“True Catholics”: Religion and Identity in Western Flores1

Maribeth Erb
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

Religion, Identity and Violence in Contemporary Indonesia

“When everyone has converted to one religion or other, some claimed, then a general
war would erupt between religious groups in the nation. …., Indonesian religious policy
is viewed not as a strategy for national unification, but rather as a divisive instrument
promoting social and cosmic upheaval.” (Atkinson 1987:179)

In October 2002, the International Crisis Group released an “Indonesia Briefing”

about the current tensions on the island of Flores (ICG 2002). They argued that the
situation on Flores must be understood as “symptoms of” a wider national picture of
communal violence that has erupted in various parts of Indonesia over the past four years,
and is potentially waiting to explode in others. Flores, by no means in the international
news for its religious and ethnic conflict as some other places in Indonesia, still has seen
numerous cases of, fortunately still fairly well contained, violent outbreaks, since the
resignation of President Suharto and the end of the “New Order”2 in 1998. A
predominantly Catholic island in a nation of a majority of Muslims, Flores is seen by

1 The research on which this paper is based has been conducted at various times over the past 20 years.
Research in Manggarai, western Flores was conducted in 1983-1986 under the auspices of the Indonesian
Council of Sciences (LIPI) and the sponsorship of Nusa Cendana University, with funding by a Social
Science Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Grant for Improving Doctoral
Dissertation Research. Subsequent research in 1992-1993 was partially funded by the Vatican, and
sponsored by LIPI. Research was done between July-October 2000 and May-July 2001 under the auspices
of LIPI with the sponsorship of Universitas Nusa Cendana in Kupang, and funding from the National
University of Singapore grant # R111-000-022-112/007. Many thanks to these institutions for their
assistance. I want to thank my research assistants, Drs. Yosep Jelahat from the Department of Sociology,
Nusa Cendana, Ardie Agus, a freelance guide in Ruteng, and Marcel Djeer an undergraduate student in
Universitas Indonesia. Many thanks also to many, many priests who I have spoken to over the years, who
have provided many insights into the life of the Church in Manggarai, among these must be mentioned
most especially, P. Stanislaw Mucek, SVD, P. Stanislaw Ograbeck, SVD, P. Stanislaw Wyparlo SVD, P.
Stephanus Wrosz SVD, and P. Jan Olenski SVD. Special thanks also to Rufino Kant, Fitus Tamor and Agus
Jehadut, Romanus Beni and Wilhelmus Anggal for many stimulating discussions. The ideas and comments
on the events discussed in this paper, however, are my own responsibility.
2 The “New Order” is the term used for the period of rule of President Soeharto, from 1966-1998. Many
people felt that this time period was a time of considerable centralization, and the center was in many ways
Java.

1
many of its inhabitants to be an island ripe as a target for attention and penetration by
radical Muslims. Many of the conflicts that have occurred in Flores over the past several
years have had nothing to do with “religion” or “ethnicity” however; for example in
western Flores, the part of Flores I know best, land wars between kin, conflicts between
political rivals, demonstrations against the government, or against those seen to be
exploitative in the new “reform era” since the end of the New Order, has accounted for
most of the violence and conflicts that have taken place.
The beginning of a more religious complexion to the conflicts in Western Flores
can be seen in the incident that took place in Ruteng, the capital of Manggarai (the
westernmost regency), in July 2000, when two Javanese peddlers were murdered by
angry mobs, after being forcibly extracted from their protective sanctuary in the police
station. The police station was burned, and all non-Manggaraian police forced to flee the
town. The peddlers were accused of disseminating rabies, a disease that has grown to
epidemic proportions in Flores since the mid-1990’s, by throwing bread on the road to be
consumed by passing dogs. The incident sparked a massive riot, where thousands of
people gathered around the police station demanding their release. The distrust was as
much aimed at the expectations that the police and the courts (positions mostly not in the
hands of local Manggaraians), would allow the accused to slip quietly away upon receipt
of bribes, as much as it was aimed specifically at distrust of Javanese, or Muslims in
general. A few days later in another Manggaraian town, a Padang coffee shop/restaurant
(the owners were Muslims from Minangkabau, Sumatra) and the police station were also
burned, again on the pretext that people were plotting to disseminate diseases in Flores.
Arriving in Ruteng a week after these incidents, it was clear to me, from the stories that
people told, that there was a lot of fear associated specifically with ideas that radical
Muslims were attempting to infiltrate and attack Flores.
The possibility of religious conflict breaking out into a violent war has been
slowly gaining ascendancy in the minds of many Florenese in the past several years.
People hear about, sometimes from people who have experienced it directly, the religious
conflicts that have erupted into volatile and bloody clashes in East Timor3, in Ambon, in
Poso in Central Sulawesi, conflicts specifically pitting Muslims against Christians. They
3 East Timor being predominantly Catholic, people in Flores have always seen military oppression of that
ex-province within a religious framework.

2
are fearful that it will happen, that someone will try to make it happen, in Flores as well.
Fears of plots against Flores, “the Catholic island”, were already fomenting in the last
decade of the Soeharto era, This was a time that had come to be increasingly dominated
by a more radical Muslim, anti-Christian agenda (Tule 2000, Aditjondro 2001, Hefner
2002), concretely represented by the burning of over 300 churches throughout Indonesia,
and what seemed like little concern on the part of the government to do much about it.
Just the rumors of Church burnings in November, 1998 were enough to spur retaliatory
riots and mosque burnings in Kupang, the capital of the province of NTT4, where Flores
is located, (see Tule 2000) even though no Churches have as yet been burnt in the whole
of the province. Shortly after those incidents rumors flew in the coastal town of Labuan
Bajo in west Flores, that various churches in other coastal towns in West Flores had been
burnt (coastal towns have a large minority of Muslims). Priests worked hard to keep
people under control, cautioning against taking any action. It turned out that all of the
rumors were false, and were clearly spread to attempt to trigger more conflict.
It is thus not surprising, given all of the recent incidents in the region, in the
nation, and indeed globally, that people in Flores, as indeed Christian Indonesians in
general, have come increasingly to feel as if they are “under siege”5. The incident that
perhaps best sums this up is the reaction in July 2002, when a Protestant man carried a
Eucharistic host (believed by Catholics to be the body of Christ) out of a Church in
Maumere in Eastern Flores. This kind of incident, read as a direct attack on an object
sacred to Catholics (although the intentions of the protagonists are not always clear), has
occurred before in Flores, but has proliferated many-fold in the past several years.
Recently, however, instead of being interpreted as the sign of antagonism between
Catholics and Protestants in the province6 (since many of the incidents, as the recent July

4 NTT- “Nusa Tenggara Timur”, the islands of the southeast, often referred to in older literature as the
“Lesser Sundas”, comprising of Flores, Timor, Sumba, and the smaller islands around and within this
triangular region. This province constitutes a majority of Christians, both Protestant and Catholic.
5 The ICG report, p. 8 says “suspicions of a central government plot to promote Islam has produced a kind
of siege mentality”.
6 As Flores is primarily Catholic, West Timor is primarily Protestant. The proportion though is not
equivalent. There are far more Catholics in Protestant Timor, than there are Protestants in Catholic Flores.
However many positions of power in the provincial government have in the past been held by Protestants.
Foreign Catholic priests have related to me the difficulties that they had had in the past dealing with visa
and other immigration matters in the provincial capital of Kupang, where Protestant civil servants
purposely gave them difficulties in arranging their administrative matters.

