To: Pope Francis, Vatican City
From: Alicia Bonner, Astorga, Spain
Querido Papa Francisco,
I’ve been walking the Camino de Santiago Frances for a month now. I feel blessed to be making this journey during both Lent and Holy Week, a time when the country’s faith and the glories of spring are on full display.
On Good (Holy) Friday, I watched the endless processions through the streets of the city of León commemorating the death of Jesus Christ. Thousands of men dressed in executioner’s garb carried flotillas of the stations of the cross, trailed by women in traditional funeral attire and religious leaders wearing hoods reminiscent of the American Ku Klux Klan. Hundreds of thousands of onlookers crowded the streets to watch. The next day, I watched the coverage of other cities’ processions, with variations in color and scale. It’s an incredibly unifying national experience and a visceral reminder of how Christ died.
In America, Good Friday is observed by Christians and Catholics but not with such fanfare. I felt grateful to be able to witness this spectacle as part of my Camino journey. Remembering the passion and the story of Christ’s death is helpful context for the deeper meaning and purpose of the ancient Camino tradition.
I stood watching the scenes of Jesus’ last days move past me to the dirges and drumbeats of a funeral procession for more than an hour, and I was already exhausted. I’m unsure if it’s because I’m 33 weeks pregnant or because I’ve walked 300 miles in the last 25 days. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I needed to sit down. I can’t imagine how tired Jesus must have felt. I admire the dedication of those carrying the flotillas and the women walking in high heels and formal funeral dress who follow them. Perhaps in remembering Christ’s death and resurrection, we more easily envision our own.
I have just completed my fourth week walking the Camino, after starting my journey in St. Jean Pied de Port on March 20. While the varied regions of Spain remain distinct in my mind, the long days of walking and the pilgrim albergues have begun to blur together. And I suppose that is the point. The Camino erases the day to day structure of daily life, replacing it with a long string of hills, valleys, dirt tracks, bunk beds, bocadillas, and dinners. The smiles and greetings of the pilgrims I meet somehow unify into a conglomeration of humanity.
Having enjoyed the rolling hills of vineyards and olive groves in Navarra and La Rioja, I entered the meseta with some trepidation.
Just beyond Castrojeriz, I saw a sign that read:
“Sin la meseta, no hay Camino.”
Without plateau, there is no path.
In some ways, this statement seemed to reprimand the pilgrims who skip the meseta because of its mind-numbing endlessness. But on a philosophical level, it articulated a deeper truth. In between the highs and lows, life often forces us to plod through endless expanses of flatness in which nothing changes and we wonder if things will ever change, how or when life will take on a different shape. The plateau tests a person’s will perhaps even more than the deepest low.
As I’ve walked through what must at this point be more than a hundred towns and villages across northern Spain, I’ve marveled at the degree to which Catholicism has so completely saturated this part or the world. No matter how small, every community has a Catholic church, and few other sects or religions appear to exist outside of the major cities. I will admit, I am not a Catholic. I’m an Episcopalian (what Robin Williams called “Catholic Lite.”) But I can’t help being impressed with the extent of the palatial grandeur that has been erected in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Walking in the shadow of this history is its own invitation to reflect on what faith meant when the first pilgrims set out on this long and often deadly trek, and what it means today.
Earlier this week, as I was making my way across the meseta, I encountered a 17 kilometer stretch of track along which pilgrim rest areas had been installed at regular intervals. In each, a graffiti artist has taken it upon themselves to inscribe their version of truth on the cement benches.
“Unidos Podemos”—together we can, one said.
An another, “Aborto” after which someone had inscribed “No” and over it someone had written “Sí.”
“Abortion No” or “Abortion Yes.”
It’s impossible to walk the Camino without contemplating the meaning of sin, and our vulnerability to it as humans, if in fact you are a person who believes in sin and repentance. I believe more in a loving God then a damning one, but the Camino has brought my sins into focus just the same. The thing I refuse to accept is shame. Adultery and divorce are part of my story. They are woven into the tapestry of my life. To hide them is to obscure part of who I am, or at least, once was.
Abortion is part of my story, too, but it is emotionally different. Divorce has become so commonplace, we accept its occurrence almost without judgement. Abortion, however, remains laden with shame and secrecy.
As I was walking across the meseta, I listened to a BBC podcast about how the abortion culture war got started, how one young evangelical who had himself been forced to accept an unwanted teen pregnancy because the advocate for the anti-abortion sentiment that has united Catholics and evangelicals in a culture war that is especially rife in America.
