The Macías Picavea primary school hardly looks like the seat of revolution.But this unassuming brick building in a sleepy industrial town has become a battleground in an intensifying war between church and state in Spain.
In an unprecedented decision here, a judge ruled in November that the public school must remove the crucifixes from classroom walls, saying they violated the “nonconfessional” nature of the Spanish state.
Although the Roman Catholic Church was not named in the suit, it criticized the ruling as an “unjust” attack on a historical and cultural symbol — and a sign of the Spanish state’s increasingly militant secularism.
If the judge’s ruling was the latest blow to the Catholic Church’s once mighty grip on Spain, the church’s response showed Spain to be a crucible for the future of church-state relations in Europe.
For Pope Benedict XVI, who has staked his three-year-old papacy on keeping Europe Catholic, Spain, with its 90 percent Catholic population and rich history, represents a last hope in an increasingly irreligious continent.
That hope is quickly dimming. Since 2004, the Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has legalized gay marriage and fast-track divorce, and it is seeking to loosen laws on abortion and euthanasia.
But in response, the church and religious Catholics have been pushing back, seeking a greater voice in public life. The result is that the church is in a full-throated war with the government.
As such, Spain represents not only the Catholic Church’s past in Europe, but perhaps also its future: an increasingly secular country with a muscular Catholic opposition, or what Benedict has called a “creative minority,” smaller in number but more ardent in faith.
At stake is the vision of the country: Will Spain join the rest of secular Europe or stand as a final Catholic foothold?
“I’d say that certainly there’s a worry; it would be naïve to deny it,” the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said of Spain. “It’s a critical point in the church’s confrontation against secularization in Europe and in the Western world.”
For the Feast of the Holy Family, an estimated 158,000 people on Dec. 28 attended a Mass and rally in Madrid “in favor of the family.”
The march appeared to be more low-key than past events. Before the 2007 elections, the church got into hot water when some of its rallies were seen as endorsing Mr. Zapatero’s right-wing opposition.
Today, the Spanish prelates are trying hard to be “for the family” rather than against the government, but it is a delicate balance.
If the church becomes too hostile to the government, it could compromise the logistics and public financing required for Madrid to host the Vatican’s biennial World Youth Day in 2011, a choice of venue that underscores the church’s focus on Spain.
In a recent interview in Madrid, the secretary general of the Spanish Bishops Conference, Msgr. Juan Antonio Martínez Camino, said it was important for the church “to use all the means at its disposal to promote and defend its fundamental rights.”
He called the 2005 law legalizing gay marriage and adoption “very strange and very irrational and very unjust.”
The implications are broader, since Spain, with its 42 million Catholics, remains a touchstone for Latin America. South America alone has 324 million Catholics, the world’s largest concentration.
The church is also concerned that Spain could set a precedent for European Union legislation.
The Vatican last week said it would reassess its relationship with Italian law, so as to avoid adhering to Italian and European Union social polices that it opposed.
The church also fills a vacuum in the Spanish right. The center-right Popular Party is weak and has never been particularly engaged in religious issues.
Today, one of Mr. Zapatero’s strongest and most persuasive right-wing opponents is a Rush Limbaugh figure: Federico Jimenez Losantos, a former Communist turned right-winger and a professed nonbeliever who hosts a morning radio show on La Cope, the country’s second most popular radio station — which happens to be owned by the Spanish Bishops Conference.
With his harsh criticism of Mr. Zapatero’s policies, Mr. Losantos is inevitably seen as fanning the flames of church-state tensions.Mr. Losantos acknowledged that his show “creates problems” between the bishops and the government. “But at the same time, a lot of regular people say, ‘Good thing there’s the Cope; at least someone is in the opposition.’ ”
History looms large. During the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, left-wing Republican forces killed many clerics. But during Franco’s four-decade dictatorship, Catholicism was the official state religion.
Until after Franco’s death in 1975, women could not open bank accounts without their fathers or husbands co-signing. Today, they hold many of the highest political offices in the country.
“Spain changed very, very quickly,” said José María Contreras Mazarío, the director of religious affairs at the Justice Ministry. Today, he said, “Spain isn’t Catholic theoretically, culturally or politically.”
In an increasingly multicultural society, he said, the government wants to revise its definition of religious liberty so all religions are effectively equal.
Indeed, many see the church as a reactionary force trying to hold the country back.
“The army evolved after Franco,” said Carlos Parrado, the president of the Association of Secular Schools, which filed the lawsuit asking that the crosses be removed from the Valladolid school. “The church never evolved in this way.”
In many ways, Spain represents “a profound paradox,” said George Weigel, a Vatican expert and biographer of Pope John Paul II. “On the one hand, the ancient altar-and-throne alliance in Spain ill prepared the church to withstand the hurricanes of modernity, so when the winds hit after the death of Franco, just about everything collapsed.”
“On the other hand,” he said, “it’s striking that many of the new and vital renewal movements and new Catholic communities emerged out of Spain.”
Opus Dei, founded in Spain in 1928, has 30,000 members in Spain. More than 70 percent of Spaniards baptize their children, even if far less than 30 percent of the public regularly attends Mass. In spite of its social policies, the Spanish government continues to direct significant state financing toward Catholic schools and hospitals.
Some say the intense debate benefits both sides: the church can raise its voice, and the government can change the subject from the economic crisis.
It remains to be seen how the debates will play out. Media reports said fast-track divorce had not taken off, but not because of church pressure. Times are tough, and divorce is expensive.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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(Source: NYT)