3
2002 one in Maumere, were instigated by Protestants), the incident sparked off
antagonism against Muslims (ICG:2-4). Over a hundred people, egged on by para-
military groups set off to burn down a mosque, and were only stopped by the intervention
of a priest. This incident can be read as a sign of the times, the increasing polarization of
Muslim and Christian in Indonesia (and perhaps globally), and the readiness to read every
seemingly hostile religious incident against this polarized landscape. As Philip Tule
(2000) has suggested, a “culture of tolerance” in Flores and elsewhere in NTT, where
Christians and Muslims have always lived side by side with little trouble, often being
members of the same family, is being increasingly eroded.
This increasing predominance of a “Catholic” identity, and the reading of current
events against a religious landscape, it can be argued is something that is being
“produced”. It is a well argued theoretical point that “identity”, is not something that is
inherent, something that is a part of our “essential being”, nor can the whole concept of
“identity” even be said to be significant or relevant in all cultures (Handler 1994).
“Identity” is something that in general has a history, associated with the modern politics
of the nation state, and specific “identities” are shaped by historical circumstances, that
make it advantageous for one reason or another for people to proclaim and adhere to
particular “identities” at particular times. As Nils Bubandt has argued in his examination
of the religious conflicts in Maluku (the Moluccas), in order for “religion to become the
marker of one’s identity and the source of violent behaviour, it had to achieve hegemonic
status and this hegemonic status had to be produced” (2000:23, emphasis in original). He
argues that this production is taking place within the local and national media, as well as
through various cultural and religious lenses, which take and shape events to be
understood in particular ways. In addition to this point, that religious identity is produced
and is currently an increasingly important marker of who one is in contemporary
Indonesia, is the related point that Indonesian Christians have a unique Christian identity
that must be understood for what it is. Loraine Aragon (2000) has recently contested the
common idea that Christians in Indonesia, especially those in the villages, are just
“nominal Christians”, and that their religious practices are essentially still indigenous
animist. Indonesian Christians (of whatever denomination) should not be understood as
“deficient Christians” she argues, “but simply distinctive ones” (2000:9).

4
 I would like to weave these two related points into the argument of this paper.
Manggaraian people of Western Flores have a strong identification with the Catholic
religion. Recently a friend, who is not what would be called a “practicing” Catholic,
(since he does not regularly attend mass or partake of the sacraments), stated to me, “I am
a true Catholic”. The context in which this statement could be made is what interests me
here. I believe that the wider context of sectarian violence in Indonesia plays some role in
the strong identification with religion at the present moment in Indonesia. However I do
not think that it is that simple. Illuminated against this background of a broader picture of
religious formation and affiliation in Indonesia, I want to look at the history of the
attribution of the Catholic religion and Catholic identity in Flores, and more specifically
in Manggarai, and the recent question of revival of cultural identity, to attempt to answer
the question, what does it mean to a Manggaraian to be a “true Catholic”.

The Transitions of Religions in Indonesia

“The religious charter of Indonesia is a cultural model for inclusiveness; in a profound

way, however, its application is exclusive” (Atkinson 1987:177).

“If Ambonese customs and beliefs would not have been subjected to … systematic
destruction…and people on both sides would still have considered themselves as
Ambonese first and Moslem or Christian second… the pela concept could have had some
soothing influence on the conflict”, Bartels 2000, quoted in Aditjondro 2001:107.

One can attribute the outbreak of religious violence in Indonesia over the past
several years, partially to a policy of religious “creation” that dominated the New Order
policy towards religion. Interestingly Atkinson (quoted at the beginning of this paper) had
already shown 15 years ago how some people in Indonesia7 thought that affiliation with a
“religion” (by which was meant one which was officially recognized by the state) would
lead to major conflicts, and not to national harmony and peace. Conceptually one can
argue that the heightened association of religion as an important identity, which has been
part of Indonesian political policy, has also been accompanied by a shift in the whole way
that the issue of “affiliation” itself has come to be viewed. As Bubandt (2000) has
thoughtfully argued, policies which forbade religious, ethnic and racial affiliations to be
7 It is perhaps not surprising that these people she quotes come from Central Sulawesi, not far from the
recent outbreaks of violence in Poso, between Christians and Muslims.

5
the rallying point for political campaigning (referred to by the acronym SARA, suku-
cultural affiliation, agama- religious affiliation, ras, racial affiliation, and antargolongan-
divisions between groups) has actually been partially responsible for producing “religious
identity”. From a policy created from the top to signpost tabooed political identities,
SARA has been transformed in post New Order Indonesia into a “descriptive term
employed by the media to describe supposedly long repressed, primordial forces being
stirred by political….. puppeteers” (Bubandt 2000: 23). Predominant among these, he
argues, has been religion.
In a comprehensive and important book published in the late 1980’s, a number of
thoughtful Indonesianists showed precisely how SARA identities, particularly that of
religion, were not “primordial” forces at all (Kipp and Rodgers 1987). The book
explored a number of important issues about religion in Indonesia; the complex history,
of many external “world religions” entering the archipelago over the past two millennia;
how people embraced these religions and transformed them to suit their own cultural
frameworks; and how these religions have provided one means of linking various peoples
in the archipelago with people in other parts of the globe. One of the important arguments
in that book that has particular relevance for thinking about religious identity in present
day Indonesia, is how religion has most importantly been politically “created” in recent
Indonesian history, and has come to be produced as a pre-eminent “identity”.
As Atkinson in that volume argues, part of the political nature of Indonesian
religious policy has had to do with the way that it has been used to create boundaries.
This underscores the fact that religion in Indonesia has developed in conjunction with
political changes, and the formation of the nation state, a highly inclusive, yet exclusive
animal (Anderson 1991). The influence of modern nation state politics on the ideas of
identity as a bounded, inherent and exclusive entity cannot be over stated (Handler 1994).
Lowenhaupt Tsing (1987) in that volume points out that religion has a fairly long history
of being a highly political force in Indonesia. Islam in pre-independence Indonesia was a
“key idiom for political mobilization”, with various reformist elements in Islam and
nationalist ideology and fervor emerging and growing together (1987:197, see also
Hefner 2001). During the Japanese occupation both of these movements were encouraged
and flourished. After independence, and with pressures from some Muslim groups to

6
create an “Islamic state”, religion kept its highly political position, as one way to define
opposition to the creation of an Islamic state. This can best be encapsulated in the way
religion was interestingly handled by the first president Sukarno. Lowenhaupt Tsing
quotes Sukarno’s “Birth of Pancasila” speech of 1945 to show that he encouraged
religious competition, urging religious groups (especially those opposed to an Islamic
State) to work “as if their life depended on it”, to mobilize supporters, get their members
into Parliament, and fight for the regulations of the state to be favorable towards and in
agreement with their religion (1987:271). Pancasila, the five principles of Indonesian
nationhood8, perhaps best sums this up. Belief in God is the first “sila” (principle), and as
Atkinson states (1987:177), the choice of the word Tuhan, (Indonesian word for “God”),
rather than Allah, (the Islamic word for God)9, created an underlying basis for
monotheism, at the same time allowing the choice of religion. This became encoded by
the Ministry of Religion in 1952 when “religion”, agama, was defined as consisting of
followers of a prophet, having a holy book, and international recognition. “World
religions” in Indonesia that fit this model (such as Islam, Protestant Christianity, Roman
Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism) were proclaimed officially agama under their
policy (Lowenhaupt Tsing 1987:197).
From the beginning of the Indonesian nation state, therefore, there was a certain
pressure to identify with a religion, defined by the state as such. The pressure became
even greater with the aborted coup attempt of 1965, blamed on Communists, and the
subsequent massacre of unknown numbers (estimates range from 500,000 to 2 milllion)
of people known to be or accused of being communist party members or sympathizers.
The issue of belonging to a religion, therefore, became especially critical, in that more
than ever “one’s life depended on it”. In this way people who had had either tenuous
relations with the official religions, or had had no clear connection with one, came to
affiliate themselves with a “religion”. In addition religion in Indonesia, as both Atkinson
and Lowenhaupt Tsing show, came to be identified with a status of “developed” and
“civilized”, vis-a-vis people who were considered “pagan”, and did not have one. Various
different peoples in Indonesia who were defined by the state as “suku terasing” (“isolated

