reverse faith

Recently there was a funeral in my family. It was mildly significant, as funerals in my family go, because she was the last of a generation to be returned to the earth. Because of this the significance of the funeral lies not in its commonly accepted purpose, but rather arises from providing a glimpse of one’s own transience. But this is not what struck my fancy, excuse the happy phrase, considering the unhappy moment. Rather the Philippino Deacon is what I find fascinating. Before you call down God’s thunder upon my head because I do not make this a memoriam for my dear Oma, please bear with me.

You see, this is Vienna. Now, while Austria is a fairly modern country, and while we had our fair (read: fairly large) share of Catholic Church sex scandals, and while we also have really tried very hard to forget our more recent past this is still a Catholic Country. May it be because of an inherent – teatular, so to speak - conservatism, or may it be because we want to cover our bases, or simply out of good old lethargy, but 95 % of all the white people in Austria are Catholic. We pay church tax! I should use this opportunity to thank the Church for its greed, because my infidel behind would otherwise have been baptized. Apparently being the second largest landholder in/after the country is not enough, and apparently that pissed my dear parents off enough to excommunicate themselves. So you see, you can’t even blame me when I end up in hell. Anyway, in this bastion of Catholicism in Central Europe, only to be out-gloried by Poland, a Philippino Deacon conducts my Granny’s last event in our lives.

I just spent Christmas ‘06 in the Philippines. This is the second time that I was in Manila. The first time was about ten years ago. Unlike when I am at home I like to read local news when I travel. It gives me a feeling for the place I am visiting, for what’s going on, for what the local folk think and do. Which is why I don’t do it at home, there I already know that the local folk just needs their bread and games. During both visits it struck me how Catholic the Philippines are. Fanatically so - the pope gets more requests for autographs in the Philippines than condoms tossed at his head in Finland, it’s a close call though. There are people in the Philippines who still beat themselves over the back with what resembles a Cat O' Nine Tails. Without sarcasm one can say that this country’s Catholicism stopped developing after the first missionaries arrived at its virgin shores. It makes sense too, I look at myself and see that I am still Austrian the way Austrians where 12 years ago. Hopefully, that joint developed a little since then. A church cut off by sheer distance from its all-nurturing mothership will lag behind in its evolution of faith – sorry, I’d be lying if I’d call it thought. I mean, when was the time you saw a guy whipping himself in Austria? Ok, don’t google it, let me answer instead: 1261 A.D. It was in fact quite chic in those days, they even had a name for the merry songs they sang whilst beating the shit, I mean blood out of themselves – Geisslerlieder. At some point the Pope thought that this practice was silly. He probably figured that we already nailed one guy to the cross, why beat ourselves up over it? So he forbade it, which, I think, in church context means that you go to hell if you do it anyway. Let me gently remind you that I was never the one who wanted to give those faith guys medals for logical thought processes.

I digress, and since you probably wonder if this is going any yonder, let me come to my point. The Philippines are now bringing the faith back to Austria. Sorry, one more digression – Austria used to run Spain, which used to run the Philippines (before our current faith-behemoth took over) - Quot erat demonstrandum Austria brought the whipping boys to those particular virgin shores. And now the Philippines are returning the favor. This strikes me as entertaining. The Austrian community of faithful can not even muster their own priests anymore. Does it not strike you as similar to us importing Guestworkers from Southeastern Europe in order to fill all the jobs that we think ourselves too good to do? Namely cleaning our toilets, taking care of our geriatrics, sweeping our streets, picking up our trash, you catch my drift. Here is a country that has been Catholic for the better part of two bloody millennia, whose church owns something like 30 % of the land but yet a Philippino is doing the holy grunt work. I mean offer some slowly vesting stock options or something. Oh, that’s right you do - excuse me while I lol a tiny little bit – done.

So the Austrian Catholic Church is recruiting the obviously and finally redeemed former poor lost heathen souls from those former virgin shores in order to save our own newly endangered eternal lights from hellfire. This gives a brand new meaning to Brain Drain. I want to like it to a toilet in the southern hemisphere. You might think that this is annoying to me, this invasion of stupidity, when finally we have beaten senseless prayers with senseless consumerism. But instead I bask in this warm comforting sense of Karma, I wallow in it like a happy little piggy, I rejoice in this circular logic and faithful justice – Hallelujah!!! Bring those infidels to heal, I mean, show those poor lost souls the way to Christ. Bring y/our holy scripture, we promise we will try to stay up to date a little better than you did on what’s cool and what’s not (does god have email, or a FAQ?). Bring your Cat O' Nine Tails and take our Paprika while you are at it. I know it is really Hungary’s Paprika, but who minds a little spice, right? It doesn’t have anything to do with any of this anyway, right? Right?

Dear Granny, thank you for the soup and for providing one more spark.