As we approach the second anniversary of Fr. Gabriel and I completing the Camino Primitivo, it’s about time I finished Part 3. If you’d like to start with Part 1 or Part 2 first, you now have the links. Part 1 might help with defining some terms but they’re all different vectors of approach on the same experience. Starting here is just fine.
Walking with a guy in funny clothes is an invitation to be continually asked “So, what is he?” When I answered “He’s a Dominican” in Spain they assumed I meant he’s from the Dominican Republican and wondered why his Spanish was so terrible. I was told by other peregrinos that “the guy in all white robes with the ginger” was a topic of conversation on Facebook groups. While priests, bishops, and even the occasional Pope have walked various Caminos, they typically don’t walk the Camino Primitivo and the also tend not to walk in their habits. Fr. Gabriel, as a proper Dominican friar, doesn’t even own clothes other than his habits. 320km on the trails with only two habits does take a bit of a toll on them, though I’ve been informed that one of the class abilities for Dominican clerics is keeping white clothing implausible clean under all circumstances. Also, Ward vs. Marinara Sauce is a cantrip for them. This might also be why Franciscans wear their brown-grey burlap; the dirt and stains don’t show on those.
I GUESS RELIGION HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH ALL THIS
But it is one of those things that should be a headscratcher why the land that gave birth to St. Dominic doesn’t readily recognize a Dominican, unless you know some recent history. Spain has had centuries of not just the Catholic church welded to power, in the form of the monarchy, but the Dominican Order specifically. Where this got extra unpleasant was during the rule of Franco and the policy of Nacionalcatolicismo, welding his Nationalists and Catholicism together. Among other things, Dominicans got accused of violating the seal of confession and turning people over to Franco’s thugs, something that would be a dire fucking betrayal of your priestly vows and, more importantly, your parishioners. What is more likely is Francoist agents listening in with bugs and taking advantage of confession because they’re jerks, but the Dominican Order still took the blame and were more or less uninvited from the country. This meant that younger Spaniards we ran into regularly had no idea what a Dominican was, but older Spaniards who grew up under Franco could be rather cold to us because they remembered. As one of Fr. Gabriel’s cousins once described it “Spain as nation that hasn’t figured out how to be a normal Catholic yet”. You know, it’s a place where there’s churches and priests, yep sure thing, they’re there but please don’t get too wound up and Protestant about it.
These days, there’s not remotely enough priests to run all the churches and shrines in Spain. You may be shocked to hear this, but walking a Camino takes you by an awful lot of churches & shrines. On the Primitivo, precious few were actually open and staffed outside of the cathedrals. Many are little more than scenic ruins after decades/centuries of neglect, depopulation, and civil war but maybe this is just the north. Many which were theoretically still functioning only had a priest on a circuit, like judges in the old west, arriving once a week or maybe just once a month to hold mass and take confessions from the few remaining people in a community. Or they’d implement the magnet model to pull churches too small to maintain themselves into one larger one that was sustainable, but this might require difficult travel for parishioners. You may be familiar with this trick from school districts with shrinking enrollment. This observation lead Fr. Gabriel and I to have the first of several very interesting conversations on what I consider the bureaucratic aspects Catholic operations. The conflict of vows, faith, and duties to the community with the organizational challenges of staffing, resources, and shifting priorities over spans of millennia in a truly global corporation that no mere company can compare to is quite something. If a line worker at a field site feels disconnected from the thinking and actions in the C-suite back at HQ in the Big City, I get the impression that a local parish’s relationship with the Curia is just this side of xenobiology. For example, things like the required number of masses per day, week, and month and what type of mass dictate what grade of church you are, what kind of services may be offered, what kind of relics they’re allowed to have, etc. It raises questions like, is it a cathedral because the bishop is there or is a cathedral a church authorized to have a bishop? Could you level up a random shrine to the point it becomes a cathedral? Would a bishop and antibishop, which immediately decays into an Anglican, instantly manifest in a weird moment of ecclesiastical pair production? These are the toughies.