8 1) Belief in God, 2) nationalism, 3) humanitarianism, 4) social justice, and 5) democracy

9 In Catholic liturgy in Indonesia, both terms are often used together, “Tuhan Allah”, as well as the single
terms Tuhan or Allah.

7
peoples”) mobilized to get what they saw as their traditional beliefs and practices
recognized as a religion, or affiliated under the umbrella of another official religion
(Weinstock 1987, Volkman 1987, Atkinson 1987, Hoskins 1987, Lowenhaupt Tsing
1987). In this way some “religions” swelled their numbers, and many Christian religious
denominations in Indonesia found this a time of great “harvest” (Myers 1998, Webb
1986)
Inevitably the swelling of the ranks of “official religions” meant that people came
to accept these religions often in their own unique way. Hoskins shows how in Sumba,
for example, indigenous peoples at first accepted Christianity as another kind of spiritual
practice, that had a different locality, than their practices associated with “rock and tree”.
Ancestral spirits demanded certain types of offerings at particular places, however if one
was not in those places, then the appropriate practices could not be done. Christianity
therefore came to be recognized as a far more mobile religion, that of “book and pen”,
which could be carried with one to entirely different contexts in towns and cities
(Hoskins 1987:146). Subsequently, with a dissatisfaction with the way Christian
missionaries accepted their version of spirituality, some Sumbanese started to reform
their own religious practices into something that looked more like an official religion,
cultivating their own “book and pen”, as it were. In this way, out of the mutual appraisals
and re-appraisals, indigenous religious practices and beliefs, and the practices and beliefs
associated with established, “official”, world religions, underwent multiple kinds of
transitions all over Indonesia.

The Making of True Catholics: Flores and the Catholic Church

“The Florenese live on an island where ‘even the trees, rocks and birds are Catholic’”,
Webb 1990:1).

The history of Catholicism on Flores is a long one, and although Flores was one
of the islands that experienced some violent massacres of suspected communists in 1966
(though not as many as in Java or Bali), that certainly affected people’s relationship with
religion, this cannot be said to be one of the main reasons why Catholicism was adopted

8
in Flores10. While in eastern Flores Catholicism was the first “world religion” to reach its
shores, western Flores has a different history, having fallen under the control of various
Sultanates on other islands in earlier centuries, meaning that Islam has older, though in
most places in western Flores not very deep, roots.
Tracing the history of the Catholic Church in eastern Flores, Prior (1988) relates
how earlier Portuguese colonial efforts facilitated the bringing of Catholicism to the far
eastern islands of Asia in the 16th century. Dominican missionaries were active in eastern
Indonesia throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, but with the eventual ascendancy of the
Dutch, the Portuguese presence in eastern Flores, and the missionary work protected by
it, ended (1988:6-11). Because no locals were ordained priests at that time, with the
waning of Portuguese control the 15,000 to 20,000 people baptized Catholic and their
descendents, were eventually cut off from administering priests and the sacraments of the
Church for almost two centuries (Prior 1988:8). In the mid 19th century the Portuguese
and Dutch signed a treaty, whereby the Portuguese gave up all claim to Flores and West
Timor (Prior 1988:17); but in this treaty the Dutch agreed to send only Catholic
missionaries to Flores (Orin Bao 1969: 231-32). The Dutch priests who arrived in the
second half of the 19th century rediscovered the surviving Catholic communities in
eastern Flores (Prior 1988: 17). For several decades Jesuit missionaries baptized as many
children as they could, aiming to prevent the area from becoming Muslim (Prior
1988:19). The Dutch colonial government of the 19th century, however, restricted what
the Jesuits could do; they did not allow them access to areas that had not been “pacified”,
and did not allow the Catholic Church to become involved in education. When the Jesuits
left Flores in 1917, they left behind 30,000 baptized Catholics, which at that time was
64% of the total indigenous Catholic population of the entire Netherlands Indies (Prior
1988:18-19).
Change in Dutch policy at the beginning of the 20th century (towards a more
“ethical policy”, which meant less concern for their own profit and more concern for the
education and health of the population), as well as the “pacification” of the rest of Flores
in 1908, meant that the Church could expand into various parts of the interior, as well as

10 Webb gives some account of the communist cleansings in Flores, suggesting that these “so-called
communists were ‘good Catholics’, most of them attending church on Sundays and…… seeing nothing
incongruous in being ‘Catholic communists’” (1986:155).

9
become involved in the building and organization of schools and other facilities. (Prior
1988:19). The Jesuits, however, were slowly being withdrawn from Indonesia, and the
islands of Nusa Tenggara Timor fell to the newer missionary Society of the Divine Word
missionaries (SVD- Societas Verbi Divini) (ibid: 20). It was Divine Word missionaries
who first set up mission posts in the western part of Flores to begin the Church’s
evangelizing work there.
Western Florenese history differs considerably from that of the east. It was never
visited or controlled by the Portuguese, and it had for a number of centuries fallen under
the control of the kingdoms of Goa, and Bima on the islands of Celebes (now Sulawesi)
and Sumbawa, respectively. The kings of Goa and Bima converted to Islam in the
beginning of the 17th century. War with the Dutch in the later half of the 17th century
weakened the growing might of the Sultanate of Goa, which had been gaining control
over the spice trade east. In 1667 the Treaty of Bongaya between the Dutch and Goa,
recognized Bimanese control over Manggarai (Coolhaas 1942:163, Lawang 1989:137,
Erb 1999:85). Bimanese took advantage of this control by supplying thousands of
Manggaraian slaves to the Dutch in the western Netherlands Indies islands over the
ensuing centuries (Coolhaas 1942:163).
Despite the control of a Muslim state over the western part of Flores, it can be
argued that the Bimanese and the Islamic religion did not penetrate very far into the
interior, primarily because Bimanese attitudes towards the people of Manggarai was very
condescending. Bimanese traders and administrators were forbidden to live inland among
the peoples, for fear of compromising their religion and adat (customary laws). They
were only allowed to live in a few coastal towns considered appropriate for Muslims
(Coolhaas 1942: 165-166). To the present day, quite a number of coastal town residents
claim descent from Bima, and have continuing relations with that town on the island of
Sumbawa. In some villages in the northern part of the interior there are also clans that
claim descent from Goa. These may have been refugees from the war with the Dutch in
the 17th century, or assorted trading groups from Celebes (Sulawesi), that settled down on
Flores in various periods after that (see also Tule 2000:96). Quite a number of people in
northern villages will claim that their grand, or great-grand parents were Muslim, and

