Working and living in Brussels can feel like finding yourself marooned in enemy territory. A friend who once worked there on human rights legislation cautioned me that the city is “full of nets” with which to trap you – as well as full of “Satanists”.
It was hard to know how figurative he was being. The current European Commission is pushing the most progressive legislation in the EU’s history, as I heard one MEP with the nationalist Sweden Democrats put it. Not long after I arrived in April, the European Parliament hosted a photographic exhibition that included images suggesting a homosexual Christ surrounded by acolytes in leather clothing typically associated with bondage and fetishism. The obvious objection is: good luck trying that with the Prophet Muhammad and expecting Muslims to acquiesce quietly to such artistic licence.
The scale of institutional kowtowing and rainbow flag use in Brussels during this year’s Pride Month was surreal. Walking around the city, it felt like a strange army, having invaded and conquered the city, was displaying its unimaginatively dystopian-styled colours in every street so you had no doubt about regime change.
For many of those who endorsed Brexit, Brussels is the hub of Big Government of the worst kind, where a strangely lumped-together assortment of technocrats issue utopian-style diktats to more than 477 million people across 27 nations. I can’t deny that the more I see of it, the more it is turning me into Margaret Thatcher.
And yet, despite the progressive shibboleths being endorsed by an overly centralised system that stirs one’s inner Maggie, Brussels remains a “city of hope”, as the same friend noted, in which “Catholicism runs through it like a raspberry ripple”.
I increasingly noticed that for myself since arriving. There are the church spires that continually rise into view above the city rooftops; the bells ringing out at the weekend. There seem to be scallop shells everywhere, decorating buildings, doorways, fountains and the insides of churches.
After thousands of kilometres walking multiple Caminos de Santiago, I am somewhat attuned to spotting the scallop shell symbol of Saint James and the pilgrimage to his tomb in Santiago de Compostela. There is a large scallop shell behind the famous bronze Manneken Pis sculpture in the centre of Brussels, of a naked little boy stridently urinating into the fountain’s basin.
In the city’s famous Grand Place, a very large gold-plated scallop shell gleams in the sun atop one of the ornate buildings surrounding the square.
On Brussels street corners I have even encountered shrines to Saint Roch in his classic pose of pointing at the wound in his thigh while a loyal dog beside him offers a loaf of bread carried in its mouth. It’s like bumping into an old friend. Saint Roch is a prominent figure on the Camino due to his own life of pilgrim peregrinations. I encountered him many times along the trail, in small Spanish and Portuguese churches, including when dealing with my own injuries while similarly being helped by strangers.
“Europe was made on the pilgrim road to Compostela.” Just before you arrive at the Porta do Camino walled entrance on the edge of Santiago de Compostela’s old town, if you pay attention you can spot those words engraved in the paving stones you are walking along. After all, through the Camino, medieval pilgrims from all over Europe were brought into contact with each other, resulting in a mingling of nationalities that for many people would have been the first time in their lives that they encountered someone from another nation. Urban settlements grew to provide shelter and sustenance to pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, while kings and regional authorities made it their mission to coordinate protection and provisions for pilgrims, regardless of where they came from.
French fries – frites – are a big deal in Brussels. Great queues of locals and tourists gather outside the best-known friteries. Not far from the Grand Place is my favourite place to go – the frites are excellent while the friterie is not as busy or as pricey as others – opposite Saint Catherine’s Church that overlooks a small but lively square.
Twice the church has faced demolition: in the 1950s for an open-air car park, and more recently in 2011 when it was closed by a former bishop and about to be turned into some sort of covered market place. But a grass-roots movement by parishioners got Saint Catherine’s open again and cleaned up.
Sunday Mass there now is solemn and long, with gangs of altar boys – both small and towering teens – thurible swinging with incense. Each Mass ends with the priests and altar boys gathering in front of a statue of Mary off to the side of the altar as Salve Regina is sung. Following Mass there is a serious amount of candle lighting and silent prayer in front of myriad statues of saints dotted around the church. Occasionally there is an aperitif on the church steps as the parishioners mingle, shake hands and speak with the priest or queue up to receive a blessing. It all feels “very Catholic” – the best way I can describe it. During Mass some of the parishioners choose not to sit in the pews and remain at the back of the church, standing or kneeling on the floor’s stone slabs. Watching them one gets a sense of being among those early Christians who gathered in the catacombs of Rome to worship.
Back in the “real world” of Brussels city life, in contrast to the stern-faced young women striding around the European Quarter on “important” EU business, all around the city centre there are statues depicting fair maidens, feminine grace and maternal, life-nourishing qualities. There are a lot of bare breasts displayed in a way that I can only describe as proudly and nobly, and a conspicuous presence of infants under the protection of these maternal figures. It’s a strikingly different version of the matriarchy compared to the one that has been fashioned by modern feminist trends.
On July 11, I bumped into a bunch of merry Flemings holding an impromptu street party celebrating the Battle of the Golden Spurs, when the rebellious forces of the County of Flanders inflicted a disastrous defeat on the royal army of France in 1302. The name of the battle comes from all the pairs of spurs collected from the fallen French cavalry knights on the battlefield that were triumphantly hung up on the walls of the abbey church of Courtrai.
During the revelry one man told me that his girlfriend worked for the EU, explaining that though politically she was very much on the Left to his Right, the strength of their relationship transcended such differences. But it was tested when he joined her for a meal out with her work colleagues – and the topic of abortion was raised. “Brainwashed” was his description of the consensus everyone parroted. He said his girlfriend remained silent during the myopic “discussion” and apologised afterwards for what he’d had to listen to. She explained she couldn’t publicly question the opinions aired in case it caused problems at work.
“There is something deeply sinister about this country,” Tracey Rowland, the former dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, wrote in 2014 in What happened to Belgium? Lament for a Catholic Nation. “Its Catholic culture has been trashed by a couple of generations of intellectuals at war with their own heritage.”
It doesn’t seem to be just Belgium either, judging by current events around the EU and in the UK. But despite such a bleak reckoning of where Brussels has got to, there remains hope, of course, thanks to that raspberry ripple effect.
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