In Palencia on Saturday, I went in a mid-sized church (which means semi-giant) and stood in the back for a few minutes. A Mass was in progress, and a priest and three elderly congregants took turns repeating the time worn phrases of worship. A high, ornate retablo loomed behind the priest, and the walls were adorned with the familiar accoutrements of Catholic faith, including a bigger than life-sized statue of Christ bleeding on the cross.
Over the last weeks I have stepped out of the sun or rain and into the cool and quiet dark of dozens, maybe hundreds of churches. Casting back, I can hardly distinguish one from another, though the cathedrals stand out, as does the Santuario de Nosa Señora de Barca in Muxia, where numerous model ships, from schooners to trawlers, hung from the ceiling on long chains. But if what I found inside most of the churches became repetitious, even monotonous, I never passed by an open door without stopping in. I don´t know exactly why. I guess I was drawn by the monumentality in part, and also by the aura of intensity and commitment, even though I felt none of the same myself—and even if I was also often repelled by the ways faith was repeatedly expressed.
Repelled may be a little strong, but troubled at the very least. I couldn´t really admire the huge stone structures, the complex and careful art within. When I consider all the treasure and labor devoted over the centuries to constructing the churches and making the elaborate Christian art, my proletarian heart balks. I wonder if such wealth might have been put to better use. And I wonder what might have been if so much artistry had had more than the one tale to tell, if for all those centuries creative people could have pursued a wider field of endeavor.
But it´s not just the churches and art themselves, as evidence of a limited good and a lack of imagination, that I question. More, it´s the story or message that these tell and re-tell in an architecture and imagery that is persistent, insistent, even bullying. For me, seeing Christ crucified over and over and over, in the ubiquitous images of the stations of the cross, in stained glass and paintings and sculptures, seeing him upon his cross in every church, his cadaverous face suffused with pain and suffering—I could no longer take these familiar scenes for granted, but had to confront what they meant, to me. And my conclusions were not happy ones. I came to think of all this imagery of grievous suffering, and of the churches themselves, as a means of waging a battle against the body and mortality. It seemed to me that I was being told that the body was the enemy, to be hated and despised.
The great weight of stone and space, the endless repetiton of the crucifixion spectacle, Jesus´s torn body hanging bloody on the cross—all this, it seemed to me, was intended to drive one towards the ill-defined promises of the soul, at the expense of the body. In these churches and cathedrals one cultivates the spirit, in part to placate God, but mostly to assuage the supposed tragedy of the body, the terrible fact that we are meat and we die. This fate is supposedly unbearable, but not if we embrace spirit, the golden path to a dreamy, eternal residence in heaven.
Here too, Christ is represented as representative. Typically on the towering retablos at the head of even the smaller churches, the crucified Christ hangs near the bottom, where he can be easily seen; but always at the top near the ceiling, distant but just visible, is Christ redeemed, happy in heaven, whole, adorned in comfy robes, seated and serene. The juxtaposition is none too hard to interpret.
I understand that many people find great solace in the story of Christ´s suffering, and in the promise of redemption. But in the churches and cathedrals, while I sometimes felt awe at the architectural and artistic accomplishment, more I came to feel oppressed. I looked at Christ on the cross, his hands and feet impaled, the crown of thorns on his bleeding brow, a gash on his chest, raw wounds on his knees, blood and more blood…. And I felt not uplifted or inspired but queasy and ready to cry. I suppose I´m supposed to weep for Christ, but without the consolations of the spirit, a belief in his redemption, I´m left only with the tragic part.
But then I would go back outside, and here I would find my own form of consolation—an antidote to the story the churches were telling me. Yes, we are meat and we all die, but what I saw in the streets outside the churches and cathedrals were people, in their bodies, living. Back out in the light I would shrug off the morbid story of Christ´s murder, and walk through the streets where always the pagan holiday was underway. People would be sitting outside cafes drinking coffee or wine and eating olives or tapas; maybe at one table two men played guitars; in a park old men with canes would congregate on benches in the shade, talking and reading newspapers; people lolled in the plazas, turning their faces to the sun; children ran about chasing pigeons and each other—they would run to their parents, and maybe a man would gently take a child´s earlobe between his thumb and forefinger, or cup a child´s chin in the palm of his hand.
When I came out of the church in Palencia the other day the street was sunny and hot, and I stood for a moment and enjoyed the heat on my face and arms. While the Mass had promised a life everlasting, through the body and blood of Christ, it seemed to me that the obsession with death overshadowed this message—and that even the promise of redemption was simply morbid fear dressed up as faith.
I shed the gloomy atmosphere of the church as I walked away down the street. I felt happy to be in Spain, in the sun, in my body, alive in that moment and not too worried about the next.
