Bishop Says Spain Is On A Mission To Drive Religion From Public Life

IN 2010, during a visit to Spain, Pope Benedict XVI claimed that ‘aggressive anti-clericalism’ had taken hold in the country. His remarks came after the then Socialist government had ended obligatory religious education in state schools, legalised abortion on demand and, in 2005, had become the fourth country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage.

Now it’s reported here that the gulf between church and state is widening further, much to the dismay of Spain’s bishops who were horrified when the country legalised euthanasia in March.

In what the Catholic Bishops described as “abandoning the suffering,” the law requires the National Health System to provide euthanasia for:

Any adult Spanish nationals or legal residents who suffer from a serious and incurable disease or a serious, chronic and incapacitating condition.

Bishop Luis Javier Argüello Garcia, above, Auxiliary Bishop of Valladolid and Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference said that while relations in ordinary interactions with government agencies are “cordial and constructive” Catholics are having a “troubling disagreement” with the country’s socialist coalition government.

He accused it of restricting freedom of conscience and marginalising the teaching of religion in schools.

We are concerned about the government’s legislative programme because we are seeing how an anthropological vision is being proposed and set in place.

Proposed legislation includes a bill allowing minors to seek gender transition without parental consent, and to allow 16 and 17 year olds to procure abortion without parental consent.

Spain is also discussing establishing a “National Covenant for the Laicidad” (a concept similar to the French Laicité, which defines a separation of state and religion but not necessarily the disappearance of religious groups from the public square).

It would take the form of a Conscience Bill that Garcia says will:

Reduce religious freedom to a matter of conscience alone, certainly in line with a general proposal to privatise the life of faith, or to box in the exercise of one’s own faith within the conscience or in the sacristy of each church.

The bill, which seeks to establish a strictly secular state with no relationship with the Church, was part of the platform in the deal struck between the PSOE and Podemos parties to form a coalition government.

The bishop stressed that the bishops of Spain “are concerned” about a bill that seeks:

The reduction of the religious to the private sphere, the reduction of conscience without its public expression or limiting it to the sacristy, excluding it from the public square or the social fabric.