In the minds of many, the word ‘heresy’ is one that brings out much grisly history. For Filipinos immersed in Hispanized Catholic history, heresy is associated with witch burnings, the Spanish Inquisition and the auto-da-fé, the Cathars of the Languedoc, and even the purging of our own ancestral anito in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It is surprising that ‘heresy’, from the Greek airesis, originally just meant ‘choice’. The Latin transliteration, haeresis, was the one popularized by Saint Irenaeus in the first anti-heretical work, Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies). In this work, Irenaeus defended an early Christian church whose doctrine was challenged left and right by Gnostics.
How challenged? Gnostics, in this sense, were those who ‘chose’ certain beliefs from the Christian faith, while rejecting others. This was a stark contrast to the faithful submission of the early Church to all beliefs provided by the Church’s magisterium and apostolic succession.
The heretics, in choosing parts of a faith, saw themselves as enlightened souls with secret wisdom (gnosis). Gnostic secessionists claimed that their beliefs were ‘purer’ than the rest of Christian society.
Heresy was just defined by choice, by people seeking to be enlightened, seeking to be perfect. Heretics defied doctrine, and were often led by heresiarchs: that is, heretics who had founded, supported and led heresies and heretic communities.
For this column, let us not confine ourselves to this context of heresy. The Catholic Church has long foregone its stance on burning heretics and has asked pardon for the unjust brutalities Catholic militants imposed on infidels. You would not expect heretic burnings to continue to exist today, but they do; not necessarily burnings, and not all are necessarily against the Catholic Church.
You would see that the Gnostic heretics were those who were originally part of the Christian Church, but then broke away after reaching an intimate degree of familiarity with the faith. I am of the mind that this dynamic works for any institution. Families, schools, corporations and the government can all have their share of ‘heretics’. How?
One can be a heretic simply by choosing: choosing to be purer, choosing to view oneself as seized by visions, a mystic of wizened soul and a bearer of secret knowledge. Arrogant, haughty, judging and perfect. If you know more than you are supposed to, you are a heretic. If you seek to be purer than the flawed man, you are a heretic.
By writing this, a disclaimer: I do not advocate heresy against my beloved Church. It is wrong; it is a sin and grave anathema.
But guess what, I am a heretic. Worse, I feel like a heresiarch.
I realized this after two years of writing for this publication. As a University writer you become intimate with the workings of the University because your job forces you to analyze. You become exposed to the systems, and you begin to appreciate how the University works around you. You get to know the best professors professor and/ or administrator, the kindest guard, and who the most secretive secretary.
In interviewing these people to write a story, you learn more about them. On rare occasions an administrator might treat you to coffee and talk with you to learn more about you. You sort of become friends. There is trust. You know his problems, and you try to present it in the paper as balanced as you can. You’re not out there to bash him, but what you really want is so that people understand, and that people know what they should be getting, be it from administrative policy or community insight.
But then even after the publication of your article, nothing happens. People might talk about your article, even accuse you of poor writing skills, plagiarism and sensationalism, but nothing really happens. As a writer, you describe a phenomenon. The action should come from people from, say, the USG, or administration.
I fear that my heretical tendencies are reaching all time highs because of this. Because what I write about is taken with a grain of salt, if taken at all, I start to view myself as someone who is ‘purer’. And it’s not a conscious effort. After gnashing my teeth in analysis, my work has trained me, sadly, to quickly form judgments about things, about others. I am starting to ‘see’, starting to form my own ‘choices’ and not accept things as easily as I should.
I am not submitting as I should be. I am questioning. I am rejecting certain teachings I, believe, possess some strange gnosis and certain wisdom which if let out through my writings would put certain institutions under heathen fire.
In this secular 21st century society you can call it doubt, skepticism, cynicism even. But I choose to see it as heresy, because there is in the system around me a promise of hope, similar to the original religious context of heresy; a doctrine that abides by Faith, Service and Communion. De La Salle University and its administrators, faculty and student leaders should all be working together in the direction of that mission without compromising too much of what it has.
To ensure that, heretics like me exist. We exist to check and balance something that we have been rooted in, grown to love, grown to hate, grown to question, even if we have not chosen to submit to it blindly. If by our knowledge we become haughty, we become threats to the institution, then be not alarmed. The unity of the early Christian Church was only strengthened when it defended itself successfully against heresies. The effective subjugation of divisive elements only strengthens the whole.
Provided, of course, that its defense is effective enough to combat the heresy. If its remedies are weak, shallow, or insubstantial, then the heresy, the anathema, may very well prevail, and that is an end that not even we heretics seek.
