Embracing Otherness

It goes without saying that a couple of Presbyterians were sort of fish out of water on the Camino de Santiago.  We weren't the only Protestants (or even the only Presbyterian Teaching Elders), but we didn't even see a Protestant Church the whole time we were in Spain.  It was very Roman Catholic.
The feeling was cushioned a little bit by the fact that so many Pilgrims are not Catholic, and many are completely non-religious, so among the Pilgrims we felt more or less at home.
But still, there was all this stuff, the whole setting, the story and the history that surrounded us were just drenched in a sort of Christianity that is foreign to me, partially because of the Catholicism of it, but partly because it was not even modern Catholicism, it was medieval Catholicism, which is an entirely different beast.  And it has some distinctly beastly attributes, many of which I understand to be the heart of the disagreements that the reformers had with said church.
One of the reasons why Pilgrimage was pretty much a lost discipline for 500 years is the fact that the very purpose of Pilgrimage was to earn and indulgence, a physical act that begat forgiveness of sins, for yourself or for others.  People risked life and limb and spent considerable resources to "earn" themselves a better afterlife.  Theologically speaking, at least in Christian terms, this is utter nonsense and was anathematized in all its forms by reformed theology.
Yet when you anathematize (name abhorrent, condemn in the strongest possible terms) things, you often throw the baby out with the bathwater.  You become a reactionary and often cannot ask yourself searching questions or hear the convicting answers.  Case in point: Matamoros, the Moor Slayer, the medieval alter ego of Santiago.  The Apostle James, whose bones are believed to be in the crypt under the chancel in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, has two general manifestations: the Pilgrim, who you will see as a sort of kind, balding man in a long robe with a pilgrim staff and a gourd for water.  He is the evangelist, the one who wandered to the ends of the earth bringing the good news of Jesus to the world.  Then there is the Moor Slayer, mounted on a war horse, complete with medieval armor and weapons and often literally slicing through a horde of North African Muslims.
Matamoros made me a little queasy, first of all theologically, and second of all factually.  It is so obviously an anachronism, and it so obviously counter to the ethical imperative to love your neighbor and pray for your enemies, and turn the other cheek and all of that.  Matamoros is a superhero who bears the name of an Apostle, a fiction that people living in a world threatened by an unknown and terrifying other looked to for comfort.
I want my faith to be more about the Pilgrim than the Moor Slayer, but then one day I was standing on a wall that used to surround the town of Mansilla de las Mulas, there's still a lot of the wall left, including a couple thick stone gates.  I thought of what it must have been like for people who were just trying to live their lives in the face of marauders and wild animals and the threat of a foreign people sweeping down upon them to kill, rape, steal and enslave them.  I thought about the fact that the Moors were not nice people when they went slaughtering their way through Spain.  They were, quite frankly, a cold splash of reality.
I thought of the average peasant farmer outside of Leon, who would need to be able to flee to one of these walled cities for protection if the Moorish horde appeared on the horizon, and I thought about his wife and children being protected by the city and by Matamoros (even if he was just a legend), and it makes me at least understand why they carved his image on their churches.
I thought of all the violence that Christian people have supported and done over the centuries, and I understood, it no longer made me queasy, it just made me sad.  And a good part of the sadness was rooted in the fact that much of it was so very necessary.  Hitler needed to be stopped, Ghengis Khan was not a peaceful benevolent sort of fellow.  For all it's faults the Roman Catholic Empire and the legacy it left was responsible for creating a world where freedom and liberty could become important values, and where things like the Reformation and the Renaissance could happen.
Do I like Matamoros?  Not so much, but I came to understand why he exists.  Do I now subscribe to the veneration of Saints?  Do I think we ought to be more like the medieval church?  Ummm, nope, but I have a better understanding of many things, and understanding increases my capability to love.