Oh, before I forget: being counted

[afuna]

The census taker came by earlier this week, and I managed to discreetly ask to note down my religion as "none", instead of the assumed Roman Catholic. The census taker gave me this weird look, and asked to make sure she hadn't misheard, but otherwise noted it down with no protest.

I'm still culturally catholic, but I'd like to approach religion on my own terms, not just as something I was raised with, and don't believe in.

I feel good about having a tiny official note somewhere, saying that I'm not catholic. I don't think proud is appropriate for how I feel, because it's much less in-your-face than that. But: relaxed; not misrepresenting myself; not misrepresented. Yeah :)

(My mom would be disappointed if she knew that thirteen years of catholic education just managed to drive me away from religion, but I've always known/she's always suspected. The only thing that's changed is maybe I'm contributing to statistics which says that not everyone in the Philippines is Catholic -- and I know it is possible for good catholics to not agree with everything the Church says, but that's not where I am.

Also, we have Muslims, and we have many religious minorities, but somehow everyone seems to still believe that the Philippines is still 98% Catholic. I guess one person subtracted from the list is a tiny thing, but I no longer want to be miscounted through my own apathy.)

Comments

[starlurker]

I can relate to that. I'm agnostic, and the looks my mom's friends give me and my mom whenever it comes up is a combo platter of irritating/patronizing/disappointing. It's hard to disassociate yourself from Catholicism when you're a Filipino since the culture is so deeply entrenched in it.

In other words, yay for small victories!

[afuna]

Ahahaha, true that! I used to not have a chip on my shoulder about it, but then people just kept trying to convince me back to Catholicism, and it was so totally ridiculous, I ended up being all defensive against any religious authority figures.

But now I'm away from all that (except the personal family stuff! whoo!), and I can just relax in being secular. Ehehehe :)

(And sometimes it's so hard to even *bring it up*. Hooray for you too <3)

[pauamma]

I take it there's no "None of your business" answer?

[pne]

The second question is whether "none of your business" is lumped in with "Roman Catholic" when statistics are aggregated, if the assumption is really that everyone is RC by default if they don't explicitly state anything else.

[pauamma]

Ah, yes. Maybe "disestablishmentarian" would be a better annswer, then. Or "discordian". :-)

[afuna]

*snickers*

*goes with old boring "none"* :-)

[afuna]

Hmm, I don't know. It's an unofficial assumption, so I mean, what the census taker said to me when she came to the religious section was, "Religion... Roman Catholic, right? Is there anyone who isn't?" And while saying that, she was already writing "RC" on the blanks *G*

I suspect that (well I hope that) the computer would treat a form field as "unknown" rather than RC, though.