Something that Fr. Gabriel and I have discussed over drinks before is that American faith, of almost every creed, is too cerebral; that Americans are too busy playing the game “Mind Faith: The Thinkpriest Cometh” and seeing who can best debate themselves into a shitty and unpleasant corner, even the atheists. I blame Calvin. And it is hard to ignore walking the Camino that your body hurts. You are tired at the end of the day, collapse into bed after eating enough to do it all again the next day, after a cafe con leche with jam & toast of course. You might get stronger, more fit, better acclimated, or you might have joints failing, metatarsals dislocating, and become nothing more than a collection of blisters and sunburns. As I said back in Part 1, one of the wonderful things about it all to me is that the Camino had a certain meditative emptiness of mind, the concentration of just…keep…walking. And, as much as he hurt from revisiting his collective soccer and ROTC injuries, Fr. Gabriel loved this clarity as well. Talking about “The Carnality of Faith” is something that got us fired up…or at least as much as you can be while waiting for ibuprofen to kick in. That you should rejoice in the body you have, to be able do what you can, to be thrilled to be doing this and experience what is happening. I forget which of us said it, but to ignore your body, to not enjoy the pleasures of world and exult in all its gifts, is to forsake the gift of existence. Seems damn ungrateful.
Not to get too deeply theological with things, but for a faith sitting on a bedrock principle of The Word Made Flesh, seems like a lot of people claiming to be Christians over the centuries have been working really hard to ignore the dirty, messy, bloody flesh aspect of faith. Another thing that hammered home the concept of the Carnality Of Faith to me was going to the Prado. PROTIP: do not try to do the Prado in a single day, you will fail, or at least you won’t be able to see it all and will hurt from trying. I include here my favorite depiction of Madonna Lactans, of which there were many on display. When I pointed out I’d never seen a depiction like this before, Fr. Gabriel said “These should be everywhere. They were everywhere, but not in a prudish America that doesn’t want to remember bodies exist, much less that Mary suckled the baby Jesus. I miss the churches with toddlers running up and down the aisles and babies crying during mass in Central America. That’s a church that’s alive!” Hell, if you want to chase mothers away to a nursing room so that no one will be scandalized by a titty, at least put depictions like this there as a high five to them. Also, all of Hieronymus Bosch’s art 1) is smaller than I expected, 2) so more ridiculously detailed in person than I thought, and 3) was bathroom art for the king in El Escorial. That’s right, all Bosch’s religious art was to be enjoyed while pooping.
On the last night in Madrid before we went home, listening to Brass Against The Machine, with Fr. Gabriel contemplating how he could do more Caminos, we got to discussing the Carnality of Faith again and I asked “Can you assign pilgrimage as penance? I know it certainly was a thing a centuries ago, though it was also practically a death sentence.” I wish I’d recorded our conversation for the level of detail we delved into. Much like we’d enjoy making Phil & Fr. Gabriel’s Big Book of Heresy someday, with particular attention to the dismantling of the Cult of Americhrist, Fr. Gabriel desperately would like his fellow priests to adopt some reform of penance to make it more restorative. There is classic trope of someone going to confession, getting assigned some number of prayers, everything is clean slate a afterwards, does the exact same thing, repeat forever. I made a sarcastic joke and asked if there was a standard conversion table of sin to penance and what the units were. This required Fr. Gabriel to take off his glasses and rub his eyes in pain “Yes, there was one. An awful lot of old priests were trained to that and they never gave it much thought. Confession isn’t a drive-thru fast food order. It does a disservice to the person who has come to you as you haven’t helped them heal the harm they’ve done to themselves, much less the harm to world from their sin.” This was not the answer I was expecting. I’d always regarded confession/penance as a quid pro quo kind of situation, which is kinda the result of the old priests having a Sin Chart to phone it in with. While he hasn’t assigned pilgrimage to anyone (yet), he’s certainly assigned penitent work and activities to people with a restorative aspect.
