A penitent holding a candle during a Holy Week procession in Granada, Spain, earlier this year.
SOPA Images/SIPA Images USA/PA
Catholic organizations have joined Church leaders in warning Spain’s socialist-led government against violating the constitution and international law with its planned reforms of secularization in education, family life and education. other areas.
“This government in office uses totalitarian methods to try to stifle critical entities for exclusively ideological reasons,” said Ignacio Garcia-Julia, president of the Spanish Family Forum. “We will campaign to demand respect and equal treatment for dissident entities, for standards of democracy and plurality to be upheld, and for dissidents not to be unjustly persecuted and punished. This is the attitude of the totalitarian regimes, not that of consolidated democracies.”
The Foro de la Familia was reacting to the decision of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government to withdraw a direct state subsidy paid to it since 2003. He said that this decision, which had not been notified or consulted beforehand , had been “exclusively political”. and demonstrated the “undemocratic mood” of the government. He added that the Forum, which claims to represent more than four million Spanish families, was counting on “all citizens who care about family, life and freedom” to work together to “fly those flags”.
Meanwhile, the Spanish confederation of Catholic schools said it was also concerned about government plans to restrict religious education, after relevant parental rights were questioned in November by Isabel Celaa, minister for Education and Vocational Training. The confederation added that the right of parents to choose “a religious and moral formation in accordance with their convictions” was guaranteed by Article 27 of the Spanish constitution, as well as European Union regulations and international law.
“This is a frontal attack on the education system in place since 1985 – it breaks social consensus,” said the Escuelas Catolicas, whose 5,939 schools employ more than 82,000 teachers and enroll more than 1.2 million of students. “This is typical of a conception of education that shifts the responsible role of parents in the upbringing of their children to the state, and seems closer to positions of totalitarian power than modern democracy. ”
Spain’s ruling Socialist Party, the PSOE, pledged to scrap a series of 1979 agreements with the Vatican and tighten tax and fiscal controls on the Catholic Church before winning just 120 places in the 350 Cortes seats in the November elections, and said he would push through reforms after announcing a coalition with the left-wing Unidos Podemos party.
The 10-point coalition, released in late November, also considers a corporate wealth tax and measures to boost job creation and protect public services, as well as “new rights” to “a dignified death and euthanasia”, and “feminist politics”. against “gender-based violence” and promoting the “security, independence and freedom” of women.
In November, the Episcopal Conference also denounced plans to restrict religious education, warning that the move risked violating fundamental rights in the country, where Catholics make up 67.4% of the 47 million population, according to the August figures. Meanwhile, Cardinal Antonio Canizares of Valencia, who bitterly attacked the government’s draft program in a pastoral letter at the end of November, urged Catholics to resist attempts “to embitter and destroy humanity”.
“Today they intend to snatch faith from schools, making it difficult for parents to educate their children according to their own convictions,” Cardinal Canizares said during a mass at the cathedral. last week. “But all can be saved, forgiven and cleansed – all can be filled with light. There is no place for discouragement or despair.”
New data from Spain’s National Statistics Office has shown that civil marriages now far outnumber Catholic marriages, which have fallen over the past decade from 100,000 to 38,000 in 2018, the average age of marriage is now 38 years for men and 35 years for women. The national birth rate has also fallen 6.2% in the past year and is at its lowest since 1941, with almost 25% more deaths now recorded across the country.