10
there still are villages in northern and far western Manggarai that are predominantly
Muslim11.
Continuing Bimanese rule over Manggarai lasted well into the period of direct
Dutch intervention in Flores. Though the Dutch troops had taken over control of
Manggarai they still left the kingship of the territory in the hands of the Sultan of Bima’s
family. SVD missionaries who started systematically setting up mission posts in
Manggarai from 1920 (Propinsi SVD Ruteng 1988:6), started to instigate protests against
the rule of Muslim Bima. In 1924 Manggarai was granted the right to set up its own
treasury, and a Manggaraian man was appointed as a viceroy of the Sultan of Bima.
Eventually in 1928, after many protests, and clever lobbying of the Catholic clergy, the
Dutch agreed to the Manggaraians having their own king. The man chosen was mission-
educated, and from a prominent family. He was crowned king in 1930 (Lawang
1989:199-206). This was a great victory for the Church in terms of finally separating
Flores off as a distinctly Catholic island.
In 1940, after war had broken out in Europe, German missionaries were interred
in camps. Later when the Japanese occupied the island in 1942, the Dutch missionaries
became the ones put away in camps on the island of Sulawesi. The Japanese, recognizing
the Church as an instrument of stability in the region, brought two Japanese bishops to
Flores in 1943. Attempts were made to speed up the process of ordaining local priests,
since there were very few priests left to administer to what was then a Catholic
population of over 300,000 (Prior 1988:22).
When the war was over, the Dutch returned to Flores with little opposition, and
the Church in Flores supported the creation of federated states. There was fear that a
single, unitary state would be dominated by Muslims, and Christian Eastern Indonesia
would be unable to keep its religious autonomy (Prior 1988:23). However with the
ousting of the Dutch and the installation of a multi-religious state, the Church on Flores
changed its position (Prior 1988:23). Sukarno’s stand on religion, that religions be in
competition, was particularly favorable for Flores, where “the 77% Muslim majority has
been more liberal than the ‘Christian’ colonizers ever were”12 (Prior 1988:243). It became
possible for the Divine Word Missionaries to push ahead their main objective, that is, to
11 This is true in the regency of Ngada as well, the immediate eastern neighboring regency to Manggarai
(Tule 2000:101).

11
baptize the whole of the island of Flores. With the help of dedicated catechetical teachers
(called guru agama) and school teachers, the Church was able to practically reach this
goal in a fairly short period of time. In the 1980’s it could be claimed that Flores was
90% Catholic (Prior 1988:24).
Prior however is very frank in his assessment of the missionary activity of the
early Church in Flores. He has a number of interesting critiques to make that are directly
relevant to my argument here. The Vatican I Church held the idea of the Church as a
societas perfecta, a perfect society that existed above and beyond any given cultural or
social group existing in the world (Prior 1988:174). The Church created its own world,
quite apart from the village life that existed on Flores, and seemingly oblivious to the
colonial world which allowed for its existence (ibid:175). With this attitude there was
very little compromise with cultural norms that were different and appeared to oppose the
Church’s ideals. The early Church in Flores expected the converts to accept Christianity
as a “package deal”, “to be accepted or rejected as it [was] presented” (Hillman 1970:26,
in Prior 1988:26). Prior shows how this attitude represented a very inflexible attitude
towards marriage customs, which in many ways were at variance with Catholic Church
rulings (polygamy, cousin marriages and bridewealth payments being the most
problematic, see also Erb 1991). Interestingly the Church strategy of baptizing young
children, at birth or at school, and in many respects ignoring the “pagan” elders, who
were seen to be in essence unchangeable, did not further the goal of planting an
indigenous Church. This is because, as Prior points out, these young people were still
brought up within the ideologies and ethical practices of their villages (1988:24). Hence
the world of the Church and the world of the villages in Flores for a long time remained
overlapping, but distinct (1988:175-182).
The Vatican II Council (1960-62), which reevaluated the Catholic Church’s stand
on many issues, set out to create a different relationship between Church and community.
The community, the “people of God”, were placed before the hierarchy of the Church
within the Church structure (Prior 1988:177-179). Theoretically this meant that the

12 Prior reminds us of the fact that Sukarno was exiled in Ende, Flores, in 1938-1939, and that his
tolerance of multiple religions and formation of the concept of Pancasila can be directly traced to his time
there. He spent many evenings in conversations with Dutch missionary priests posted in Flores, and this
was the first direct contact he had with a non-Muslim religion (Prior 1988:242-243).

12
Church was to work more at adapting itself locally to merge with the customs of village
life, rather than vice versa, a process termed “inculturation”13. This attitude, however, was
very slow in coming. Some of the foreign missionary priests who had spent many years
in Flores were sympathetic to indigenous ritual and custom, some were not. A generation
of new Florenese priests were educated to be sensitive to cultural concerns, at the same
time they had been removed from their village life at a very early age, (seminary
education begins at primary level), and therefore again it became to a large extent a
question of individual interest and preference, whether they became interested in
furthering the cause of “inculturation”.
Western Flores had its own unique missionary in the person of Mgr. Wilhelmus van
Bekkum, a Dutch priest who was ordained the first Bishop of Manggarai in 1951. Given the
name “the Buffalo Bishop” in one liturgical conference in Greece that he attended (Yayasan
van Bekkum 2001), Mgr Van Bekkum was a radical supporter of something like
“inculturation” well before the Vatican II council. He became famous in Flores and
elsewhere for his “buffalo mass” (misa kerbau), a total fusion between the sacrifice of a
buffalo, done at important Manggaraian rituals, and the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy
of the Roman Catholic mass. With this the blood sacrifice of traditional adat, (customary
ritual) done at the compang (village altar, where important dead were buried) and initially
offered to the ancestors as an atonement of wrong-doings and a request for prosperity, was
offered as part of the sacrifice of the mass. Mgr. van Bekkum, who had always had a great
love and interest in Manggaraian history and adat (see for example van Bekkum 1944,1946)
was also the sponsor of the first indigenous Catholic hymnbook on Flores (Prior 1988:46),
called Dere Serani- “Christian Songs” (still being published in its perhaps 12th edition). The
songs were basically village ritual songs, but had been modified to express a Christian
message. They were gathered by school teachers and priests who had a love for music and
wanted Manggaraian music to be part of the Catholic mass.
Mgr. van Bekkum was in a radical minority, however, and many of the other
missionary priests (at the time still primarily European) wrote numerous letters of protest to

13 Prior suggests that the change from the pre Vatican II 50’s to the Post Vatican II 80’s went from
adaptation, some incorporation of elements of local culture into the Catholic liturgy, to acculturation, a
taking over of a local culture, which is they imbued with the standards of the Gospel, to “inculturation” a
recasting of local culture from within by Gospel values (p. 46).

