Jose Carillo: Let's face it—there are things we were taught not to question from our childhood onwards until we become parents ourselves, like the foundations of our faith and the basis for the Holy Week that our predominantly Roman Catholic nation is celebrating now. This was why I was taken off balance seven years ago when my then nine-year-old son asked me why Holy Week wasn't being held on the same date like that of Christmas Day, which is always December 25. Why, he asked, make the scheduling of Holy Week ever-changing and so complicated?
I was abysmally ignorant then, so I did some quick research and wrote an essay about my findings, "Matters of Faith," for my column in The Manila Times in April of 2003. It's an essay that I believe remains relevant even today, so I am posting it in Jose Carillo's English Forum for your Lenten Season reading. As companion reading, I make an introduction to Diarmaid MacCulloch'sA History of Christianity: The First 3,000 Years, a deep and sweeping but dispassionate look into how one of the world's great religions evolved.
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