Older than our country...

Yesterday I was the official tour guide on our vol team's last day in Seville. As I handed them off at 6pm to someone else who was taking them to dinner I laughed and said I had thoroughly worn them out. It turns out I really wore myself out. When I walked away and got on the bus to head home, I realized I was so tired that I wasn't sure I could make it from my bus stop to my apt. I'm not as young as I once was...
As part of the tour I took them to the Catedral. I have been there twice before and didn't intend to go in with the group, but it turns out that I get in free now that I have a residence card. So if it is free, why not? Once again I was overwhelmed with the stained glass and the gold altar and the silver altar and Christopher Colombus's tomb and the climb up 30-something levels to the top of the tower. I never tire of seeing Seville from it's hightest point.
But once again, the thing that overwhelms me the most, the thing that I just can't shake when I walk out of there is the emptiness of it all. The central figure throughout the building is Mary. And this morning as I was reading in 1 John about not having idols I was brought to tears for the people lost in this religion. I watch people cross themselves every time they pass a church and a picture of Mary. I know they are trying to do what is right. They are at least attempting to acknowledge God, but it breaks my heart that they have been sold a lie. I said to someone yesterday, we spend so much time praying for Muslims to come to faith, but I almost think that it would be better for these people to be Muslim than to be Catholic in Spain. There is no truth in the Catholic church here. (It is very different from American Catholicism.) But my point is, at least the Muslims acknowledge the fact that they are not worshipping Christ. Here Christ and Mary are equal.
Just a couple of days ago I listened once again as a Spaniard told me she was Catholic but did not attend mass or really believe anything. She was honest about the fact that she is just Catholic because she is Spanish. They are almost one in the same. And she wants nothing to do with the church or with God...they are the same in her eyes.
Last week I listened to a man in his late 50s explain to me what Franco had done to this country and why no one wants to be a part of the church. The church to them is the same as Franco's government. It is a way of controlling the people. And so now you have the older folks still following the church because it is all they have ever known and you have the younger generation rebelling against it searching for freedom, yet tied to it by tradition and out of respect for their elders. It is so heart-breaking. And so overwhelming. Are you praying?