Some of you may be aware of the tremendous crisis looming in Spain. Against the backdrop of a bloody civil war, 50 years of Franco's rule, and post-Franco reconciliation, a momentous struggle is about to occur whose outcome may affect us. Premier Zapatero has introduced measures to permit gay marriage, ease divorce and end religion classes in school. Aznar is back, commanding the right on the barricades. The battles resemble our own, faced with Republican control of our government and provide more proof than suggestion that Bush and the Religious Right are un-American.
This article by Le Monde's competent and insightful Vatican reporter, Henri Tincq, narrates the background and potential for violence.
The months-long conflict opposing the Spanish catholic hierarchy and the Socialist government of Spanish Premier José Luis Zapatero harkens back to the most somber if not the most contested pages in the history of the mythical Catholic Nation. On May 23rd, continuing the struggle initiated by John-Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI urged Spanish catholics to resist secular tendencies which, according to the Pope, threaten their country. He has ordered the Spanish Church to show firmness in its options to counter Zapatero.
The Spanish Church opposes several reforms introduced by the leftist government in Madrid, most notably those liberalizing divorce, permitting gay marriage and stem cell research and making religious instruction in public schools optional. According to a recent survey by the Opina Institute, 82% of the Spanish population says it is Catholic, but only 42% are practicing. Most Spaniards in this group vote for the Partito Popular (PP, right-wing). However, 2/3 of Spaniards believe that the Church is far divorced from social realitities.
This type of fracture is not unique in Europe. Over the last few years, in countries such as France, Holland or Belgium, where homosexual unions are recognized by the law, the national bishops' council has declared war on the governing powers. Gay marriage has become a kind of red flag waving in the face of Catholicism.
In Italy right now, the Church is leading a campaign of voter abstention in the upcoming national referendum on whether to authorize stem cell research using human embryos. The Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, wrote in an editorial in the May 23 issue of the Italian daily, La Repubblica, that the practice is a "Faustian bargain." The campaign resembles prior efforts against divorce and abortion led and subsequently lost by the Church at the beginning of the `70s.
But in Spain, battles between Church and State may take on exaggerated proportions, given the sad history of the 20th century. Certain Spanish Catholics compare the attitude of the Zapatero government with the anarchist and anticlerical experiment which, according to the Church, nearly crushed the "soul" of Spain.
The creation of the Spanish Republic of 1931 was a de facto separation of Church and State, as it was for France in 1905. The Spanish State has no official religion, declared the new fundamental law of the republic. Churches and monasteries were burned down in Asturias, Catalonia and Andalusia. Religious orders such as the Jesuits were disbanded or expelled. All governmental subsidies to the Catholic Church and its institutions were severed.
Historian Bartholomé Bennassar reminds us that the Spanish Civil War was a war of religion. Franco's forces marched in a crusade in the name of Christ the King against "Marxists," and carried out hundreds of summary executions of the "red vermin." The Republicans as well let go of their scruples and placed priests, nuns and bishops in front of the firing squad. 7,000 clerics lost their lives during the Spanish Civil War. The hero of the Alcazar of Toledo, Franco's General Moscado, thundered at the sanctuary of St. James of Compostela: To thee, Saint James, who inspires us in these terrible moments of war and who guides our leader Generalissimo Franco, we proclaim our Catholic and national convictions as we are challenged by Jewish and cosmopolitan nihilism.
The Catholic Church was the pillar of Franco's régime. Its backing permitted Franco to embrace a sort of moral duty, marking his distance from Fascist and Nazi régimes. The Franco government encouraged the teaching of religion in schools and acceded to every demand of Reconquista Catholicism, and insisted on the right of nomination of candidates for bishop before their appointment by the Pope. But, thanks to internal changes within the Catholic Church of the 1960s and 1970s, Pope John XXIII's Encyclical Pacem in Terris, the Vatican II Council (1962-1965), the teachings of Pope Paul VI on liberalism, the respect for the right of the press to go on strike, the Catholic Church, with the exception of a few ultra-Francoists and technocrat ministers with membership in Opus Dei, took its distance from Franco.
El Caudillo, who had his hands full with the separatist Basque clergy, claimed that he was stabbed in the back. He detested Paul VI, who did not reply to his invitation to visit the country. Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancon (1907-1994), Archbishop of Toledo and Madrid and Primate of Spain, preached national conciliation, condemned Catholic triumphalism in the aftermath of the Civil War, demanded liberalization and protested repression.
When Admiral Carrereo Blano, a radical Catholic and head of the Franco government, was assassinated by the ETA in 1973, the "Red Bishop" became a public whipping boy. In street protests organized by ultra-Francoists, Tarancon was vitiated in banners reading, Tarancon al paredon (String up Tarancon). After the death of Franco in 1975, Cardinal Tarancon will rally the support of the Catholic Church behind the idea of a non-confessional state.
In the conflict which is occurring now, thirty years later, between the Church and Spain's socialist government, we should bear in mind the passions of yesterday and the widespread resentment, intolerance and violence which accompanied them. But this unhappy past must not justify an attitude of systematic opposition [to reform] unfastened from the legacy of Cardinal Tarancon and the Vatican II Council. The way in which Benedict XVI will handle this crisis in the coming months will be an indication of the direction which he has chosen for his pontificate.