The Spanish Episcopal Conference has awarded its ¡Bravo! Press Award to Javier Cercas for a book with Pope Francis. Up to this point, one might imagine that the bishops intend to recognize a brilliant defense of Christianity or an appreciative look at the Church. But then the first article that Cercas publishes after the award is announced appears, and the mirage shatters: a piece in El País Semanal in which he portrays the Church as a macho, backward, fossilized, and socially irrelevant institution. A perfect picture… for receiving a ¡Bravo! Award in today’s episcopal Spain.
Because Cercas does not write from affection, nor from respect, nor from the slightest intellectual sympathy. He is the typical progressive writer for whom the Church is useful as a literary object or as a cultural antagonist, but useless as a source of truth. His usual catalog includes: structural misogyny, systemic homophobia, medieval remnants, oppressive institutions… a menu that any reader of El País recognizes as the dish of the day. And yet—or rather, precisely because of that—the CEE decides to award him. The pastoral Stockholm syndrome must be in its metastatic phase.
The award that consists of making yourself small before those who consider you small
The problem is not Cercas; Cercas is what he is and has never hidden it. The problem is the CEE, which lives installed in a childish fascination with trying to ingratiate itself with those who despise it. And it does so in the most pathetic way possible: handing out awards to see if that way the chic columnists of Madrid stop calling them macho, retrograde, or medieval for a couple of weeks.
It doesn’t work. It has never worked. But they keep going. And every year they outdo themselves.
Episcopal self-referentiality in its maximum splendor
But let’s not forget the other side of the ¡Bravo! Award: its endogamic self-complacency. Let’s review the track record:
COPE, Trece TV, Cadena 100, various executives, Bustos, the entire episcopal media ecosystem… Is it really necessary to hold a gala for this? With a single event they could handle the award ceremony and the company Christmas dinner. After all, it’s always the same guests, the same speeches, and the same automatic applause.
These awards do not recognize any evangelization; they recognize internal loyalties, office balances, corporate miseries and, when they step out of the corral, they do so to flatter characters who will never return the courtesy. Because if there’s one thing Javier Cercas is clear about, it’s that the Church, as he conceives it, is an uncomfortable survival. And if there’s one thing the CEE is clear about, it’s that they love to award those who think that.
The Church according to Cercas… and the Church according to the CEE
Cercas presents the Church as:
- Misogynistic.
- Reactionary.
- Socially useless.
- Culturally irrelevant.
- Historically guilty of everything the enlightened elite fears.
And right after publishing all that, he receives an ecclesiastical award, an episcopal ovation, and probably a salmon canapé at the subsequent reception.
One no longer knows whether to laugh, cry, or ask someone to review the house statutes, lest the ¡Bravo! Award has officially become a contest of “flatter your executioner”.
The perfect symbol of a self-esteem crisis
The Cercas case is not an anecdote. It is a symptom:
A Church that no longer takes itself seriously.
A bishops’ conference that confuses “opening up to the world” with apologizing to the world for existing.
And awards that, far from evangelizing, confirm self-imposed irrelevance.
In summary:
The ¡Bravo! Awards no longer serve to recognize those who announce the Gospel, but to celebrate among themselves or beg for external acceptance.
And this year they have achieved both at once.
Bravo. Bravo, really.