Me: And what if they don’t do it? You know, take the absolution and run. How would you even check?
Him: [in his finest “You sweet summer child” voice] If you don’t complete assigned penance, then it is as if you never made the confession at all. There is no absolution unless it is completed.
Me: And if they lie and say they did it at the next confession?
Him: Then they have acted in bad faith and it as if it had never happened, no absolution. Also, gimme some credit for paying attention. I know when things happen and when they don’t.
If Fr. Gabriel had his way, an awful lot more people would be expressing the Carnality of Faith with acts, to exist in this world, and make it a better place to be in. While Jesus may have said “The poor you will always have with you” it doesn’t mean you make sure they stay that way forever so you have always some. You help those in need and do the work they can’t for them…and for yourself. Take a squirt of the milk of human kindness and just be.
STUNT MASSES
We began our Camino with an early morning walk over to the Oviedo cathedral as we needed to get a new credential for Fr. Gabriel. Of all the things to forget on his desk back in Salt Lake City, his credential for walking the Camino is what he forgot. From the American Pilgrims of the Camino, we’d learned that they were available at the cathedral and the municipal alburgues in Oviedo. Once there and walking, we found out you can get them from pretty much any cathedral or other office, but this was knowledge we didn’t have at the beginning. As it is something the observant are supposed to do before beginning a Camino walk, Fr. Gabriel lucked into an early pilgrim’s mass in Oviedo at the Cathedral. I, meanwhile, got to have the rest of the cathedral to myself before it officially opened to the public to enjoy the ridiculous amount of decor in the place. When a place is the official starting point of a pilgrim trail that’s over a thousand years old, you accumulate some serious pretty cruft. Not quite as fancy as Santiago mind you, but that’s the difference between the beginning and end of a pilgrim trail.
Now, I’ve often made the joke that a Catholic priest is a computer that runs the program mass.exe at least once a day. This is wildly inaccurate and the V2OS for Catholic systems can be much more complicated. I don’t claim to know the exact number of times Fr. Gabriel is required to say mass per week, but I do know for certain that he needed to have one done by sundown on Saturday and that they vary depending on grade of church, day of the week, liturgical calendar, etc. etc. But not to worry, Fr. Gabriel had 10kg of INSTANT MASS (just add priest) kit in his backpack. This meant wherever we were, once I’d bought him a bottle of red wine from a stall at Atocha Station, he could set up an altar to say mass with himself as both the celebrant and the congregation. It looks a bit like holy talking to yourself to an outsider. But, you know, Spain’s got a lot of churches so this was like carrying a first aid kit; you’re glad you have it, just in case.
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Our first trail mass happened on the third day where we stopped in Cornellana to rest in the shade, take our shoes off, get lunch, and hit up a pharmacy. PROTIP: siesta is still a thing in rural Spain and, annoyingly, sometimes things don’t open again afterward, like pharmacies. We also met a nice woman from Boston that was doing this Camino in honor of her sister that had passed away from cancer. The Monesterio de San Salvador we were sitting outside of was the end of the trail for her today and she was staying in the dormitory there. After sitting there for a while and considering how much further we needed to go for the day as our muscles locked up, we decided this was a good place to stop too and asked the caretakers of the monastery very nicely if we could stay there too. In thanks and because he was due, with my very bad Spanish, I asked the caretaker if Fr. Gabriel could use the church at the monastery to say mass for anyone that wanted to attend. This is how we got to go into the 1000 year old church on a UNESCO Heritage Site that is normally locked up except for a monthly mass to maintain consecration and special occasions like feast days.
