Spain

The Criminal Christ

in Catholic Church, Spain 25 Comments Tags: ,

Although Catholic cultures have punished crime severely including by torture and death, there has been, especially in Hispanic cultures, a curious cult of the criminal as saint. Mexico has its holy banditos and narcotraficantes.

Miguel Mañana was a Counter-Reformation Spanish noble. He had been violent and lascivious, and underwent a complete conversion. He served the poor and especially criminals.

Most people then and now would understand the identification of Christ and the suffering poor, but Mañana went further.

Timothy Mitchell in Passional Culture explores the confradías that Mañana founded. The brothers provided assistance to criminals condemned to death.

They collected alms on the way to the gallows, prayed for his soul, provided for his widows or children, and gathered up the limbs of those who had been drawn and quartered. Not everyone approved of such consideration for criminals.

For Mañana Christ was the original “criminal,” condemned to death by the law, whose execution was/is a never-ending source of grace to humanity.

To those who dared to doubt that the hanged felon could represent Christ, Manana replied  that “there are two considerations in a man put to death: one, that of punished delinquent; the other, that of the helpless poor man. And since in the second our Lord is represented, any demonstration that is made in this respect falls short.”

Mañana’s generosity was unending, and the poor wept when he died. His penances were astonishing and disgusting; he may have been neurotic, but if so, he was a saintly neurotic – and perhaps the world needs more of them.

“I was in prison and you visited me” applies not just to Christians  imprisoned for their faith. The only group that does extensive hands-on work in prisons is Prison Fellowship International, mostly evangelical Christians. Chuck Colson was a neighbor in Florida, as is Michael Timmis, the current head. They have gone into some of the most dangerous prisons in the world to help prisoners and to bring the Gospel.

A few times when I was a Federal investigator I occasionally had to visit maximum security prisons and prisons for the criminally insane. When that iron door slams behind you, you feel a certain dread. I would not do it again willingly, but there are those who do it all the time, seeing in the convicts not just the justly punished criminal, but the face of the scourged and executed Man. I wish I could do that.

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The Spanish Civil War

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The Spanish Civil War began 75 years ago. The historian Stephen Payne blames the Left. They murdered rightist leaders hoping to provoke the army into rebellion. Then the Left could crush the army and have a free hand in reconstructing Spain and eliminating the right. It didn’t work out that way. The Right won and crushed the Left. Political leaders, from antiquity to the present, have never learned that wars rarely go according to plan. They also have never learned that it is easier to start a war than to stop one.

Payne thinks that the Nationalists and Republicans killed about the same number of people – and the Nationalists won and had the Left at their mercy. If the Left had one, the Right would have been slaughtered.

Some bishops, many bishops have recently disgraced their office. But all the bishops who were in the Republican zone were murdered. They stayed with their flock and died. The only two who survived were outside of the country and could not get back to their sees. One in four priests in the Republican zone were murdered, many tortured to death. The Italians bombed Barcelona and killed hundreds of civilians in a foretaste of Dresden and Hiroshima. And the children above all suffered.

Payne thinks that Spain has changed radically and such violence could never be repeated. The dispossessed rural working class of the south is gone; the devout small holders of the north have abandoned their villages, which are in ruins. A Socialist government is doing the bidding of international bankers. Catholicism has dried up. All ideologies are discredited. The conflicts are still there, but they are a shadow of their former selves, and no one thinks that Spain can be saved from its problems by the Right or Left. In fact, the young think that the economic situation is hopeless and would like to emigrate.

Yet is still a beautiful and deeply moving country, and to me it feels like the Roman Empire never really ended. To sit in the sun on a patio above the vineyards and grain fields, in front of a stone Romanesque church, drinking the red wine of Rioja – the Romans would have felt comfortable. They would think that the locals mangled Latin, but they would recognize the local language as Latin. I hope that Hispania endures.

