Talking
of hard-to-believe matters Galician . . . There's said to be a driver
here who's been stopped more than a hundred times for reckless driving and who doesn't even have a licence. But it's not a myth and
you can read about "Spain's King of reckless driving" here.
After years on the run, he's now handed himself in and hired a
leading lawyer. Who seems to have his work cut out.
Talking
about driving . . . Here's one reason why you shouldn't implicitly trust
your satnav in Spain. Teruel in particular.
Gay
marriage: Here's a funny thing:- Catholic Spain? - Yes. Catholic
France? - Yes. Protestant England? - No. Wonder what it means.
I've
tried all sorts of tricks to get the hungry/greedy seagull back into
my garden, even throwing real bread, but with no success. However,
there was ample compensation this evening when that most timid (and
unusually quiet) member of the crow family, a jay, swooped down and
then sat in my fig tree slowly devouring a crust.
I've just noticed that the last paragraph moved seamlessly from gays to jays. Impressive, if unintentional.
Circumstances
change principles. And priorities. I was talking to a Galician friend
today about the Cómete o mar/Come o mar controversy I
mentioned the other day. And about the fact there are three, yes
three, organisations in Galicia - a region of 3 million - which
purport to superintend the Galician language, Gallego/Galego. Maybe,
she said. But no one has time for those things these days. There are far more
important things to worry about. Like getting to the end of the
month, as the Spanish put it.
In
the book I mentioned yesterday - by Hape Kerkeling - he describes the Camino as a marriage market for South American women, some of whom
are sent there by their parents specifically to find a husband. I can't say I've
seen any evidence of this but, then, on each occasion my companions
were 5 women. Must go on my own in September. And try to appear both
rich and available. Well,
one out of two isn't bad.
Finally
. . . All religions have the capacity to make one laugh. Would that
were all. Sadly, they also have the capacity to infuriate. Here's one
justifiably angry woman, Rosa Montero, writing in El País
today. There may be a Catholic
response to her points but it ain't going to convince me, especially
if it involves everyone dying but then living happy-ever-after in some variant of
Heaven:
I'm
not religious but I think that spirituality is not the prerogative of
religions, rather an essential quality of being human. I respect
religious beliefs as long as they are not imposed or themselves
impose egregious abuses (such as the stoning of Sharia). I know
wonderful Catholics, heroic priests and nuns who work to the bone in
terrible places and enhance the world quietly. I feel much less
sympathy for the Catholic hierarchy, which exercises a power that
often seems retrogressive and abusive. Yet I almost always try to
make the effort to be moderate and to coexist because I don't want to
hurt decent Catholics, who are many.
But
today I want to talk about the case of Beatrice, a Salvadoran aged
22, pregnant and very ill (with discoid lupus erythematosus,
eclampsia and severe renal insufficiency), who will die if her
pregnancy is not interrupted as soon as possible: each passing day
her condition worsens. Now we know that the Salvadoran
Constitutional Court has denied the possibility of abortion, a
doubly wretched judgement when we know that the foetus lacks half its
brain and is unviable. But within this cruel tale of horrors there
something I feel that is even worse that those four insane judges,
and it is that the Episcopal Conference of El Salvador has welcomed
the ruling and has kept up throughout radical opposition to the
operation that would save Beatriz's life. And I say that this
attitude is worse because the bishops have not been disowned by the
Vatican; because the Catholic Church is a huge and powerful
institution and not a handful of fascist judges; because a ferocious
fanaticism which saves a foetus with no brain and kills a mother is
the antithesis of Christian humanism; because it forces you to
assume, to the dismay of all, that the Catholic Church is a gang of
criminals.
No comments:
Post a Comment