Berkley Center

Once, for a midterm, I wrote an absurdly lengthy essay detailing macro, meso, and micro levels of secularization in both the United Status and Europe. (Professor Timothy Wickham-Crowley’'s Sociology 136 class, if that sounds like a party.) So I’'d heard of secularization, Max Weber, the “disenchantment of the world,” and declining levels of “religiosity,”… and I discussed it all for 13 pages and an A-. But while I demonstrated some level of academic understanding, abstract concepts and processes, especially theories as grandiose as secularization, are difficult for me to fully grasp, and prior to this past January, my grandmother has colored my every concrete experience with Spanish Catholicism.

My grandmother immigrated to the United States from Spain in the spring of 1946, just six months after she married my grandfather, and probably prayed the rosary every day of their two-week voyage across the Atlantic. She was undeniably a deeply devout and religious woman, attended Mass daily, confession weekly, and used crucifixes as the focal point of a room’'s décor. She knew from memory every Holy Day of Obligation as well as the feast day of all of her children and grandchildren’'s patron saints. My sister and I accessorized with rosary beads while playing dress-up in her sewing room, her house smelled of the thick incense that clouds stained glass windows, and a porcelain baby Jesus (specifically the figurine from her living room, the smaller one with the chipped toe) appears in nearly every memory of her, no matter how benignly secular, –a leitmotif for sure if I were to ever translate such memories to prose. It’'s an admittedly limited understanding, my grandmother as the sole ambassador of Spanish religious culture, but preconceptions must originate somewhere, and family memories are much more poignant than abstract theories. Besides, Spain was one of the, if not the most, historically (and sometimes violently) Catholic countries I could recall from any European history course: the conquistadors, the Inquisition, Franco in more recent years.

Yet from a superficial examination of my experience here in Salamanca, most notably the nearly vacant cathedrals, Weber and company seem to have won out, my grandmother’'s team of elderly women thumbing their Mass books and rosary beads deep in the pockets of their long fur coats failing to attract the younger generations when faced with competition from the glamour of, so says Weber, rationality. Most Spaniards I have met here, while nominally Catholic, don'’t attend Mass save a marriage, baptism, or funeral. Only among my American friends have I heard any discussion of Sunday church. Thus the current, apparently secular, trends found in the World Values Survey: low levels of church attendance and religiosity and declining importance of God and/or religion in one’'s life.

But I would argue that such objective indicators, while possibly pertaining to the contemporary role of the institution of the church in the lives of Spaniards, do little to illuminate the place of Catholicism in Spanish culture. This distinction seems to be overlooked by many who, with or without much contemplation, surrender all of Spain and Europe to the secular jaws of disenchantment. A changing role of religion does not predicate a disappearing role. Catholic religious holidays constitute a significant portion of school and university vacation days; popular names such as María, José, Juan, Ana, Pedro, –if not a member of the Holy Family recall either another Bible character or saint; and clichéd adages often refer to the Mass. Some of Spain'’s most well known events, such as Carnival in Cadiz, Semana Santa in Sevilla, and the running of the bulls in Pamplona, all celebrate distinctly religious occasions, and local superstitions generally invoke a saint or similar religious figure.

It’'s as if the religiosity previously associated with intense devotion and piety has been assumed by popular culture, becoming part of Spaniards'’ collective memory of their heritage. Is not such a process a victory for religion, so pervasive it becomes indistinguishable from a people’'s culture? Or is this joining of the everyday and the religious effectively a secularizing process in itself? Regardless of perspective, the fact that both sides of the debate must acknowledge is that Catholicism is indeed deeply entrenched in Spanish culture. The majority of contemporary Spaniards may not practice their faith as did my grandmother, yet the legacy of such practice does not seem as if it will soon disappear.