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Death Comes to the Archbishop

in Camino de Santiago, Southwest, Spain 4 Comments Tags: ,

I have been reading Death Comes to the Archbishop. It is balm for the soul after the other stuff I have been reading: the endless tales of clerical crimes, and the horrors visited by the anticlerical Republicans upon the often innocent priests of Spain. Willa Cather traduces Father Martinez, and is somewhat condescending to the Indians and the Hispanics, but she loved New Mexico and is sympathetic to French Catholicism.  My wife informs me that Cather taught my wife’s grandfather (Pittsburg High School, Class of 06). Cather wore mannish tweeds and sat on the edge of the desk – very daring.

 

Toward the end of the book Cather recounts a story told about Junipero Serra, the missionary to California. He and a companion had set off across the desert with only one day’s provisions.  On the second day they came to three cottonwood trees and an adobe house with a Mexican family: a father, mother, and small child who had a pet lamb. The family welcomes and fed them; Serra wanted to question them how they fed their flock, but he was exhausted and fell asleep. In the morning the family was gone, Serra assumed to tend their flocks, but a breakfast was laid for the Franciscans. 

When Junipero reached his goal those who welcomed him couldn’t believe he had survived the desert. Sierra told them that the Mexican family by the three cottonwood trees had saved them. They knew the three cottonwood trees, but there was no Mexican family there, his hosts insisted. They travelled back to the site: there were the trees, but no house. 

Junipero  remembered: 

When he bade his hosts good-night, he did indeed stoop over the little boy in blessing’ and the child had lifted his hand, and with his tiny finger made the cross upon Father Junipero’s forehead.

 

For They had returned 

to play Their first parts, in the persons of a humble Mexican family, the lowliest of the lowly, the poorest of the poor,– in a wilderness at the end of the world, where angels could scarcely find them. 

Years ago, a friend of mine was a law student living in Turkey Thicket in northeast Washington, D. C.  When I was visiting him, someone came to the door. He answered it and spoke for a few minutes to a woman, and then came back in with some potholders which the woman was selling. He explained to me that his Croatian grandmother had told him that Jesus and Mary often wander the earth in the guise of a poor person to test our hearts.  One never knew whether the poor person who asked for help was the Son or God or the Queen of Heaven – and did it matter?

 

In the novel, Latour, as he lay dying in his study in Santa Fe, reviews his life. All his past life becomes contemporaneous with him. When I was walking the Camino de Santiago, I wasn’t sure what I should be doing. I found myself reviewing my past life, all the people I had known, from my playmates when I was three years old up to the present.

 

One person I had worked with was Norm Rebhorn – he was my second level supervisor when I was a federal investigator. I came into investigations under unusual circumstances, and he gave me a break and confidence. He worked out of Philadelphia. He told us that he was often approached by beggars. One guy said he needed money for lunch. Norm said, sure, I was just going to have lunch too. Let me take you to McDonald’s. He guy sat with Norm, grumbling through his cheeseburger. Another time a beggar approached Norm and asked for money. Norm asked him what he wanted it for and the beggar said he needed a drink. Norm gave him the money, saying that he understood perfectly, every now and then a guy needed a drink.

 

I read John Chrysostom when I wake up at 3 AM from my nightmares induced by reading about sexual abuse. Chrysostom is the Father of Almsgiving. He told his flock in Antioch and Constantinople that they were too harsh in cross-examining poor men who asked for help. Does God cross-examine us when we ask for His help? I would be at a loss to answer His questions – but fortunately He gives when we ask and even when we don’t ask, when perhaps someone asks for us.

 

When I walked the Camino, I met some people who were begging their way along it. One was a young woman outside the church in Pamplona. I gave her some money, and I thought I should accompany it with a fatherly lecture that this is not a good idea for a young woman to do, but my Spanish is weak, and I thought I could be misinterpreted, so I let it go.

 

Spain is full of unemployed young men (45% unemployment of those under 30) and some were begging their way along the Camino. I gave a euro or two to them. Once as I entered a town I rested, and the young peregrino asked for 5 euros to pay for a bed at the refugio tonight. I gave him 10, and asked him to say a prayer for me when he got to Compostela.  Probably just another young Spaniard down on his luck, but who knows? And does it matter?