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Six days later, we were sitting on benches outside of a shrine in a graveyard several kilometers outside of O Cadavo. It was beginning to very lightly rain and we both kept falling asleep into micronaps. This is where my day one declaration that “failure is absolutely an option” was finally accepted by Fr. Gabriel as his body was failing him. That we did not need to die for this walk. That if we didn’t take the break we might not finish. And so, I summoned a cab to the nearest place that I could identify on a map to our location to take us the fairly steep 6km we weren’t going to make that day. I also declared Recovery Day, where we’d be resting the following day as well and got us a private room at the pension rather than a bed in the alburgues thanks to Mery at Porto Santa. Then a miracle happened after we got to our room.
Fr. Gabriel: Give me two euro.
Me: Damn, mendicant begging in my own room. Here, take five.
[time passes]
Fr. Gabriel: [returns from the vending machines, hobbling into the room with two bottles of Estrella Galicia beer and a bag of sabor de jamón Ruffles] Try those.
Me: [goes to Second Level, Zardoz-style] Goddamn. GOD. DAMN.
It was then time to go get snacks from the market along with more painkillers. While slowly hobbling that way we heard someone yell “Padre! PADRE!” Fr. Gabriel turned to face the approaching group of five in their early 20s and answered “Yes?” in English.
Him: [some rapid Spanish asking about mass location and times]
Fr. Gabriel: [in English] Sorry, I’m not a priest here. No idea.
Him: [switches to English] Oh you’re Americans too?
Fr. Gabriel: Yep. Just so you know, Spain doesn’t use the word “padre” for priests. That’s a North America thing. It’s curo here.
We discovered that they were a collection of seniors from Franciscan University in Steubenville, OH that’s had started their Camino in the Pyrenees and the person running their Catholic student life program was someone Fr. Gabriel had gone through formation with. The small world syndrome blew their minds but didn’t help them find a mass to attend as the multi-mass per day, every day they could, kind of Catholics. I told them I’d work on it and let them know what I figured out. Fr. Gabriel went to go take a long hot bath and brief nap while I went to work. By the time he was feeling human again, I’d arranged with Mery to make use of their back patio for Fr. Gabriel to set up his travel altar and say mass. Mery was thrilled at this as she wrangled her daughter. daughter’s friend and various townsfolk who were available (it’s a small town) over to the pension. I walked over to the alburgues and let the students know I’d done the legwork for Fr. Gabriel to put on a mass for them.
Blond Student Guy: How did you do that? How did you do it so quickly? I thought you were a professor or something.
Me: No, I’m a safety guy. Do you have someone in your group who has fixes things when they’ve gone wrong on the Camino?
BSG: Yeah!
Me: [squints, points at the woman that is the math major among them who’s just this side of being a nun] It’s you, isn’t it?
Math Almost-Nun: [smiles] Yes. And for the last several years.
Me: In any group, it’s important to find your Phil. She’s yours and cherish that. She’ll keep you alive to Santiago. Fr. Gabriel is lucky enough that I’m his.
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Two days later we were in the Roman walled city of Lugo. I had already reserved us space at a coffin hotel there because I’d wanted to sleep in one of those since I first read of them at age six in my dad’s OMNI magazine. I have learned they’re neat but not particularly quiet or comfortable relative to other accomodations, or at least they weren’t there…ESPECIALLY WITH THAT FUCKER WITH A GUITAR IN THE ALLEY BELOW OUR PODS THAT PLAYED “WONDERWALL” FROM 5PM TO 4AM. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
The Lugo cathedral was very instructive in a couple different ways. The first was a practical demonstration of something I’d always known about the weird Catholic shadow world where Diocletian’s reforms still matter. In Emperor Diocletian’s efforts to stabilize the Roman Empire, he reorganized it into a whole bunch of smaller regions that could support their garrisons that could then be rallied together by their provincial leader into a legion as needed. These administrative regions were called dioceses and looking at a map of them in Europe they haven’t changed all that much since then. While the Catholic Church holds a bit of a grudge against him because of Diocletian’s Edict Against the Christians, they very happily maintained his management structure. When priests travel outside of their home diocese, they have to carry a card that states their faculties (what they are trained/empowered to do) and an endorsement from their bishop that they are a priest in good standing, 100% Not A Heretic. These days it’s something of a formality; to my nerdy ass it feels like I was watching The Fifth Tradition from Vampire the Masquerade done for real. But not all that long ago when travel and communication were hard, wandering clergy usurping parishes and preaching variant doctrine/straight up heresy were real.
