar’s Faith

Contrary to whatever impression my earlier pieces have given, I am not, within my own family, the true believer and defender of the faith. At best I am a born-again but non-Charismatic Catholic. Truth to tell, the real hardliner at home is a twelve-year old kid, Gunnar.

Gunnar is not his real name, of course. It is Victor Benedict, Victor because his grandfather on the paternal side carries that name, as did his maternal great-grandfather, now long-deceased. And Benedict because he was born on the feast of St. Benedict, the family patron.

Gunnar is half-Chinese, and goes to school at Xavier. His father describes himself as a Taoist-agnostic, whatever that means, while his mother is a baptized, though non-practising Catholic.

My sister and brother-in-law stopped going to Sunday mass and the sacraments long before Gunnar was born. They’ve had him baptized on their own and let him go to his first communion and confirmation with his classmates, but that is all. For the rest of his faith life, he is pretty much on his own.

Such as his family religious upbringing has been, being Catholic is a big thing with Gunnar. So big, in fact, that he has been having lively discussions with his father and not a few sleepless nights over the fundamentalists.

Now Gunnar and I don’t even discuss these things in great detail, this much I know: his tiff with the born-again's (some of his classmates and their parents are) stems from the purely personal and practical, rather than dogmatic grounds.

My nephew, you see, prefers his life straightforward and uncomplicated. He thinks two dishes on the table is one too many. If he likes a shirt, he will wear it to death. Most of his friends date back to first or second grade, and he has been going to the same barber with the same frequency for nearly as long.

As with his life, so it is with Gunnar’s faith. For him, being a Catholic is as much a given as being a boy and being half-Chinese, and he likes the sense of permanence it brings. He is into things that endure, and what’s lasted all of 2,000 years is good and true enough for him.

Gunnar thinks, and I completely agree with him, that all these public debates with fundamentalists will lead nowhere. We’re right and they’re wrong, so what is there to quarrel about? Let’s not bother with them and go our own way, he suggests.

Gunnar’s notion of going his own way is he’ll just continue serving mass in school regularly and saying his prayers on rising and retiring. Mine, I tell him, is as follows:

I will hear mass and go to communion daily, and take him and my nieces to church every Sunday.

We will resume praying the rosary together before the family altar (which has three images of the Blessed Virgin) at home every evening.

We will take turns praying before and after meals.

No meat will be served at home on Friday, within or outside Lent.

I will give each member of the household a Catholic bible, a rosary if he or she doesn’t have one yet, a medal each of the Blessed Mother, St. Benedict and our Guardian Angel.

We will bring flowers, light candles and pray at my parents’ tomb at least once a month.

The family will tithe to support the following causes: parish projects; the education of seminarians; a home for the aged; a community of monks in Malaybalay.

In short, if Gunnar and I have our way, our family will henceforth do everything that the born-again's say we shouldn’t. Because if we are right, and they are wrong, we must and will gladly pay the price in full for our religious convictions, no ifs and buts about it.

Having been sealed with the sign of faith at baptism, other options are no longer ours to take. Catholic at birth, like all forebears have been, we will be Catholic until the very end, and so, if we can help it, will all those who come after us.

And if that be intolerance, we will forever bless and thank the Lord and His Blessed Mother for it. May they guide us always on our pilgrimage through this valley of tears, on our way back to the Father.