 

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The Shepherds of Spain

in Spain, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: ,

RETABLO DEL NACIMIENTO o DE LA ADORACIÓN DE LOS PASTORES
Gregorio Fernández (Hacia 1576, Sarria, Lugo – Valladolid 1636)1614

Madera policromada

Monasterio de las Huelgas Reales, Valladolid

Unlike the other figures, the infant Jesus is naked, which emphasizes his full humanity and his vulnerability. He also is lying in the same position that he is shown in after the crucifixion when his body is lying on the stone of anointing.

The sacrifice is emphasized by the shepherd who is kneeling and offering a lamb to the Cordero de Dios.

 The Counter-Reformation sought for a model of Christian manhood for the layman. Joseph is therefore shown as a vigorous, mature adult, not the wizened old man in the corners of medieval and Byzantine nativities.

 I especially like the shepherds. I saw many young men in Spain (I walked through Sarria on the Camino) who could have served as a model for the kneeling shepherd.

 The baby is restless and playful. The reason he is not sleeping is shown by the shepherd who has just finished playing the gaita, the Galician bagpipe, and is looking at the Child to see how he reacts. Very few babies will sleep when a bagpipe is played in the immediate vicinity.

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José and the Ham – or – Eurabia and España

in Islam, Spain 3 Comments Tags: , ,

 

You can’t make these things up:

 

A teacher in the secondary school Institute Menénez Tola has been denounced by the family of a Moslem student for talking about ham in class.  

Un profesor de secundaria del Instituto Menénez Tolosa…ha sido denunciado por la familia de un alumno musulmán por hablar de jamón en clase. En concreto, el docente impartía clase de Geografía cuando, al hacer referencia a los distintos climas de España, comentó que el frío propio de Trévelez, en Granada, favorecía la curación del jamón.

Fuen ese momento cuando un alumno de origen musulmán consideró que el ejemplo era una ofensa para su credo. Tras la denuncia interpuesta por la familia del menor, la Policía se personó en el Instituto para interrogar al profesor.

The teacher was lecturing about climate and mentioned that the climate of a Spanish city favored the curing of hams.

 

A snotty Moslem kid (13 years old – what else) took offense at the word “ham,” raised his hand, told the teacher that he was not to use that word in class, the teacher told the snotty kid off, the kid then told his parents, the parents went to the police,  the police went to the school and interrogated the teacher.

 

José Reyes Fernández, the teacher, was livid. He said the denunciation to the police was “ridiculous, intolerable, and grotesque,” and that the mother had resorted to “defamation, lies, and calumny.” She had attacked “his honor, his image, and his professional ethics.”

 

The local school officials supported the teacher, who still has a police complaint on his record.

 

Two points —  one minor, one major – you decide which  is which.

 

The Spanish may have abandoned Catholicism, but they are still devoted to ham. There are ham shops throughout Spain, I walked past a Museum of Ham in one city, and my wife tried the ham ice cream in Madrid.

 

The snotty Moslem kid may have known his complaint wouldn’t get far, but he put teachers on notice that they had better not say anything offensive to Moslems. How do teachers talk about Spanish history, the Reconquest, or terrorism?

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The Best and Worst

in anticlericalism, clergy sex abuse scandal, priesthood, Spain 9 Comments Tags: , , ,

Pope Benedict  has approved the beatification of six more martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Because they were martyred, a proof of a miracle is not required, only that they had been killed because of hatred of Christ and had forgiven their persecutors. 

About 2,000 more cases are wending their way through the Vatican. About 10,000 priests religious, and laity were killed during the war because of hatred of Christianity. It has been on the pope’s mind recently; although much of the criticism of the clergy and sexual abuse is fair, some of it begins to look like the anticlericalism of the Spanish Civil War.

 

I have been researching the backgrounds of clerical abusers in old newspapers. One, William Kuder, was loathsome. He abused a 9 year old boy with oral and anal rape, and used confession and threats to keep it secret.

