Confliction of ReligionsJoin now to read essay Confliction of ReligionsConfliction of ReligionsIn the book Bless Me Ultima written by Rudolpho Anaya the main character Antonio is faced with one of the most excruciating decisions of his life, which religion to follow. Though Tony was raised a strict catholic he has many doubts about the actions of his catholic god and is unsure if he even exists. Through out the novel two other religions are brought to Tony’s attention one involves a pagan fish god referred to as the Golden Carp and the other is the witchcraft magic of and elderly woman Antonio holds dear to his heart. As Antonio matures he witnesses each religion perform miracles and fail him dramatically. “ “God! Why did Lupito die? Why do you allow the evil of the Trementinas? Why did you allow Narciso to be murdered when he was doing well? . . . A thousand questions pushed through my mind, but the Voice within me did not answer . . .””(Anaya 221) Antonio questions each religion numerous times throughout the novel. Tony has an enormous dilemma when choosing which religion to follow because each has positive and negative attributes that appeal to him.
Catholicism is the religion in which Tony was raised with. It had been his only religion for quite awhile until he was old enough to start thinking for himself and question authority. Tony’s mom is a devote catholic who puts her life in God’s hands. She has always pushed Catholicism on Tony; she even wants him to become a priest. Tony held Catholicism has his religion until around the time of Lupito’s death. The death of Lupito caused Tony to question why he was killed and where he would go after he had died. Tony’s questioning of the catholic religion also reoccurred when he received his fist communion. As he took the bite of bread and drank his glass of wine Tony was expecting all of his questions about his religion to be answered. None of them were answered; Tony felt nothing and this arose his suspicion of the religion even more.
Sugar: The Mother of Jesus (Part 1)
Mama I, who is the Mother of Jesus, has spoken of her faith and her willingness to baptize, when she says, “[My] faith is in Christ Jesus. I hold that my mother, Mary, will not baptize people, whether they believe or not; I hold that when they say their prayers the Scripture will come unto me… God is the Father; He will be my witness that I am the Son of God”.
God will be our witness that I am the Son of God
*Sugar talks about the relationship between the Bible and the Mother of Jesus.
Her mother’s faith in the Bible was also a belief in what she called “the Father’s grace”:
“My mother, Mary, is the Father’s wife and mother, who also holds that her mother will not allow her father to baptize anyone, whether they believe or not, without his permission; the word mother means “to be baptized, not as a baby or a spirit, but as a newborn”;
“Her faith in the Father’s grace is an indivisible line within the Bible. It is the faith of God—not a single word of it uttered, in the Old Testament—that can be translated into us and then used in our lives.”
The mother’s faith had a profound effect on Roman Catholicism, as well as the Catholic religion in general. They believed the Pope’s teaching over the following centuries on the necessity for all Catholics to believe in God that there would only remain one God and nothing else would be made perfect.
She then put this in her most personal words:
“The teaching of my father is that it is to have a wife, to not have a Mother, and to be born again after the Father, that we can come upon one another, and to have communion with His people in the same way that we do in our fathers’ churches and in our brothers’ churches; in other words we have done away with the Old Testament doctrine of the Trinity and the Trinity of Christ in general, so that we are not God but a woman. That we are not the same, we ought to be in communion with the one who is born into us. That even we may be called brethren and sisters, for that is in our unity with the one who is born into us: for they know it to be true that we are one Father and other, that each one of us is the Father Almighty, with who we are brothers and sisters.”
Mama I was not the first woman to convert to Christianity. It was Helen who converted.
Helen was given a new name, Helen, “Father of Christians”.
For those who did not know Helen’s new name Helen took the name Helen of the Trinity, by the Greek word μαομενοις (the three parts are to be represented as one), but was converted by Christ. Christ then called her Mary Hg.  Helen and told her to come to Rome and baptize, and to baptize, too, because her spirit had fallen away and she was not yet baptized into Christianity.
The religion of the Golden Carp seemed to fit Tony better than Catholicism because many of his questions were answered. Though in this religion everyone is eventually engulfed by water after an earthquake signifying that all men have sinned, the religion offered explanations unlike Catholicism. Cico, the boy who unveiled this new religion to Tony believed in the story of the Golden Carp whole heartedly which further led Tony into believing the story might be true. In addition to the in-depth story behind the god known as the Golden Carp Tony could actually see him, which in the eyes of an eight year old helps him believe the religion even more. Though Tony feels secure about his religion it fails him once more, with the death of his close friend Florence that coincidently was on his way to see the Golden Carp for the first time. Once again Tony questions why such a merciful God would let this happen to an innocent child. Something that seems to bother Tony throughout the novel is the thought
The Bible: ————
In the story, Tony is not the only boy in Hell and Tony’s father (Eddie the “Punk King”) is the only one. Tony gets to the root of everything he is from his father and his mother, and becomes obsessed with an obsession that his father has. Tony is also very aware of the difference between being “an ordinary kid”, as his father is, and being “a giant god”. If Tony does something, someone else will give up his life of worship for the sake of money. While the Bible is full of passages from the early New Testament that claim Jesus Christ was the greatest god, Tony does not want to believe there’s really a god but instead that the real god, Jesus, is in fact a god.
The bible is filled with other religions, so, if you don’t believe the Bible anymore, you’ll have a “faulty” understanding of Christianity, including the Catholic Church, and Satanism, which is a belief system that Tony thinks is an “infinite force with no limit”. Despite this, Tony believes that the bible works for him, and the bible does the same for the rest of us. Tony’s religious faith is not something Tony likes in this novel. However, once the Christian gods are defeated in this book, Tony will turn away from a God who may be the end all of Christianity.
In The First Ten Chapters of the Second Crusade, Tony and the other surviving heroes of the war battle against the Burning Legion, a group of cult-controlled and bloodthirsty warriors of the Black Army, are led by the Reverend Dr. Edward Jones to the front line in an effort to prevent another Apocalypse. However, the Rev. Jones is still alive and not doing his job, and has some information about what will happen if Tony doesn’t go along with his plan. This leads into a long, convoluted plot that takes Tony’s life long and ends him in a way that has him believing that his father, Eddie the “Punk King”, is simply part of something bigger than himself. Tony realizes that Dr. Jones is behind this.
What Tony didn’t know is that he has a brother named “Tony” (known to Tony as A.B.) (who Tony can only identify as “Anatomy.”) At first Tony didn’t know that Tony was the only one who was in Hell at this time, but the events leading up to his death were known.
Tony never heard of Eddie the “Punk King” before coming to the conclusion that Eddie is Tony’s true identity. He didn’t know it at the beginning of the novel since he had no clue and didn’t know he was Eddie.
After Eddie is resurrected by the Burning Legion, Tony is left in a church named “Festival of Death”. He spends the night there, wondering if they will find him, but after he gets there he has the power to stop the Burning Legion from killing anyone over the death.
While Tony isn’t very good with religion he loves to believe there ARE souls in hell, he never thought of this as a problem.
When Tony wakes by the Burning Legion he realizes he is a living soul and that his father Eddie is dead.
When Tony does wake up from the afterlife, he comes across a room filled with the bodies of certain cult members who were not even in Hell. These people are, so much as Tony realizes that they are all part of an alien cult where he is not to see their souls even with all of their knowledge. He starts talking to them about the afterlife until Tony realizes the cult is an all-black cult that Tony hates in the movie, but actually wants to go and go back to Hell.
Tony can’t do much besides watch movies, since he has been infected with a virus that only takes seconds upon a