Reading in Indonesian

Welcome back!

As promised in my previous post, I've finished reading the book that I said I would. This was the book in question:

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In English, the title of this book translates to From the Priesthood of Parmalim to the Priesthood of Catholicism. If that sounds a little awkward, it's because I'm basically translating it word-for-word. Perhaps a more elegant English title that still keeps the spirit of the original Indonesian would be From Parmalim Priest to Catholic Priest.

In any case, I'll leave that issue to anyone who's interested in translating this book to English.

Some may ask: "what the heck's a parmalim?" To answer, it's the traditional religious beliefs of the Batak people of Indonesia prior to the arrival of Christianity and Islam. I hesitate to call it paganism because it's a monotheistic religion from what I can tell. Some of the habits that I've heard of (not eating pork, not drinking alcohol) reminded me of Islam and Judaism.

Moving on...

Dari Imamat Parmalim ke Imamat Katolik is a story of Monsignor Anicetus B. Sinaga, an Indonesian Catholic priest and bishop from North Sumatra.

An an aside, Mgr. Sinaga died two years ago at the age of 79. If you're Catholic (or Orthodox) and are reading this, I will appreciate it if you can pray for the repose of his soul. More importantly, Mgr. Sinaga will appreciate your prayers.

I enjoyed reading this book for the most part. However, I will confess that it took me a while to finish this book. I actually bought it in 2019, the last time I was in Indonesia. Yes, it took me four years to finish the book.

The reason it took me so long to complete Mgr. Sinaga's book was because the way it was sold to me. You may notice the 'otobiografi' on the cover of this book. This was an autobiography of the late Mgr. Sinaga. At least partly, I'll get to that. Though it took me a while to finish this book, it meant a lot to me.

At the time that I bought this book, I have just converted to Catholicism from my childhood Protestantism. This was a difficult process for me because in many ways, Catholicism felt like a foreign religion to me. My ethnic group, the Batak of Lake Toba had been converted to Christianity by the Lutheran missionary I.L. Nommensen around the late 19th century.

Because of all this, Protestantism was basically an ethnic identity to my people the Batak. We even have an ethnic church, the HKBP. This was strengthened by the fact that Indonesia is a majority Muslim country with a significant political force wishing to impose Sharia law on the whole country.

I don't wish to dwell on Indonesian politics, at least not in this post. But the point is when I converted to Catholicism, it felt like I abandoned my roots. Of course, I know that this isn't true. In fact, my parents had sent me to a Catholic grade school back in the day. But there was that feeling that I could not shake off.

Mgr. Sinaga helped me realize that you can be a Catholic and also be faithful to your roots. That being a Batak doesn't mean being a Protestant. If anything, Catholicism showed more respect to the traditional Batak beliefs than the Protestantism of my youth.

Back to the book itself, I bought it in the hopes of reading the autobiography of this Catholic priest who belonged to my ethnic group. I was not disappointed on that end. Dari Imamat Parmalim ke Imamat Katolik is a great autobiography; it detailed Mgr. Sinaga's journey who grew up being the son of a Parmalim priest. He then converted to Catholicism and went into the priesthood. At some point, his father also converted.

As I said, it was a great autobiography. The problem was that it only covered about half the book. The book is about 400 pages and Mgr. Sinaga's autobiography was less than 200 pages. The rest of the book covered Mgr. Sinaga's work as a priest, bishop, and archbishop.

Post publish addendum: I would like to clarify that the non-autobiography part of the book was not written by Mgr. Sinaga himself. Rather, it was written by people close to him and/or who had worked with him.

I'm pretty sure that once I finished the autobiography itself, I got bored and then put the book down. Lest I'm criticizing the book's other parts, I was also glad that I returned to finish this book. It detailed the efforts of Mgr. Sinaga; by extension, it also detailed Catholicism in the lands of the Batak people.

Thus, I was grateful to have read the book in its entirety. Even if it took me four years to finish it.

I now wish to shift gears and talk about my experience of reading in the Indonesian language. It was a strange one. When I first read this book, I don't think I've read any Indonesian media other than WhatsApp messages from my parents and relatives. Thus, I'm glad that I finished the book in its entirety. It's the first book in Indonesian that I've finished since probably high school.

The one thing that I noticed about Indonesian is that it's a long language. What I mean is that anything you say in English, it would take a few more syllables to say in Indonesian. It made reading the book feel different than all the other books I've read. It's a strange feeling, I don't know how to describe it.

Another interesting thing is how there are occasionally English-words sprinkled in the prose. I suppose it's not too different to how one can find Latin or French words in English prose. However, I can count at least one time where the author used an English word when an Indonesian word would have sufficed. Strange.

To conclude, that was my experience with Dari Imamat Parmalim ke Imamat Katolik and my experience with finishing a book in Indonesian. I hope to find more books in Indonesian to read. I've already been following Indonesian news on Twitter, whatever good that does.

To be honest, I'm not sure where I'll take this blog next. However, I'm glad that I managed to finish this little project of mine.

Until next time,

Michael P. Marpaung