 

Kuder can’t be blamed on dissent or Vatican II; he was ordained in the mid-1930s. He turned up in an old newspaper because he accompanied a black prisoner, who was Catholic, to the execution chamber.

 

On the same day, September 4, 1936, the newspaper headline was Spanish Premier Resigns Post: City of Irun Engulfed in Flames. The retreating Republican forces had set fire to the city (film of evacuation).

 

They did something else. 

In the early morning the monks of Fuenterrabia monastery had been shot by the defenders of Irun, Their bodies, clothed in white robes, could be seen lying on the roof of the monastery from vantage points in Hendaye [in France]. 

The Republicans also shot the bishop of Valladolid, who happened to be in Irun.

 

What to make of it? –  the wheat and the tares, the best and the worst. And how to sort them out?

 

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Dragons in Spain

in Spain 2 Comments Tags: ,

The memories of the Civil war are vivid in Spain, and a new movie, There Be Dragons explores them. Roland Joffe, an agnostic, (The Mission, The Killing Fields), directed it. He is aiming for a Palm Sunday, 2011 release. The movie is intense. 

The plot is that two friends who grow up and take different paths, one a soldier and killer during the war and the other Josémaria, who founds Opus Dei. 

Americans know almost nothing about the Spanish Civil war, although it was the dress rehearsal for World War II. At most they have read For Whom the Bell Tolls. 

Any war is terrible, but a civil war in which friend kills friend, neighbor kills neighbor, brother kills brother is perhaps the worst.

 

Political violence increased in Spain throughout the 1930s – murder became a favored political weapon. Before the 1936 elections, both sides announced that they would refuse to accept the results if the other side won. The Left narrowly won and began an orgy of church burnings and killing. Franco and the generals led a Nationalist armed rebellion against the Leftist Republic and began an orgy of killing. 

The German Nazis and Italian Fascists backed Franco and bombed Guernica and Barcelona; the Communists backed the Republic and soon began killing their Socialist and Anarchist allies. Franco won and killed scores of thousands of leftists – and some priests who tried to stop the Nationalist atrocities. 

Will Spain ever really recover? 

Will other countries go down the same path, or I should say, continue to go down that path? We have seen Cambodia and Rwanda and Bosnia. Where else can it happen? Can it happen again in Europe, or here? Human nature contains dragons, and they may one day devour us.

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Benedict and Spanish Laicism

in Pope Benedict, Spain 5 Comments Tags: , ,

 

I finished my Camino on October 31, met my wife, and we stayed in Santiago until November 4, just before the arrival of the Pope. We went to Madrid for a few days and observed, among other things, the controversy started by the remarks that Benedict made to reporters on his plane: 

“In Spain, a strong, aggressive laicity, an anti-clericalism, a secularization has been born as we experienced in the 1930’s,” Benedict said. 

Along the Camino I had seen the memorials to the priests and religious murdered by the Republican side in 1936-1939 – and also the memorials to the leftists murdered by the Nationalist forces. With the wayside crosses, such memorials put the aches and pains I was feeling into a proper perspective.

 

At the Prado we saw Goya’s overwhelming paintings of the violence and repression in Madrid during the battle between the Spanish people and the French forces in 1808. At the Queen Sofia museum we saw an exhibition about the Spanish Civil War – of which Picasso’s “Guernica” was the centerpiece. The Republican propaganda showed the Catholic clergy as murderous allies of the Nazi-dominated fascists. We saw the newsreels of the battle of Madrid, newsreels of the children killed by bombs and artillery.

 

On Saturday we attended mass at the Augustinian church – the  mass of the martyrs of the order, murdered in Spain 1936-1939. We were given cards with their pictures, and the relics were in the church. The priest pointed to the martyrs during his sermon, as he spoke too of the Catholics murdered during the All Saints day mass in Iraq. 

 

Those who know Spain far better than I do say that conditions have changed so much that another civil war is impossible – I hope they are right. But the memories of the war are bitter on both the Catholic and laicist sides.

