Once they governed an empire, their crusaders and missionaries spreading the faith to newly discovered corners of the world. Today the Catholics of Spain are an angry and fearful group, convinced that the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wants to oust them from public life. The Socialists are “engaged in a brutal assault on the Catholic Church on many fronts”, says Elena Fernández-Trapiella, a Madrid-based public relations executive with three sons in primary school. “They are attacking the very Christian foundations of Spain.”
Like many Catholic parents she is particularly concerned about the Government's new citizenship classes, introduced this academic year amid great controversy. “I am worried because of my children,” she says. “They are trying to demolish fundamental pillars of our society that I grew up with, believe in and feel comfortable with. They are leaving us in a moral void.”
Ms Fernández-Trapiella is not the only believer who finds the social reforms anathema. Hundreds of thousands of conservative Catholics marched in Madrid in December to denounce Mr Zapatero's policies on everything from legalising same-sex marriage and fast-track divorce to embryonic stem-cell research.
As numerous and vociferous as they are, the Catholics are seeing their country move in a different direction. Even after Spain's powerful bishops took the unprecedented step of calling on Catholics to vote against Mr Zapatero in the March general election, he comfortably won a second term in office.
Emboldened by its win, the Government has vowed to complete in this term a project it began in its first: to remove the remaining vestiges of the Church from the State. A prime objective is “to advance in the secular condition that the Constitution confers upon our state”, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, the Vice-President, said this month.
She also vowed to introduce new measures to guarantee a woman's right to an abortion, which the Government believes is under threat after recent campaigns against clinics by Catholic pressure groups.
The words were like a red rag to a bull, angering Spain's Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican. “We are in the midst of a cultural revolution,” Antonio Cañizares, the Cardinal of Toledo, told his congregation. “The secularism that is being imposed on us is designed to eradicate our Christian roots, our heritage and the moral principles that have characterised us in the West” - substituting them, in the Pope's words, with “the dictatorship of relativism”.
Once one of Europe's most devout nations, Spain is a key battleground in Pope Benedict XVI's drive to combat “creeping secularisation”. The Vatican has denounced many of Mr Zapatero's reforms, though it tempered its language after the Government threatened to review state funding for the Church. Spanish taxpayers contribute about €4 billion (£3 billion) a year to the Catholic Church.
Spain's bishops are also preparing for more battles with the Government. In March they replaced their leader, a moderate who sought good relations with government, with Antonio María Rouco Varela, a renowned hardliner who spearheaded the fight against Mr Zapatero.
Few reforms are as worrying to the Church as Mr Zapatero's efforts to drive it from state schools. Upon taking office in 2004 he scrapped a plan by the previous conservative Government to make religious instruction compulsory. More recently, he has introduced citizenship classes in schools.
The bishops are calling on parents to boycott the new course. Many Catholic parents fear that the Government is seeking to inculcate their children with leftist ideas. “Of course we need to teach our children some basic principles like justice and equality,” Ms Fernández-Trapiella says. “But the way it has been done is just straightforward political indoctrination."
Now the Government is again challenging the bishops under plans to reform Spain's 1980 Religious Freedom Law governing relations between the Church and the Government.
FAITH AND LAW
France
Gay marriage Civil unions are allowed
Contraception Was illegal until 1967
Abortion Available on demand, up to 12 weeks
Italy
Gay marriage No special legal rights for homosexual couples despite pressure from gay rights organisations
Contraception Providing detailed information about contraceptives was illegal until 1971
Abortion Available on demand, up to 12 weeks
Poland
Gay marriage No form of homosexual union, civil or otherwise, recognised
Contraception The lowest contraception prevalence in Europe
Abortion Available up to 12 weeks where mother's health is in danger, or in cases of rape and incest. In practice, all but illegal.
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