Albertus
Bagus Laksana SJ, Journeying to God in
Communion with the Other. A comparative theological study of the Muslim and
Catholic pilgrimage traditions in South Central Java and their contributions to
the Catholic theology of communion sanctorum, Doctoral Dissertation, Boston
College, 2011, 663 pages. UMI Dissertation Publishing no 3499300.
Indonesian
Muslims, especially in the Central Javanese plains, cherish a large number of
shrines. Some are small, but there are also elaborate monuments that attract
thousands of pilgrims once in 35 days, at the concurrence of a Muslim day in
the schedule of the 7-days week and a traditional Javanese day within a week of
five days. This calendar already shows the characteristic of these Muslim
shrines: they are also related to pre-Islamic traditions and important figures.
Laksana gives detailed historical and modern descriptions of three Muslim
shrines in his first part. They were created over a long period of time: the
shrine of Tembayat is centred on the grave of the first preacher of Islam in
the region, around 1550, while the shrine of Turgo Hill is a quite recent
‘invention’ of the 1980s. The second part (187-426) is a substantial
description of three Catholic shrines, all created between the 1930s and the
1990s.
The first is a Catholic place of pilgrimage, called Sendang Sono (Pond
of the Sono Tree). This is an adaptation of an existing well, high in the central
mountains not far from the ancient Buddhist Borobudur temple. In this well the
first larger group of Javanese Catholics were baptized by Father Frans van Lith
in 1904 and already in the 1930s a stream of pilgrims started.
In Ganjuran, not
far from the southern beach of Java (traditionally a sacred place where the
Goddess of the Southern Ocean is venerated), a shrine was built in 1930 for the
Sacred Heart of Jesus in a style that was more or less a copy of the Hindu
shrines near Prambanan. The initiator was a pious and rich Dutch owner of a
sugar plantation. After 1950 this place was more or less neglected, but in 1988
the Indonesian priest Gregorius Utomo started a revival of the shrine that was
very successful and since then the celebration of the procession in June
(Sunday of the Feast of Holy Heart of Jesus) has become one of the big events
among Catholics of Indonesia. Water was found at the place of the shrine and
some miracles took place.
The third Catholic shrine is in the town of Muntilan
where the first missionary Frans van Lith, the first martyr, diocesan priest
Sanjaya, and some other ‘ancestors’ for Catholicism in Java have been buried in
graves that resemble the Javanese Muslim graves. In 1935 it was forbidden by
the Church authorities to pay visits to these graves, but after the 1960s they
were gradually opened for pilgrims and in the 1990s a museum for the early
beginnings of Catholicism in Java was built, a monument for the pioneering
missionary and for the martyr of 1948 (who died amidst the war of independence
against Dutch colonialism). Laksana pays much attention to the hybridity
between Javanese-Muslim traditions and Catholicism. This is not only found in
the architecture and some rituals (burning of incense and offerings of flowers
on the graves, holy water to be taken home, pilgrimage as a method to seek
material gain, marriage partners, pregnancy, healing from diseases), but also
in the uttermost purpose of pilgrimage that he defines as a quest for tentrem (peacefulness) and slamet (integral wellbeing). I found it
striking that these are all this-worldly goals. The Virgin Mary plays an important
role in the shrine of Sendang Sono, also called ‘the Lourdes of Indonesia’, but
the person of Jesus remains quite vague and not elaborated even in the Sacred
Heart shrine of Ganjuran. Is this a reflection of the Muslim environment where
an emphasis on Jesus as son of God is not really appreciated? The third part of the dissertation wants to
apply the proposal of Francis Clooney for a comparative theology to the two
series of places of pilgrimage. This is done in two concluding chapters:
chapter 8 elaborates the conflicts (Catholics as a remnants of colonialism and
as traditionally anti-Islamic) but also the possibilities of sharing a
spiritual milieu, a common culture of devotion. Laksana considers a true
Indonesian Christianity as the result of ‘religio-cultural negotiations and
interactions between different entities such as Islam and Christianity’ (440). From