13
Rome about his “buffalo mass”. Most of the priests had a very strict response to
Manggaraian animal sacrifice, rejecting that the use of animals in sacrifice as intermediaries
to the ancestors could be considered “Catholic” at all. Many of them scoffed at the
indigenous ritual activities as a “chicken religion”14 (agama manuk). In fact the activities
associated with these ritual sacrifices, had entered the list of “sins” that had to be confessed
to a priest, and as far as I know, there are many older Manggaraians who still refer to this
“list” in their confessions. Eating the meat offered in ritual sacrifice, holding a chicken while
saying the sacrificial prayers, all of these were considered to be anti-Catholic, and sinful. It
took a considerable amount of time, even after Vatican II, for ideas about “inculturation” to
be acceptable to most priests practicing in Manggarai, and again this was, it seems a highly
individual thing. So despite the fact that Manggarai had one of the more liberal bishops that
the pre-Vatican II Church had seen, the general tenor of Church attitude towards traditional
Manggaraian beliefs and practices was in general not very accommodating until much,
much later in the 20th century.
The first native Manggaraian to hold the position of Bishop in the Diocese of Ruteng
was Mgr Vitalis Jebarus, who took over from Mgr van Bekkum in 197315. Mgr. Vitalis had a
far more measured attitude to “inculturation”. As a native Manggaraian he was sympathetic
to much of the traditional beliefs and customs and attempted to give closer, indigenous
interpretations to various Catholic beliefs that could make the liturgy more accessible to
Manggaraians. However he still saw a very strict dividing line between what was considered
to be acceptable “adat”, various etiquettes and songs and dances, etc., which could be
handily cordoned off as “culture”16, and those things of “adat” which were not to be
acceptable, offerings to an alternative spiritual world that could hardly be considered
monotheistic (and often had been reconceptualized as “Setan”). The celebration of
traditional ritual occasions was very acceptable, but it had to be done within the limits of

14 This is because chickens are the most common ritual offering. The man who leads the ritual prayers holds
the chicken in his hands.
15 Much criticism was leveled against Mgr Van Bekkum by other priests in Manggarai. Partially this had
to do with his “buffalo mass”, but also because of his ineffectiveness as a Bishop. He spent much of his time
outside of Flores, studying in Europe and America. For this reason the Pope asked him to step down as Bishop
in 1973. He still lived and worked in Manggarai, however, until his death in 1998, and was highly respected
and loved by the Manggaraian people.
16 On the rise of this conceptual distinction in various parts of Indonesia see for example Acciaioli 1985,
Volkman 1990, Erb 2001.

14
Catholic acceptability. When I arrived in Manggarai for the first time in 1983, Mgr Vitalis
had moved to Bali to become Bishop there a few years before, however much of the attitude
towards Manggaraian adat that was held by the Church and tacitly followed in many of the
villages that I had visited in a fairly wide area in Manggarai, had been shaped, I believe by
his influence. Animals were killed for food at ritual events and ritual prayers were spoken,
but people repeatedly said it was not allowed by the Catholic religion to say ritual prayers
over the animals as an offering. There were still some ritual leaders who did this, and
even some villages that specifically sought out their services (since there were so few
willing or able to do it), but this appeared to me to be a minority in the Manggarai that I
knew I in the 1980’s, and they were considered to be “heretical” if they were Catholics.
From a theological point of view, there has been much criticism of the Church,
both from the clergy within as well as from intellectuals without. Both clergy and
intellectuals criticize, as does Prior, the lack of sympathy or respect for customary law.
This has varied very much from priest to priest however; the early Church attitude
supported the dismissal of customary rites, while the later Church has still had difficulty
finding its way with “inculturation”. Some theologians, such as Prior, add an additional
criticism, that the Catholic faith has never been planted very deeply in Flores, and this is
what has led to all the other problems. One of the reasons why this is so, many will agree,
is the attention the missionary priests gave to development work throughout the decades
in Flores. Prior states this glibly when he says many people describe the priest’s tasks in
Flores as sakramen dan saksemen- “sacraments and sacks of cement” (1988:54). Webb,
who writes about the Christian Churches in all of the Sunda Islands, relates some
criticism of a few priests who had worked on Flores, towards the programs of foreign aid
that the Church had brought to that island, which they said taught the people to become
“beggars” (Webb 1986:176-178).
As much as some of the clergy may have been critical of this involvement in the
material side of life, one rarely hears a Florenese criticize this17. I would argue that part of
the great admiration, even devotion, shown to the clergy, especially the early foreign

17 Although there is a lot of criticism these days of the way the government had encouraged people to
develop a “project mentality”, that is ask for money from Jakarta for a project and then siphon off most of
the funds for personal use, as well as some criticism of foreign aid coming through NGOs, there does not
seem to be the same kind of criticism leveled at the Church’s aid, especially that given in the early years. In
fact quite the reverse seems to be true.

15
missionaries, has had to do with gratitude for so much aid that they gave to the village
folk of Flores over the decades. Many people remember fondly how such and such a
priest gave them or a relative the opportunity to further their education, build a sturdy
house, plant coffee, chocolate or clove trees, healed them from some wound or disease, or
sent them to the hospital to be treated or operated on. As much as some clergy may
criticize this over-involvement in the material aspects of the villager’s lives, the attitude
of Manggaraian people towards missionary priests, especially the foreigners who devoted
themselves to these activities, has, I argue, been very influential in shaping their attitude
towards Catholicism as a whole. That so many Manggaraians have come to whole-
heartedly identify themselves as Catholics, without any question, has to do with a whole
constellation of events, but the self-sacrificing attitude of so many of the foreign priests
has had a lot to do with shaping their family association, and their self-identification with
the Catholic religion.
I would argue that for one thing the Manggaraian people have accepted the help
of the early priests as an indication of kinship. Kinship in Manggaraian life (as is true in
many Indonesian and Pacific societies) is something that is created through actions,
through recognition of the link by means of exchanges. Giving aid is something that is
expected of senior kinsmen to juniors. The aid given by foreign priests to various people
in the past continues to be recognized by their descendents today as signs of kinship, of
the seniors aiding the juniors, and a creation and strengthening of a network of kinship
that could easily include these people originating from other places. Two striking
incidents underscore this idea of kinship between the early priests and the Manggaraian
peoples who they have aided. In my research in eastern Manggarai years ago, I came
across people in some of the northern villages who insisted that Mgr. van Bekkum had
told them when he visited in the 1960s, that an ancient ancestor of his had been taken as a
slave centuries ago and brought to Holland. He therefore was a descendent of Manggarai,
so people said. When I checked on this with Mgr. van Bekkum himself, he was very
amused, yet denied that he had ever told anyone this. Another occasion was the battle
over the bones of one of the first missionaries, Father Eickmann18. When Father

18 Father Eickmann opened one of the first parishes in Manggarai, that of Rekas, in the west, in 1924. It is
said that he picked this place, because of its strategic location as a “fortress” against the penetration of
Islam into the interior. The western part of Manggarai had, and still has, a fairly large minority of Muslims,

