ALORAN, a perspective RELIGION

The late Martin Celemin calls himself an NBA (Natural Born Aloranon), always advise me not to talk about Religion and Politics in our gatherings because they are divisive. True, then and now. If the number of churches is an indication that the populace is religious, then Aloranons are. There's the RC (Roman Catholic), IFI (Iglesia Filipina Independiente), UCCP (United Church of Christ in the Philippines), SDA (Seventh Day Adventists), Assembly of God, Church in Aloran, JW (Jehova's Witness), IES (Iglesia sa Espiritu Santo) and recent addition of INC (Iglesia Ni Cristo), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or The Mormons and a number of relatively smaller Protestant denominations. The first two are the dominant in terms of parishioners. Though we rarely talk about it, the divide was not imaginary. I was baptized IFI and so were my late two brothers and a sister. My brothers were converted when they married Catholics. My great grandparents, grandparents down to my parents were all among the pillars of our church. Back then there were to masses on Sundays in both IFI and RC churches. Second mass begins and ends roughly at the same time. We don't go straight home after the mass, we wait for the musikeros play religious and military marches tunes. Sometimes the opening salvo comes from RC, sometimes down the road at IFI. With assortment of wind and percussion instruments, I see my uncles on both sides play in the band with boyish elan. It seemed to me that there was a contest albeit un-agreed upon, not only who has more church-goers but also who has better musikeros.