the first foreign missionaries this acceptance of Javanese elements has been a
consistent strategy, but during the last decades it developed bottom up, slowly
and in a natural way. The places of pilgrimage are also the places to remember
the pioneers and saints in Javanese Catholic history. Laksana notes with some
regret and envy that ‘in a rather stark contrast to Roman Catholicism, Sunni
Islam has no official list of saints’ (490). Therefore the role of saints can
develop more easily. In a very long last chapter 9 (504-596) this comparative
theology is further developed in the idea of communio sanctorum. Already on p. 468 Laksana compared the Muslim
idea of isnād (some kind of
‘apostolic tradition’ in preserving the memory of the Prophet and the first
generation of faithful) to the concept of the more general communion of the
faithful. In the last chapter we are no longer in Indonesia, but in a broad
group of Christian theologians (especially Elizabeth Johnson, but also Louis
Massignon, Yves Congar, Jürgen Moltmann, Henri Corbin) and Muslim mystics like
the great master ‘Ibn ‘Arabī, besides Al-Hallāj, Al-Ghazzālī and others. There
is still an echo of Pope Benedict XVI about his visit to the Great Mosque of
Amman, Jordan, where he stated that all places of worship ‘from the ancient to
the modern, the magnificent to the humble, all point to the divine, to the
Transcendent One, to the Almighty’ (438).
In the concluding chapter Laksana
again and again stresses that ‘double visiting’ (pilgrimage to a sacred place
of another religion) will enrich and deepen the understanding of one’s
identity, will produce peace of heart, but a Catholic will always pray as a
Catholic. Here I had two basic questions that I like to illustrate with two
personal anecdotes about these shrines. The first question is about the
anti-pilgrimage tradition in both religions. Protestant Christians, but also
quite many Catholics as well as many Muslims have fundamental problems with
this practice of popular religion. In the mid-1980s I was teaching at an
Islamic University in Yogyakarta. With a Muslim colleague I visited the grave
of Tembayat. Below the hill where the saint is buried, a row of women sold
incense and flowers. I bought a sachet. My Muslim colleague, a modernist,
reproached me: ‘We come here for observation, not for participation.’ I replied
that I was brought up in a Catholic tradition and loved pilgrimages with all
the folklore. He smiled, but could not understand this mixture with a Western
Catholic. This opposition to pilgrimages and to popular religion in general in
many circles of Christians and Muslims is fully absent here. Is comparative
theology some kind of ‘seek and you will find?’ but only after seeking your
favourites also with others? The second and even more basic question is about
the sometimes quite artificial division between the major religions. There is
perhaps no other country in the world where this division has become so strict.
The Indonesian constitution has the formula that the nation is built ‘upon the
belief in the One and Almighty Divinity’. This means in practice that atheists
and heretics are illegal in the country. For acts like marriage, but also to
get an identity card or a drivers’ licence one most declare one’s religion with
a choice out of six recognised religions (Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic,
Protestant, Confucian). There is some protest in the country about this
simplistic reduction of religion to six big players only, but I have the
feeling that some churches and the Council of Muslim Scholars love this state
protection of their monopoly. I once received in Yogyakarta the request of a
parish priest to support a good Catholic and jobless carpenter. The man did
some reparations in our house and built a fine miniature Javanese house for our
Christmas nativity scene. Later I met this ‘pious Catholic’ again among many
thousands in the Muslim shrine of Tembayat. He felt ashamed and only said to
me: ‘Oh sir, I still have no job!’ Shrines, sacred wells, healers, often are
not restricted to one major and official religion, but escape these too simple
categories. The fine book and thorough and sophisticated description by Laksana
is also the starting point for further questions about religious identity and
loyalty. – Karel Steenbrink, IIMO, Utrecht University. (This review was originally written for the journal Exchange and you are invited to read the whole issue of this academic journal of our institute).