 

Franco was ruthless in his conduct of the war as a matter of policy and was not magnanimous in victory. The Republican side let mobs massacre soldiers and clergy and suppressed all Catholic activity. It was hardly surprising that Catholics turned to Franco to save them from being slaughtered, but they turned a blind eye to Franco’s slaughter of  Republicans who had done nothing criminal.

 

Are the Pope’s comments justified? I do not know enough about Spanish life to know whether the consumerist secularism of today’s Spain is as dangerous as the murderous “Laicismo” of the 1930s. Catholics and laicists have learned to live together in Spain, but they still do not like or respect each other.

 

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Seventy Years Later

in Responsibility, Spain 2 Comments Tags: , ,

Der Spiegel notes this anniversary: The thousand bloody days of the Spanish Civil War ended in March 1939 when Franco marched into Madrid. The killing was not over.

Probably 200,000 human beings were killed in the name of Franco’s name in the Civil War in in the years after the war. But in their area of influence the Republicans had 38,000 political opponents murdered among whom were 6,800 priests, whom they wrongly believed to be on Franco’s side. And if such numbers are only estimates, they still have explosive force: Even until the present Spanish society is troubled and polarized, even until the present are mass graves and the bones of political opponents sought. For the Spanish the Civil War is even after 70 years an open wound.

Both sides committed atrocities in the Civil War; Franco kept up the killing afterward. All that can be said for him is that he probably killed fewer people than the Communists would have killed, if they had come to power.

Like many historical traumas, the wounds of the Spanish Vivil War remains unhealed. The French have never come to terms with the violence of the Revolution, or with Vichy collaboration with the Nazis. The Germans have not fully come to terms with the Nazi era. Russia keeps retreating from a confrontation with the evils of the Communist era. The Catholic Church turns its face away from the sexual abuse scandal. And so on. Our instinct is to turn our face away from horrors, but without confrontation and repentance there is no healing.

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Enlightened European Attitudes

in sexual abuse, Spain No Comments Tags: , ,

Some Americans praise the more sophisticated European attitude to sexuality. The fuss about the Palin pregnancy, or about Clinton’s affairs, would be unimaginable in Europe.

The Catholic Church hierarchy in the United States is heavily influenced by Europe: rising stars among the priesthood were educated at the North American College or at other European seminaries to pick up the attitudes of Romanita. They may also have picked up other European attitudes, which may explain why they let sexually abusive priests continue to abuse children for decades.

The Spanish newspaper ABC has a story about Marcelino Fernández Arnaiz. Three days after getting out of prison, he was suspected of immediately abusing a six year old girl. It was not his first time in prison: he had previoudly been jailed for sexual abuse in 1980, 1983, 1986, 1990, 1999, 2000, 2002  and 2003. Every time he got out, he reoffended. Spain has become, like the Catholic Church, a forgiving community for pederasts where everyone gets a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth…chance.

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The War and Cartagena

in Spain, war 1 Comment Tags: , ,

We were in Cartagena, Spain, recently before we left for our cruise.

In the town square at the waterfront is an unusual war memorial: A Spanish memorial to the Spanish-American war, which Spain lost.

The monument has a sailor holding a dying soldier.

The victories are holding their laurel wreaths down.

The monument lists the great battle at Santiago, Cuba, and the names of the young men from the area who fought and who died in battles against Americans.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the war, two additional statues were added on the pier by the monument.

One is of a soldier with his head resting on his hand.

 

One shows a sailor weary walking home with his duffle bag.

What else can way say about a distant, lost war.

 

The Spanish-American war was one of the least justified wars in American history, and it had a human cost.

 

Even far more justified wars have human costs. In the Kolpinghaus (similar to a Catholic YMCA) in Eichstaett in Bavaria is a simple marble plaque with the names of the young Catholic men from the town who died in World War II. At the end, not even the dates of their death were known: they simply never came home.

 

Eichstaett was an intensely Catholic town and known for its opposition to Nazism. But the young Catholics of the town were drafted and died fighting for an evil cause. It is well for both the world and for the Germans that Nazism was defeated – but the young men of Eichstaett are dead, and almost forgotten.

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