Auckland based Luis Portillo was raised a Catholic in Venezuela where he endured everything from tedious First Communion parties to insulting priests and dodgy confessions. He left the religion behind but it lingers in his memories and imagination.
One late, cold winter afternoon, as I rushed down Wellington's Courtenay Place, I was stopped by two young men from The Church of the Latter-day Saints. They had a book about Jesus they wanted to share with me.
I thanked them but passed on their offer. I explained I admired Jesus of Nazareth; after all, he had been a great community organiser, but to me, he was a mere mortal who shouldn’t be revered as the son of an almighty God.
“What if I told you a story that will make you see that you’re wrong?” one of them offered.
“I’m sure you have many tales, but it’s cold, and I’m in a hurry. Have a nice evening, lads, and keep warm,” I said and kept on my way.
It’s never bothered me when religious people approach me on the street, and I have a soft spot for Mormons. I grew up with them knocking at the door of our flat at least once a month, trying to convert us with sweetness and kindness. They were the nicest people on earth.
Religious people promoting their beliefs are salespeople, and I treat them as such. I give them a few seconds to do their spiel, and then I tell them I’m not interested.
However, good salesmen can quickly recognise who will fall for their product and who isn’t buying. It should have been evident to the young Mormons that a man way north of 40 with a grey beard wasn’t buying religion. This man didn’t wake up that day realising that perhaps Christianity, and to an extent religion in general, was something more than a successful marketing campaign that still delivered results after thousands of years.
The young missionaries may have had a story to share, but so did I.
Growing up in Venezuela, where Catholicism shaped our vernacular, I learned about Jesus early on. Many years ago, a 16-year-old virgin, Mary, became pregnant by the power of the holy spirit. Her best friend, Joseph, stepped in and married her so neighbours wouldn’t stone her for being a strumpet. Eventually, Mary gave birth in Bethlehem to Jesus, who turned out to be God’s son.
Jesus grew up to become a prophet, obviously, the kind of thing you'd expect from the son of God. But he died for our sins at 33.
Wait a second! Our sins? Excuse me? I never understood that.
Why was it "our" sins? We hadn’t been around when he was crucified. We had nothing to do with it. Yes, I was probably six, and that’s how kids reason what the world presents them, but frankly, it has never made sense.
It was Pontius Pilatus who ordered Jesus’ death after washing his hands. That’s how the story went. It had nothing to do with us, much less our sins.
Despite the misguided idea that Jesus died for our sins, Catholicism made sense. Being kind to others, helping the poor, and respecting life and everything God created on earth – including flora and fauna – seemed to be what everyone in their communities should be doing.
When it came time for school, I went to the same Catholic school my siblings attended. It was run by the strict sisters of the Rita de Cascia congregation. At eight, I received communion for the first time at that school. For years, I’d looked forward to accepting the body of Christ. I couldn’t wait for it.
When my siblings had their First Communions, my parents organised big bashes for the occasion. They both received a boatload of gifts, mostly toys; I could only imagine the number of toys I would get at my First Communion party.
But when the day came, disappointment made itself a long-life acquaintance. Not to sound ungrateful, but the party was a bit dull. It wasn’t in my grandmother’s backyard as my sister’s was or by a swimming pool like my brother’s. A small windowless event room in a club welcomed the guests, who may have arrived with wrapped boxes but had neglected to put much thought into their contents. What I got was shit, and not even good shit. Not a single toy in the batch. Only socks, underwear, and polo shirts! Sure, just what every kid who just went through weeks of catechisms to swallow a dry wafer on an early Sunday morning wants.
Did I have fun at the party? Not really. Although I’d lobbied heavily for a piñata, Mom had nixed the idea. In her head, the mere thought of a bunch of rascals beating up a cross-shaped piñata with a stick was sinful, and beating up a chalice-shaped one was no less impious.
A few kids in my class didn’t go through their First Communion.
“Rosita is an Arab,” Mom explained when I asked why my classmate wasn’t part of the group receiving the eucharist.
“An Arab?” I was curious.
“Her parents came from the Middle East. They have other beliefs."
“Beliefs?”
“They’re Muslim. Not Christian like us.”
“Why?”
“Because they are. And we must respect their beliefs as much as they respect ours.”
Shortly after my first communion, my grandfather came to live with us. On his first Sunday at home, we all got in the car to go to Mass in the early evening, but we dropped off Granddad at a friend’s house.
“Isn’t Grandpa coming to Mass with us?” I asked.