So, after we dropped our bags, when Fr. Gabriel presented himself and his card at the Lugo cathedral it was a bit of a surprise how enthusiastic they were to see him. We were fresh of the trail, tired and dirty. While he was due for a mass, he expecting to just sit in the pews with everyone else. Nope, they wanted him to run it as the priest for the afternoon mass. You see, to run the program mass.exe properly, you needs three priests to fulfill the roles of priest, deacon and subdeacon to say the words and do all the altar things. More priests than that can be up there, but only those three have formal roles. Extra priests are, effectively, Jesus’ hype men where everyone does the appropriate hand gestures to salute the host and do the call & response. But, just like your training matrix and certifications at work, so too must a priest be signed off as competent to do given masses because it Would Be Bad to do mass wrong. Fr. Gabriel is kinda the priest equivalent of that one gunnery sergeant who has gotten signed off on every damn technical manual you can think of for some reason. The only reason he escaped having to run it is because, while he certainly knew the requirements for this particular mass, his Spanish wasn’t remotely good enough to say it for the locals and he isn’t allowed to do it in Latin. And thus, he was a Jesus hype man in Lugo.
The second thing I learned was when Fr. Gabriel directed my attention up toward the ceiling to what looked like VIP box from a stadium. One side had the coat of arms for Galicia and the other had the royal coat of arms for Spain and they were, indeed, the royal boxes (the picture to the right is the box from Santiago because I failed to take a pic of Lugo’s). Because of this, Fr. Gabriel was tickled because he’d realized that when saying mass in Spain there was an addition he could do that he had never been able to do before: adding a prayer for the Catholic monarch of a country. Not a lot of those around anymore.
I’ve written nearly 4000 words at this point and could probably do another 4000 on Santiago de Compostela alone but I’m not gonna. Fr. Gabriel did get to participate in mass there, collecting the trifecta of cathedrals along the Camino Primitivo. There is one thing I want to make sure to share from there: the Botafumerio
There aren’t many of these mega-censers around anymore but once upon a time every cathedral had them as a plague control measure, following the miasma theory of disease; if you let commoners into your cathedral, you’re gonna want to do something about that smell before everyone dies. Someone paid for the giant pile of frankincense and the labor of eight dudes to get it swinging while we were there and that was a helluva thing to see. Luckily, someone else did a much better recording than I did. And, boy howdy, that thing goes swinging the FULL length of the transept. Just watch.
We ran into the Steubenville students again in both Lugo and Santiago. While they’re young and were moving faster than us, they were also dawdling in the cities sucking up as many masses per day as they could. We caught them in a bit of crisis in Lugo as one of them had lost his credential and thus all the stamps proving that he’d made the walk all the way across the north of Spain. He was in tears that he wasn’t going to be able to achieve his Compostela. Lucky for him, he’d found me.
Me: Nothing is fucked. Go to the cathedral, they’ll give you a new credential. It’ll cost you a couple euro.
Him: But all my stamps! I can’t prove any of where I’ve gone!
Me: On foot, you need the last 100km worth of stamps in your credential, two per day. The distance from Lugo to Santiago is just over 100km and that’s the minimum to get your Compostela.
Him: REALLY?!?!
Me: [to Math Almost-Nun] Take him to the the cathedral. You’re his Phil.
Math Almost-Nun: This is what I told him. Maybe he’ll listen to you.
Me: Listen to her. Probably should apologize and buy her lunch as well.
I think the day when we caught up with them in the cathedral in Santiago, they were on their fifth mass of the day. Several of them also got a serious lecture from me in the museum about numismatics. I got asked again if I was sure I wasn’t a professor. And yes, all the students got their Compostela.