A Catholic association has compared Spain’s Socialist government with the German Third Reich.Commenting on Friday about the Socialist party’s response to the Catholic Church rally held in defence of the family in Madrid the previous Sunday, when Bishops and Cardinals criticised aspects of government policy, Alfredo Dagnino, President of the Asociación Católica de Propagandistas, said that the government intended ‘to strip public life of religious beliefs, and to build belief on individualism – a theory with ‘similar roots’ to the Third Reich or to Marxist countries.
He said that a religious, pacific, and healthily campaigning act such as that seen in the Plaza de Colón on Sunday, did not warrant statements as seen from the Socialist Party.
He said that that some of the Government’s policies had the deliberate intention to do without God, the Church and Christianity in the vision of the world.
His comments come in sharp contrast to others made by representatives from a group of 150 grass-level Catholic collectives who issued a statement earlier in the day lamenting that the Bishops were ignoring current social reality.
The Redes Cristianans group said that the Church had traditionally campaigned for equality between men and women, for democracy, and they lamented the new vision of the family being promoted by the church as something ‘monolithic’ and in agreement with the beliefs of only certain sections of the Church.
Criticism of the rally on Sunday also came from one of the leading Catholic Socialists. Francisco Vázquez, Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican, told the El País newspaper that the Cardinals Antonio María Rouco Varela and García-Gasco had led a Church attack against the Government which was unheard of in the times of democracy in Spain.
He said that the information that he had from the Vatican indicated that the protest was not to have departed from the normal demands, and that by doing so the Church had taken ‘a step backwards’.
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