16
Eickmann died, many years ago, he passed away in one of the hospitals in another part of
Flores. The people of his parish in Western Manggarai, as well as other people in
Manggarai whose family had an association with him, insisted that his bones be brought
back to Manggarai19. The bones of important dead ancestors are supposed to be buried in
the center of their village, where the village altar (compang) is located. People wanted his
bones to be moved with the proper Manggaraian rituals and the sacrifice of a buffalo, and
brought back to the “center” of Manggarai (near the Cathedral), and therefore became
reincorporated back to the land where he “belonged”, implicitly the land of his
“ancestors”. However despite many protests and political wranglings, eventually the
Bishop at the time disagreed with the move, and Father Eickmann’s bones were left
where they were.
In addition to this idea of created kinship, I have seen so many people in
Manggarai engage in what appears to be boasting, about how many of the old famous
priests of early Manggarai their families had contact with, or how many other foreign
priests they or their families know. Even those who are Muslim have often shown great
admiration and gratitude for the early missionary fathers, and draw legitimacy for their
connection with Manggarai, by knowing and having connection with the early famous
priests20. Additionally a more recent and important part of being Manggaraian, and
Catholic, is how many priests, sisters or brothers people have in their extended network
of kin. Being Manggaraian for so many people has therefore to do with this history of the
Church in their families, and how this history has worked its way down into shaping their
present and their future.
It could also be argued in this sense that the Church has become almost too
localized in recent years. What might be interpreted as kinship connections, seen in a
kind light, may also be interpreted as a form of nepotism, corruption and collusion (the
rallying cry of the reformation era in Indonesia, post-Soeharto). This is something that

being the closest part of Flores to the island of Sumbawa, and the old Sultanate of Bima.
19 At the time the regent of Manggarai came from his former parish, hence the struggle over the bones was
read by many as a political ploy on his part, since many, in fact accused him of being a very imperfect
Catholic.
20 This is true in the present as well. There is a wealthy Muslim who originates from a northern
Manggaraian village who has opened up a benzene station in Labuan Bajo with the aid of the Bishop. He
made a great deal out of this association, and invited all of the clergy to the opening ceremony back in
2000.

17
Manggaraian people themselves, have become somewhat critical of in their native priests
in recent years. Becoming a priest or sister, or even receiving just a mission education,
has since the very early years been a sure guarantee of a path to a better life21. The most
prestigious work that one can do is to become a priest or a nun22. The Church, has from
the beginning been associated with wealth, on what continues to be a very poor island,
and though they have always provided a great amount of aid to poor villagers, the life of
priests and nuns is still one of great luxury (in terms of better food and housing) in
comparison to village life. And indeed the Church in Flores has been criticized for what
has been seen as sometimes excessive attention to building facilities that look
disproportionately luxurious (Webb 1986:247-248). What has been a cause of criticism in
the present day is not just the more luxurious life, which nowadays includes also owning
a car, and frequent travel off the island, but what is seen as the diversion of attention
away from more spiritual matters to the reveling in the material. This is not so surprising,
considering the Church’s emphasis in the beginning on development efforts, and the
attraction of the religious life partially due to the status and wealth that it afforded.
However it is being interpreted even by Manggaraians with relatives as clergy, as at times
excessive.
It is therefore interesting to reflect on one of the seeming paradoxes of Catholic
religious life at the present moment. The material efforts of the Church have given a road
to considerable wealth and well-being to some, and for everyone in Manggarai the
material gifts that the Church has given have been considerable. This material aspect,
though criticized to some extent by Prior and Webb, has created a strong feeling of
kinship with certain individual “founder priests”, but also the Church as a whole, I would
argue, and is one element that goes into making people feel “essentially” Catholic.
However excess materialism has come to be a cause of criticism, precisely towards the
youngest generation of priests, who instead of following in the footsteps of the early
missionaries, who gave selflessly to the Florenese people, are instead, people feel, only

21 Webb even goes so far as to suggest that the Catholic Church in Flores became too involved in
education, and that the Florenese became “overeducated”. This is because there was often no place for them
to get the kind of work which their education would warrant, and hence they were forced to leave the island
(Webb 1986:59-71).
22 So many have done so over the years, with the multiplication of seminaries and Catholic schools on
Flores, that Flores has become a net exporter of missionaries. The Catholic Church on Flores is now even
sending priests back to Europe.

18
taking from them. They take the regard that their status as a priest demands, as well as the
material wealth that they can accrue in the position. In addition they have not always
taken the material wealth for themselves only, but have often redirected funds and
materials that should have been used in their own parishes to their family members living
elsewhere. Hence again precisely the ties of kinship, which were so highly valued in the
older generation of foreign priests, has come to be seen as excessive in the younger
generation of native priests.
It can be seen from this brief overview, that the Catholic presence in Flores,
though being in some senses consistent over several hundred years, has also been very
dynamic. The relationship of the Florenese people to the Church, and the meaning of the
Catholic religion to them, has undergone considerable changes, especially over the 20th
century. These changes have continued and have become very interesting to observe in
what is the new “reformasi” Indonesia, of the past five years.

Reformasi and the Remaking of Manggarai and the Catholic Church

“I’m a true Catholic; whether I pray or attend mass or not is irrelevant. I was born a
Catholic. Manggaraian people are original Catholics, we are the real thing”, a
Manggaraian intellectual, Ruteng, Flores 2001

The ushering in of “reformasi”- a reform era- in Indonesia, after the fall of

President Soeharto in May 1998, meant a lot of different things to different people. For
many it meant calls for the end of the Soeharto family strangle hold on so much of the
wealth of the country through corruption, collusion and nepotism. For others it meant a
call for the end of Javanese domination and a decentralization that would allow for more
democratic political decisions to be made locally and local revenue to be more equitably
retained in the various regions. This entailed calls for revival of long lost political power
and the indigenous political system that had sustained it. In all of this was also often
woven local reconsiderations of “adat”- traditional economic, political and ritual/religious
customs that people nostalgically re-imagined as being the earlier source of greater
harmony and perhaps even more prosperity of the past, before the depredations of the
New Order. It has been a time too when people have had to rethink their relationship with
various localities, since legislation has changed, power has shifted, and with the various

19
new amendments that make regional autonomy a fact (if yet a confusing one, see Bell
2001), the regions indeed have become a real source of power and wealth.
In Flores people have begun to experiment with what power and autonomy could
mean in the new era. Nothing goes unchallenged anymore; no one seems to want to
accept the authority of the government, who are considered to be truly tainted with the
corruption and collusion of the past regime. It seems that part of what is associated with
“reformasi”, in the minds of people in Flores, is also a strong revival of traditional
customs and hence a “re-forming” of everything that seemed to have been done away
with over the decades in terms of ancestral practices by the Church. In other words,
“reformasi” seems to include not only a rejection of government authority, but an implicit
rejection of Church authority as well. This rejection however has only sometimes been
verbalized directly, often it is subtle, entailing a questioning of what was done in the past,
and sometimes even redoing and remaking what might have at one time been considered
finished and complete.
One illustration of this was the reburial of the bones of a friend’s father in the year
2000. Her father had been a school teacher, and the head of one of the first schools in
Ruteng. He was a good friend of Mgr. van Bekkum and many of the early missionaries,
and a very important and well respected man. He was also, however, the direct
descendent of the ritual leaders of the original village of Ruteng, and by customary
practice, had a very respected place in that village (now a hamlet of the town). When he
died in the mid-90’s, because of his important position as a pioneer in early Catholic
education, his daughters felt it would be very inappropriate to bury him, as would be
fitting his ancestry, in the center of the village, in the village compang, where all of his
male ancestors should be buried. So the daughters insisted that he be buried in the
Catholic, public cemetery, located on the outskirts of town. By the year 2000, however,
the family was having a very serious rethink about this burial. There had been a number
of catastrophic occurrences within the family, (the most drastic happening to the very
daughter who was most adamant about her father being buried outside of the village
altar). The sons, especially the youngest, began to insist that the father be reburied. He
had had dreams, and so had some of his siblings, wherein his father complained about
residing with strangers. So that year plans were made to remove the father’s body from