“He’s visiting a friend,” Mom replied.
“His girlfriend,” My sister beside me in the backseat whispered in my ear.
On the following Sundays, we kept the same routine. We’d drop off my grandfather at his girlfriend’s apartment, go to Mass, grab dinner, and pick him up on our way back home.
“Does Grandpa ever go to Mass?” I asked one Sunday after we'd dropped him off at his lady friend’s place.
“He hasn’t been to church in years,” Dad said.
“But he believes in God and prays every night,” Mom insisted of her father.
“He just doesn’t believe in priests. That’s all,” said Dad.
It turned out you could still believe in God and yet not attend Mass every Sunday; going to Church was optional, at least for grownups. But I didn’t have a choice when it came to participating in the weekly ritual, as long as I was a kid.
Later in the year, I accompanied Dad and Mom to the polls on election day. They were voting in different rooms and had to stand in long and slow lines. I split my time between the two lines to report on each other’s progress.
There were many candidates from different parties in the 1973 race. But I had questions; something wasn’t adding up to my ideas on who should run for President of Venezuela.
“So, God is almighty, isn’t he?” I asked Mom.
“Yes, nothing happens in the world without him moving a finger,” Mom answered.
"And the Church is here on his behalf, right?”
“Yes, the church represents him on earth,” Mom said tactfully.
“So, how come there isn’t any priest running for president? We’re all under God’s rules, aren’t we?”
“Why don’t you ask your Dad about it? I’m sure he’ll have an answer.”
I moved over to the line where Dad stood and asked him the same question.
“Well, that wouldn’t be fair, would it?” Dad answered and kept talking to the new friends he’d made on the line.
“Fair to who?” I didn't get it.
“The people who don’t believe in God.”
“Are there people who don’t believe in God?" I interrupted. “Then why are we believers?”
“Go ask your Mom about it.”
I went looking for Mom. She was almost standing in the same spot I'd left her.
“Because we’re Catholic. That’s why we believe in God,” Mom said swiftly and convincingly. She was proud of her answer. She thought that would satisfy my curiosity.
“So, non-Catholics, like Rosita from school, don’t believe in God?”
“Oh, no. They do,” Mom said and then continued her words carefully. “But they believe in another God.”
“Another God? How many Gods are there?”
“There’s only one,” Dad said – Mom had sent me back to Dad. “But worldwide, people see him in many ways and give him different names. For example, Muslims call him Allah, and Hebrews, Yahweh.”
“But why doesn’t everybody believe in only one God?” I wondered.
“Religions are as old as time, and different groups of people have had to believe in something for thousands of years,” Dad tried to explain.
“But which God do we believe in?”
“The Catholic one, naturally!” Mom answered. Dad had sent me back to her spot. “There isn’t any other! You are Catholic. I am Catholic, and so are your Dad, your grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and siblings.” Mom ran her words together to prevent me from interrupting. "We've all been Catholic for generations."
“How do we know if we’ve picked the right religion?”
“We don’t know,” Dad took this one. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”
That was when the first crack in my beliefs appeared. The fact that not everybody believed in the same things was off-putting. If it wasn’t universal, then what was the point in believing in it? Did we have to go through every single religion to find out which one was the right one? God! – pun intended – that seemed exhausting and unnecessary.
At nine, when I switched to a non-religious school, I welcomed the change as there were no nuns or visits to church. A year later, I returned to a Catholic school, San Vicente de Paúl, where I finished my primary and secondary education.
The school was run by loud, heavy smokers and socialist-leaning Spaniard priests. Their order, funded by Vincent de Paul in France in the 1600s, was about providing comfort to the poor by sharing one’s riches.
It was hard to readjust from a non-religious school to a religious one that started each day with morning prayers and had weekly religion classes. However, more than indoctrination, the classes mostly focused on the history of Christianity, which included Bible studies.
I suspended disbelief and immersed myself in the number one best-seller book of all time, trying to appreciate the stories it related. I was shocked by Cain killing Abel, unconvinced Noah had gathered two of each, dumbfounded by people switching to new languages while working on The Tower of Babel, saddened by Lot’s wife turning into salt, and outraged by Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac just because God was testing his faith. Not cool, Abe!
I lost interest after that; the Bible bored me, and if I wanted heroes, villans, betrayal, murder, and over-the-top drama, I could pick one of the six telenovelas available on TV at the time.
