Spain's Catholic Church has pledged to seek agreement with the Socialist-led government over its programme of secularising reforms, as part of plans to “update Church-state ties”.
“This forms part of a round of contacts with representatives of our country's main religious denominations, in line with policies aimed at exercising the right to religious freedom,” a joint Church-government statement said last week. “Both interlocutors freely addressed issues of mutual interest shaping relations between the Catholic Church and the state. It has been agreed to establish a broad work agenda for a model which permits collaboration and the resolution of possible discords.”
The statement was issued after Madrid talks between the Bishops’ Conference president, Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, and Spain's vice-premier Carmen Calvo. It said the purpose of the two-hour meeting, the first since Cardinal Omella's March election to head the 87-member Conference, had been to revive a mixed commission, foreseen in past agreements with the Holy See, as a “space for institutional dialogue” which would “allow Church-state relations to be updated to the times we live in”.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party, which holds a narrow two-seat majority in Spain's 350-strong Cortes parliament with its far-left coalition partner, Unidas Podemos, unveiled plans in January for legislation to allow “a dignified death and euthanasia” at public expense, as well as the “recovery of assets improperly registered to the Church”. Separate laws will also guarantee “state secularity and neutrality towards all religious denominations”, and downgrade religious classes by restricting parental rights in education.
The programme was partially shelved during the Covid-19 pandemic, which had left 28,343 Spaniards dead by last Monday, including at least 100 Catholic priests. However, government officials confirmed in May the timetable would go ahead, prompting calls by Church leaders for politicians to prioritise the country's common good over ideological preferences.
In a weekend pastoral letter, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera of Valencia said the projected education law would violate constitutional rights, and urged parents to demand a “Catholic religious and moral formation” for their children. Meanwhile, Bishop Juan Antonio Reig of Alcala accused the government of “promoting ideological laws for ignorance”, and urged Catholics “not to keep quiet”.
However, another senior Church leader, Archbishop Juan del Rio Martin of Castrense, said in a weekend message the Covid-19 crisis had “created a desire to speak, communicate, listen and engage in dialogue”, while seeking “the maximum consensus between government and social forces”.
The online Religion-Digital news agency said the projected education law remained “the most complicated”, but added that agreement could be made easier by the appointment of Pedro Jose Huerta Nuno, major superior of the Trinitarians of the Holy Spirit order, as new head of Spain's Catholic schools federation, Escuelas Catolicas, replacing Jose Maria Alvira, a Marianist, who had been “the visible face of confrontation” with Education Minister Isabel Celaa.
The agency said the revived Church-state commission, to be headed by the Bishop Luis Arguello, the Bishops’ Conference secretary-general, would “open ways to reaching a consensus” on other issues such as Church taxation. However, it added that Spain's bishops would “claim a voice in debates on euthanasia”, which the Sanchez government believed did not “form part of Church-state ties”.
Public Masses resumed in Spain's 23,000 parish churches at the end of June under arrangement with the Bishops’ Conference, which was thanked on 11 June for its role during the coronavirus crisis by King Felipe VI, as the International Monetary Fund forecast a 12.8 per cent fall in the country's GDP during 2020, accompanied by spiralling unemployment.
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