20
the public cemetery, and rebury it in the Ruteng village center, in the village compang.
The rituals that were performed were all of the old rituals, that were looked upon with
great disapproval by many of the clergy in the church during their father’s lifetime, and
that their father himself had come to disapprove of. In fact one of the brothers confided n
me that he had gone to the cemetery very early in the morning to do a few of the more
esoteric, questionable rituals in secret, so that he would not be criticized by his siblings.
The proof for the still skeptical members of the family that reburying their father was the
right thing to do came in the examination of the corpse itself. The daughters were
completely astonished, but also overjoyed to see the relatively uncorrupted state of their
father’s corpse. This was read as a sign that what they were doing was correct, that their
father should be moved back to his ancestral burial ground.
Another event in that same year had me again rethinking the role of the Catholic
Church in the ritual life of the Manggaraian people. I was invited to a ritual of Penti, in a
hamlet named Tuke’ on the outskirts of the town of Ruteng. Penti is a ritual of the new
year specifically attached to a particular place and the people who live there. The full
expression for this ritual in the central Manggaraian language is “penti weki peso beo”,
freely translated as “uniting the bodies and cleaning the village”. In the Penti type rituals
that I had attended in earlier fieldwork in Manggarai in the 80’s, the main purposes of the
ritual had to do with creating a “boundary” between the old agricultural year, and the new
year about to be prepared for. This was emphasized by the idea of “cleaning the village” of
any sinful actions that could disturb the soon to be planted seedlings23. Sacrifices were made
at various places where important guardian spirits of the place were located, such as the
spring, the graveyard, the village center, the main house pole in all of the villager’s houses,
in order to placate these spirits and eradicate anything considered to be harmful to the new
year’s activities.
When I attended the ritual of Penti in the hamlet of Tuke’, Ruteng in 2000, I was
surprised , first of all, to find that people had returned to a practice of these animal sacrifices
(which I had found so difficult to witness in the 1980s) but it was interesting to note that the
way villagers were conceptualising these animal sacrifices at all the key village places was
different. These animal sacrifices were said to be “invitations” to the various spirits resident
23 In Northeastern Manggarai getting rid of irregularities had always been symbolized by the twinned fruits
or mutant plants that had been found in the fields, which were discarded ritually at this new year’s ritual.

21
in important places. These spirits were being invited to attend the main ritual event, in the
main village house (of the village leader) that night, to “pray to God together” with the
whole village community. In this way the ritual sacrifices, which had been such an anathema
to the earlier missionaries, especially since they were being offered to multiple, polytheistic
spirits, had been re-conceptualised as a way of uniting the villagers, their ancestors and
various other spirits, in their prayers and offerings to one monotheistic God.
It seemed therefore that even in the urban center of Manggarai, that “custom” was
being revived, and practices that had long been discarded because of Church disapproval
were being reinstated, and reformed in such a way that people saw them as still,
fundamentally Catholic rituals. When I asked people when they had started to do these
Penti rituals and animal sacrifices again, I was told by some that this was all part of
“reformasi”. The Catholic religion it seems, was also being subjected to a “reformasi”,
inspired not from the “top” as “inculturation” efforts of the past had been, but from
communities themselves.
Some have seen this “reformasi” taking almost too extreme of a turn, and there
has been criticism even from some of the radical activists of Ruteng, about how some
ritual activities are being celebrated. This particularly came to the fore in the recent
Cultural Festival, entitled “Penti Manggarai 2001”. On this occasion blood sacrifice had a
very prominent revival in what was presented initially as the New Year’s ritual for all of
Manggarai. What was most shocking to some of the attendees is that these sacrifices not
only were being done in the presence of the clergy of the Church, most prominent among
them being the present Bishop and retired Arch-Bishop of Flores (also a native
Manggaraian), but that the whole ritual event itself was in fact being sponsored by the
Church, and being funded by a Foundation supported by and led by Catholic clergy.
The forming of plans to do this “cultural festival”, had started earlier in the year
2001 in Jakarta, among elites who had founded a Manggaraian charitable and cultural
organization, entitled, not surprisingly the Van Bekkum Foundation- Yayasan Van
Bekkum, formed as a way of doing honor to the cultural and development work of Mgr
van Bekkum. Similarly to Penti rituals done in the village, this ritual of Penti planned by
the Van Bekkum Foundation from Jakarta, was meant to be a ritual to reunite and “heal”
the whole of Manggarai, (and possibly more widely all of Indonesia) which people felt

22
had become increasingly fractured after the fall of the New Order. It made sense to a
number of people, in a variety of ways, as a ritual that suited the “spirit of the times”,
something that would regenerate a spiritually wounded Manggarai, which was
particularly plagued by outbreaks of conflict over land. There were multiple protests over
the planned event, however, and many suspicions about what its real purpose might be.
People were very suspicious of the political leaders, as well as the members of the Van
Bekkum Foundation (some of whom were suspected of attempting to curry local political
favour), who they saw as trying to capitalize on a traditional Manggaraian ritual within a
wholly inappropriate context, for their own individualistic purposes. There was a great
deal of disagreement over where the event would take place, especially since many
people criticized and could not accept how a ritual event shaped in a village could be
done in a town? And how could it be seen to benefit the whole of Manggarai, which was
actually made up of hundreds of villages that should be doing their own Penti? For the
expatriate Jakartan Manggaraians, who were geographically separate from their
homeland, “home” and the ritual that most symbolized that home to them, Penti,
obviously were defined in very different ways than those people who had never left that
“home” (see also Erb in press).
From what I understand from friends, quite a number of whom were party to the
protests surrounding the preparations for Penti, the only way that the organizers of the
event, that is the Van Bekkum Foundation and the local government, could get the
populace as a whole to agree to the staging of the Penti was to couple it with the
celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Diocese of Ruteng. Once the Bishop agreed to
being involved in the celebrations, and the event was redefined as a Church
commemoration, criticism didn’t disappear, but the protests that had being so inimical to
the staging of the event died down. Another important decision that was made that
allowed them to pull off the event was the coupling of the ritual with an actual village.
The defining of the ritual as a Penti for the whole of Manggarai was not acceptable to
people who had their own villages and own Pentis to do. Hence the old ritual of Ruteng
Pu’u (the “trunk”/source Ruteng), was picked as the location for the ritual. This resulted

23
in a number of anomalies in the staging of the ritual since some of the activities were to
be relocated to the town centre, so that more people could be included in them24.
Many activities took place in the four days association with Penti Manggarai 2001,
but the critical ritual moment was the afternoon of July 1, 2001. All the invitees, (including
the Bishops and all the clergy) travelled around to the various important keys places
associated with the village of Ruteng Pu’u, (the spring, the ritual field, the graveyard), to
perform sacrifices of chickens or pigs. There were people who commented to me
subsequently about the inappropriateness of these sacrifices being done in front of the
Bishop, of how there was a feeling of discomfort on the part of many people who attended.
However it was evident that the primacy of Manggaraian culture, as a unifying feature of
Manggaraian life, was being offered as a fait accompli, and that sacrifice had come back in
as an acceptable and integral part of this culture. Despite the fact that at one time, as has
been related above, Manggaraian ritual sacrifice had been considered to be unCatholic, ritual
sacrifice to the ancestors, and to the spirits of important places, was back, not only in full
view of the Church, but being lauded as an acceptable, even the central part of Manggaraian
Catholicism. A number of masses were also a part of the overall activities of the four days
festival, one of which was the closing Mass, billed as a Misa Enculturasi- “Inculturated
Mass”, since it was done entirely in the Manggaraian language.
Despite what was seen as a reconstituted unity, the Church and adat, it became clear
during some of the other events that took place during Penti, that not all people felt that the
whole had been reconstituted and harmony re-established. During the activities of what was
called Lonto Leok (sitting around) on the second day, which was supposed to be an imitation
of the village council meetings where consensus was reached on important matters, it
became clear that people felt that there was a lot of healing that needed to be done in
Manggarai. Many people spoke up about the difficulties that were being faced, and it was
clear that a lot of blame was being put on the New Order government, because of the way
that they had fractured Manggaraian social life with various policies, most specifically those
which took governance out of the hands of the people. Though not a lot of criticism was
expressed openly towards the Church, a number of issues clearly implicated the Church,

24 A few months later one of the ritual houses in Ruteng Pu’u burned to the ground. This became the
proof for critics that this ritual event was not planned according to the desires of the ancestors and “true”
Manggaraian culture.