There was a priest in my new school who would often drop unannounced into the classroom. Father Enrique would say things that clearly flew above our heads, like his theory that "faggots" were the product of "drunk fathers". I kid you not, his words.
One day, Father Enrique came to my friend Fernando’s class, appalled by the number of sins the kids in his class had told him in confession. Instantly, my friend knew the priest was talking about him.
As any kid trying to figure out what to tell the priest before confession, Fernando remembered that in the middle of a recent tantrum, he had tapped his mother on her side for not buying him a toy. That was a worthy sin to confess, he decided.
“You’re all destined for hell,” Father Enrique told the kids. “Particularly, the son who slaps the mother.” He pointed at Fernando. There was an audible gasp in the classroom. “What kind of son hits his mother?” Fernando almost died of embarrassment. He never confessed to anything again.
In time, a new priest replaced Father Enrique. Father Melchor would also drop in unannounced to the classroom, saying hello, telling us a little parable, and reminding us to be good Christians.
Father Melchor was a psychologist, so he had a different way of selling religion. His mission was to make us better Christians, not by dogma but by common sense. In Jesus of Nazareth’s non-judgmental ways, we could find the key to living our lives.
The message started to change toward social responsibility during my high school years. Father Melchor thought the disenfranchised needed a hand from we who were more fortunate. The poor were God’s children, too, and depended on our strength and kind intervention to live decent lives. Father Melchor would say that genuine Christians share; they don’t just give away.
An authentic Christian breaks their bread in two to give one half to the hungry. They take off their jacket to give it to the one shivering outside. Handing away your food, leftovers, or old clothes would make you a good person but not necessarily a good Christian. There was no sacrifice in those actions. Sacrifice, along with non-judgment, was the key to Christian enlightenment.
Father Melchor’s teachings made sense, particularly regarding giving without judgment. One gave away because there was a need. Why the need existed was inconsequential. We were there not to judge but to alleviate. It wasn’t our concern what the panhandler did with the few coins we gave him. We could advise him and hope he’d buy food instead of alcohol, but we couldn’t put conditions on our charity.
Despite a few enlightening points of view, Father Melchor was still a Catholic priest. As such, he pushed for some ideas I found ridiculous and out of touch.
One day, during one of our regular workshops, he went on a tirade against people living in sin — you know, those who live only according to the law of the land and not God's.
“Father Melchor,” I raised my hand. “My parents only had a civil ceremony when they married. Does that mean they live in sin?”
“Yes.” He responded bluntly.
“Are you saying my siblings and me are the product of sin?”
“What do you think?” He dryly replied.
‘Well, f**k you and the bad breath you spread among us! Where the f**k do you get off talking shit like that?’ The thought crossed my mind, but in a split second, I imagined Father Melchor calling my mother, the concubine, to lecture her for not teaching me manners but mostly for being a harlot.
“They love each other, and they love my siblings and me, too,” was all I said.
As the years went by, it became hard to believe, much less accept, the dogma of an institution that expected me to do as it said without giving me a chance to ask questions, understand, and exercise my free will. Like my grandfather, I began to visit church less frequently, but I never really walked away from it.
In my early twenties, I went through a brief Catholic renaissance.
Near the small town of Cúa in Miranda State in Venezuela, people reported that the Virgin Mary was appearing. For Catholics, it is not strange to hear stories of Mary popping up across the world.
Of all the cast of characters from the Catholic Church, Mary was the one who kept busy, working hard for 2000 years to bring more people closer to her son, Jesus. In that time it’s claimed Mary has popped up around the world some 20,000 times, while all the men involved in the Biblical episode basically retired after ascending to heaven’s boys' club and gaining their sainthood. Not one of them has bothered to appear to anyone on earth in all these years.
Several times, I visited the privately owned farm where the miracle reportedly happened. Although I stood a few times before the grotto where devouts claimed they could see her, I never saw her. While people around me would see her clearly, including her shrug, halo, and accompanying cherubs, I’d squint and try to see if the spots I saw at the end of a tree-framed path were Mary or just my anaemia acting up. I was disappointed. Maybe I wasn’t that special or didn’t believe enough.
However, that experience didn't affect my admiration for the Madonna as a historical figure. What a courageous kid, barely 16, to carry, bear, and raise a child who would later claim to be God's son.
I was sold the idea that Mary was an agent willing to represent my best interest before her son and his father – the same man who impregnated her – without her consent, I must add. Using Mary as a conduit seemed like a good deal at the time. While in other Christian denominations, devouts had to reach out to Jesus on their own, Mary offered to cut in the line for me to meet her son.
