The story of how I became a traditionalist: Part 1
It all started with my grandmother, Leonarda Arquiza moving to Cebu in the late 40s to early 50s, as some of her siblings moved to Cebu. There, she started her devotion to the Santo Nino de Cebu, a statuette of the Holy Child Jesus said to be given by Ferdinand Magellan to the Cebuano Natives. It was situated in the Church of San Agustin, run by Spanish Augustinian friars of the Augustinian Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines.
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My grandmother attended the Traditional Latin Mass early in the morning in the San Agustin Church usually under a priest named Father Leandro Moran, OSA. He was a Spanish priest born in 1886 and served as the parish priest of Bolhoon, Cebu from 1922 to 1948 until the parish was ceded to the Archdiocese of Cebu from the Augustinians. He appears in a famous picture with the Redemptorist priest with the original Santo Nino image after the World War in Cebu.
After Fr. Moran left his parish, he was assigned to the San Agustin convent until his death in 1979. My grandmother every Sunday attended Mass in San Agustin or Santo Nino with her children and after a while, go to the local theater, which was near San Agustin, to watch the latest Disney movie at the time.
My grandma married Solomon Rubi, a relative of the famous Cebuano composer Vicente Rubi and he converted from the Protestant United Church of Christ in the Philippines to Catholicism. He died in 1986.
My grandma continued attending the old Mass despite the scourge of Vatican II until it was abolished in 1971. In 1968, she bought a rosary for herself which she kept until it was rediscovered in 2023 during the renovation of my house. I still use that rosary up to now. When the Latin Mass was stopped in Cebu, my grandma attended the Novus Ordo for a while, but later became a home aloner until her death in 2018. She always prayed the novena to Saint Jude at dawn. In the 70s, when grandma visited Santo Nino church alongside my mom, she always asked how was Father Moran. The employee at the time said that he was in the upper floor of the convent. My grandma later learned that he died in 1979. On April 4, 2006, her grandson, Ryan Joseph Borgonia y Rubi was born in Illinois, USA. He is the one that is managing the blog. On July 14, 2006, I was baptized by the Old Catholic Bishop, Jean Marie Kozik of the Fraternite Notre Dame in Chicago. He was consecrated a bishop by Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc of Vietnam. Old Catholic orders are valid but illicit. In September 2006, I returned back to my homeland in Cebu City where I grew up and still live today. I grew up with many classic stories, including that of Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Snow White (1937) which I watched as a 4 year old.
From 2006 until 2022, I was raised as a Novus Ordo. My mom would often bring me to our Novus Ordo Parish of St. Vincent Ferrer, run by Franciscans. It was established in 1977 by Fr. Brice Mulroy, OFM. In 2016 to 2017, I got a pamphlet from the religious places I visit most in Cebu, the OAD Tabor Hill in Talamban, Cebu City, where they have a famous chapel dedicated to the Holy relics where the indult mass is offered. The pamphlet mentioned about the Latin Mass but was not interested in it due to the far distance from my house. It was only in 2019 when I was homeschooled that I discovered the Latin mass once again, learning that it was the mass of history. I learned about it from the learnreligions.com website which I discovered at the time when I was interested in Traditional Chinese religions like Buddhism and Taoism. I never got to tell my late grandmother that the Latin Mass still exists, due to me not interested in it because it was never mentioned in our history class that the mass during the Spanish colonial era was in Latin. I thought the mass during the Spanish era was in Spanish due to my Novus Ordo upbringing.
To be continued...
