These are difficult times for the Catholic Church in Spain. Buffeted by plummeting popularity among Spain’s once staunchly Catholic population and outraged by the secular reforms enacted by Spain’s socialist government, the Church is preparing to make one last stand.
The Church may thus far have failed to defeat the government’s legalisation of gay marriage—a legal challenge to the law’s constitutionality is still pending—and fast-track, no-fault divorce. But, undaunted, Spain’s major Catholic organisations are threatening to escalate their campaign of mass street protests and civil disobedience. At issue in this latest battle is the government’s plan to make religious education voluntary in public schools.
Although Spain’s 1978 constitution protects religious diversity, the previous conservative Popular Party government—which was voted out of office three days after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004—made a Catholic subject called Religious Fact compulsory for all students.
Under the previous law, the Catholic Church had exclusive control over the curriculum in religious education and sole power over the appointment of teachers. Other religions could not be taught. Failure in Religious Fact meant that students could not qualify for university education.
In a statement denouncing the new government’s plans to remove religious education from the list of compulsory subjects, Concapa, the largest organisation representing Catholic families, warned: ‘All actions are legitimate in seeking to modify this project, which is an attack against freedom of education, the right of a school to choose how it teaches, and the right of parents to educate their children as they see fit.’
Concapa also claims to have gathered up to three million signatures in a petition which, it says, demonstrates ‘the unhappiness throughout society against a law that has no democratic consensus’.
Before he became pontiff, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned Spanish Catholics that they were duty bound to oppose the new laws ‘clearly and firmly’. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, similarly denounced the government’s changes to religious education, warning that ‘new generations of Spaniards, influenced by religious indifference and ignorance of Christian tradition, are being exposed to the temptations of moral permissiveness’.
The Church has alienated a large swathe of the Spanish population with the stridency of its protests—a recent survey found that just 10 per cent of Spaniards express significant confidence in the Church. The Catholic hierarchy has also been forever tainted by its decision to stand wholeheartedly alongside the dictator General Francisco Franco who ruled Spain