This anti-abortion fury forces pro-choice advocates to make the case for abortion in the most extreme cases, those of incestuous rape, or teen pregnancy. While the extreme cases may serve to justify the practice in governments dominated by men, they overshadow the lived reality of the majority of women seeking abortion care.
Are we ready to start a new conversation about abortion?
Abortion is both an economic necessity and an ethical tragedy. As humans, we struggle to hold two competing truths at the same time, though they are nonetheless true.
It is no longer 1200 (or 1910!) and in most of the world women are no longer the property of their fathers or husbands, bartered in marriage for the sole purpose of breeding and inheritance. Politically and economically, most of the world believes women and men deserve equal treatment under the law.
But women and men are not biologically equal, and the law must provide protections from this inequity. Just as we have done away with the right of kings to absolute authority, so must we surrender the idea that only God can choose where and how life is conceived, if we are to truly realize the political equality promised by Western democracy. If men get to choose where and when they ejaculate, women should get to choose the pregnancies they carry to term.
And yet, this political truth does not eliminate the ethical tragedy of abortion. The fact that two human excretions, mixed together at the right time and place can result in a human life is nothing short of miraculous. To snuff out that miracle trying to make its way into the world is tragic. And yet the moral relativism is obvious. The women who is already a living breathing adult who will hold the responsibility for carrying that child to term with all the consequences that come with it deserves the authority of that choice. She also deserves care and support to grieve the sadness of the decision she feels called to make. Forcing a woman to birth a child she does not want or cannot care for will not yield a better life for her child. Some here would point to adoption, a market that has been significantly affected by the legalization of abortion, at least in the United States. But the idea that a woman’s only option should be to carry a child to term only to have to give it away is preposterous. Of course women should also have this choice. It just shouldn’t be the only option.
When I had an abortion, I was 29 and married, with a masters degree. I made the decision to terminate my accidental pregnancy because my husband was adamant he was unready to become a father and I was unwilling to bring an unwanted child into the world.
We have lost so much reverence for this miracle and the vitally important role women play in the perpetuation of humankind. We’ve sequestered so many choices related to motherhood under the veil of “privacy.” The Supreme Court, in its decision in 1973, said the choice to have an abortion should be between a woman and her doctor. When I found out I was pregnant and asked my doctor about my options for termination, she was stunned, and directed me to Planned Parenthood. She didn’t ask questions, or invite me to have a conversation.
Planned Parenthood, in turn, occupies an important but precarious position in America’s demoralizing healthcare landscape. I received excellent medical care at Planned Parenthood, but I also noted how careful they were to offer services, not counseling that advised me about what choice I should or should not make.
No one counseled me about how a surgical versus a “medical” abortion might affect me differently, only that the former required an appointment and the latter could be performed at home, which seemed logistically attractive. For the most part, I endured the physical and emotional fallout of a chemically induced miscarriage in shameful silence, unable to talk about it without becoming emotionally bereft.
No one sets out with the goal of having an abortion no more than anyone intends to have a skiing accident or a kidney stone. But we have evolved the capacity of modern medicine to support humans through the accidents of life, another massive development in civilization of the last 100 years.
As I now enter the last weeks of pregnancy with a child conceived on purpose, I have no regrets about my earlier choice. I am relieved that I lived in a place with ready access to abortion. And yet I still cry mourning the tragedy of that extinguished life. I only wish I could have felt less ashamed and isolated.
As it was for me, I imagine for most women, the decision to have an abortion is one they make alone with some help from the internet. We deserve better options, ones that appreciate the political necessity of this procedure but which also support women through the emotional, psychological, and physical impact of the choices we each need to make.
Tomorrow, I will leave Astorga and make my way up the mountain to the Cruz de Fiero, the iron cross around which are amassed the discarded burdens of pilgrims from across the centuries in the form of the stones we carry on our journey. After so many years of grief, I am ready to relieve myself of this particular weight.
Last Tuesday, I attended a pilgrim mass at the Santa Cruz Monastery in Sahagún. Padre Ángel reminded us: life is the Camino and the Camino is life. The time warp of this journey comes to embody the truths we so easily overlook or take for granted in our daily lives. Life is suffering. It is joy. It is relief, perseverance, and surrender. At it’s best, life is love, but also incredible loss. And while each year you remind the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics that Jesus Christ died for our sins, ultimately, forgiveness does not live in the Church, but inside of me just as it lives in you.
In the celebration of Christ’s resurrection this Easter weekend, I find hope for my own.
May Christ’s suffering be a reminder that we can all be channels of love and mercy rather than punishment and judgement.
Happy Easter.