24
which had been, a fairly willing accomplice in much of the New Order government’s
development policies that dis-placed, de-territorialized and dis-empowered village life (see
also Prior 1988:181). In back rooms, where some government officers were sitting, keeping
an eye on the general atmosphere of the event, far more critical things were being said about
the Church. Passing through one of these rooms, I heard some civil servants talking about
the discussions going on out front. “The Church should apologize”, one of them said rather
vehemently. “They have had quite a lot to do with disrupting and changing Manggaraian
life”. By implication the sentiment was, the government shouldn’t be blamed for everything.
I found quite a few people expressing similar attitudes in the following months.
Part of the criticism of Penti, and some of the other attempts to further the move
towards “inculturation”, is that these efforts do not recognize the distinction, that many
people feel must be continued to be made, between Manggaraian cultural life and the
Catholic Church. Penti came too close to intertwining these institutions, and blurred the
values which some see as not being easily merged. Blood sacrifice and ancestral worship
may be an intricate, and eternal part of Manggaraian culture, some people will say, but it is
something that should not become a part of the everyday practices of the Catholic Church.
They also criticize Masses said in the Manggaraian language, suggesting that the ideologies
being relayed in the language of Catholicism, and the language of Manggaraian community
life, are not so easily made consonant.
Another reason for growing criticism of the Catholic Church in Manggarai, as has
been suggested above, has to do with, paradoxically, the dissatisfaction towards the “native”
priests (not all of whom, it must be stated, are Manggaraian). The criticism that they are too
nepotistic, too materialistic, and it seems also too lax in keeping adat and Catholicism
distinct, are interesting, because precisely the opposite criticisms were being made against
the European priests in the earlier Manggaraian Church. They tried not to show favour, they
scorned the waste seen in Manggaraian ritual life, and they trying to partition and excise the
traditional customary practices seen as anti-Catholic. Again, paradoxically, despite these
criticisms against native clergy, their existence, and their “way of being Church”, is
precisely what draws the Manggaraian people more closely into the Catholic Church and
makes them feel a very close part of it.

25
 It is quite possible that these criticisms could grow much stronger against the Church
in Manggarai. It is however true that despite criticisms the Church still has a great hold over
the imagination of the Manggaraian person, and despite erosions in recent years, it still has a
great deal of moral authority and legitimacy. When the riots broke out in Ruteng in July
2000 (referred to at the opening of this paper), it was not the regent (bupati, the local
government head) who could quiet the 10,000 strong mob who wanted to kill the Javanese
peddlers who were accused of spreading rabies, but the Bishop. When the Bishop appeared
in front of the crowds, according to one of my friends, (himself in fact a great critic of the
Church), the crowds quieted down, and would have gone home, if one of the police officers
hadn’t let off a shot and wounded one of the on-lookers, a teenage boy. The Church, so
many of my friends tell me, continues to carry a considerable moral weight in Manggarai,
despite growing criticism of what are considered past and present misdeeds. Would this
continue, however, if there wasn’t such an external threat to the unity of Manggarai, and all
of Flores as a Catholic island, due to the fractured, polarized context of today’s Indonesia?

Conclusion: Manggaraian Religious Identity, Reform and the Church

“The shadow of adat haunts the young because they don’t understand it. They think they
know what is expected, but they don’t. They don’t live adat any more, so the knowledge of
it haunts them”, (tourist guide and farmer, Labuan Bajo)

Many people in Manggarai have for some time now been lamenting the loss of
“culture”, and attribute the multiple conflicts that have been taking place in recent years to
cultural degeneration. Others, however also, and at the same time attribute these conflicts as
a sign of a lack of true commitment and understanding of what it means to be Catholic. As
Prior suggests in his analysis of Lionese life in eastern Flores, much of the original values
and way of life, though changed, have not been displaced entirely, especially for people
living still in the villages. However what is called “adat”, custom, traditional embodiment of
ritual and religious/mythical knowledge has taken on a different kind of shape than it once
did. At one time this knowledge was held by only a few elders, who passed it on in their
own quiet way, slowly through word and action (Prior 1988: 218-220). The dissemination of
this knowledge in the present has become a more active process. Young people seek out the

26
customs of the ancestors, because they know it is being lost, because they have been tasked
to do so by schools, and other institutional authorities concerned with cultural loss, and
because they are coming to see it as having a value that it never before had (part of this I
have argued has to do with tourism, see Erb 2000, 2001). As this adat becomes recorded and
codified, it changes its shape. It becomes understood in a way that was different from how it
was understood and lived in the past. Prior suggests that it becomes “demystified”, and
“secularised” (p. 218). At the same time some people in Manggarai have expressed to me
the idea that the understanding is not necessarily deeper, when it becomes codified and
recited custom, instead of “lived”. In fact, one friend suggested that the young are frightened
by adat, it represents a control that they do not want to succumb to, something they do not
want to be associated with, since it does not represent a world that they want to see
themselves moving towards, but instead something they would prefer to be moving away
from. The Church in Flores has had a major role in dissecting and desacralising this adat,
perhaps even in making it something somewhat frightening to the young. But it has also
played its part in making it something that can become a mark of identity, but not something
to be truly lived.
The Penti 2001 event discussed here, magnified the multiple, multifarious roles
that the Church and the Catholic religion have come to play in Manggaraian life.
Although the event could only take place because of the support of the Church, the whole
happening in multiple ways could be read as a quiet, but glaring criticism of the Catholic
religion, and early missionization in Manggarai. It was a call for the revival of adat, and
almost a demand that compromise should no longer be made with the Church over what
the role of traditional ritual and customary activities should be. It is part of a wider
criticism that surfaced around the event itself, but also the role of the modern native
priests and the role of the Church in general in Manggaraian life. Perhaps the reason why
this criticism does not become more voiced is precisely because of the religious tensions
existing at a broader level within Indonesia, that serves to help to unite, rather than
fragment the different sides of the debate over what the Catholic religion is to be in the
Manggaraian life, and how it is to be presented and lived.
There are thus many different opinions that are held about the role that adat should
play, and the role that “religion”, i.e. Catholicism should play, in shaping the lives of

27
contemporary “modern” Manggaraians. Both come under criticism, yet both are seen as
pillars of the Manggaraian identity. Ultimately it is clear that no matter what, it is not just in
the hands of the Manggaraian people themselves, but that their lives and the negotiating of
their identity, is also shaped by external forces, that continue to play a role in how they
perceive their world and how they live it.

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