It was also during this time that I started going to confession occasionally.
By the late 1980s, the Church in Venezuela had gotten rid of the confessional booth. In this case, the priest sat in a small room with a step to kneel next to him. It was a face-to-face confession. I went in with a young priest who had recently arrived at the parish
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a while since my last confession. There is not much to say, though. I haven’t done harm or been mean to anyone. On the contrary, I’ve helped friends, respected my elders, and tried to be good. Nothing that sinful, as you may see.”
I started to stand up, sure that I’d get the usual Hail Marys and Our Lord Prayers, but the young father stopped me.
“Not so fast, my son. Tell me more.”
“More?”
“Yes. There are many bad things we do, which we don’t realise are sinful.”
Was he for real? Father Antonio, on the other side of the Church, would have got me out of his confessional room in a jiffy. I should have gone with him.
“Such as...”
“The things we shouldn’t do, like masturbation.”
“Wha … What’s that again?” I couldn’t believe he had asked me that.
“Masturbation is considered…”
“Stop.” I may have raised my right index finger for effect. “Yes, I do. I go to town at least five times a week and then some. But I’m not claiming that as a sin. How about you give me my penance for the other sins, and we’ll call it a day?”
I left the confessional and didn't even bother praying for my imaginary absolution. That was the last time I told a mere mortal my wrongdoings, hoping for ethereal, non-confirmable, fabricated forgiveness. It seemed to be meaningless.
That was it for me and Catholicism. There was no need to revisit it, and although I will always admire Jesus of Nazareth, and be inspired by his mother's resilience, when it came to beliefs and religious practices, everything seemed convoluted and filled with human-made rules that made no sense.
When I left Venezuela in my twenties, I forgot about religion. I sometimes prayed but never went to Mass. When I coupled up, things changed a bit. My boyfriend was Anglican and went to Mass every Sunday. Occasionally, he’d drop hints that he would love it if I accompanied him. He thought I’d like it. Many lapsed Catholics had been accepted at his church with open arms, without judgment. He sold it as being like the Catholic Church but without the guilt.
It was sweet of him to want me to feel part of something, but I’d tell him I wasn’t a lapsed Catholic. This guilt thing I’d only heard American ex-Catholics talk about had nothing to do with me leaving the church. Organised religion didn’t interest me. I was sure I would have walked out of any other religion, too.
I’d explain that allowing an organised group to tell me what life is all about and give me direction on how to live so I could get to heaven after death, where a capricious and unpredictable God ruled, wasn’t appealing. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t care less how the world, humans, and animals were created. It was clear we were the product of evolution, and I couldn’t care less about what came after death.
Of course, I never went as far as to deny the existence of God. But I’d make the point that no one had a clue of what God was all about, and anyone claiming to have answers was a charlatan, and that included any church.
Nevertheless, I started to attend my boyfriend’s church occasionally. But as inclusive, lovely and peaceful as it was, it did nothing for me. Service was long and monotonous; there were many rules, and they kept asking for money pledges. That annoyed me; I thought we were the ones who should have charged a fee for the expectation to go on promoting Christian mythology in our daily lives.
As I grew older, I decided if I ever reconnected with God, it would have to be on a personal level, on my own terms. It couldn’t be regulated by rules created by others over thousands of years.
If anything, I thought that Greek mythology had a more interesting take on life and death than any other monotheistic religion. Yes, the deities loved meddling in people’s lives, putting mortals to the test. But the results were swift. The few who succeeded got their rewards right away. For those who failed, Hades opened his domain’s doors instantly, and you didn’t have to wait until the end of your days to learn if you had passed the test. Also, to be fair, you couldn’t expect me to believe that a man had walked on water, raised the dead, and resurrected, but ask me not to consider the possibility of Prometheus creating humans from clay.
By the time I met the young Mormons on that cold late afternoon, I'd had my mind made up for years, but I wish I had told them how much I appreciated their work.
I do realise that religion is often all some people have and the only thing they know. No other institution, public or private, has made its chief mission to teach the less fortunate a philosophy of life and an ethics code.
I wouldn’t call myself an Atheist because the idea of God’s existence still ignites my imagination. I may be an Agnostic, and that’s okay with me. If there’s anything beyond this life, I’ll get to know it eventually. You see, when it all ends, I'd rather be surprised than disappointed.
Luis Portillo leads the video content production team at TVNZ.
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