Posted on 04/27/2005 3:41:36 AM PDT by livius
The bishop of the Diocese of Segorbe-Castellón, Juan Antonio Reig Pla, called for “civil disobedience” from those mayors who do not want to marry homosexual couples, and declared that “restricting religious freedom is the worst thing of all.” At a press conference, Bishop Reig Pla declared that the Government “is going to recognize rights never established by law which are purely subjective,” and said that the next step is that “if any mayor is being forced to sacrifice his conscience and carry out acts that have to be against his correctly formed conscience, it has got to end in civil disobedience.”
He explained that a Catholic “must obey God before men, because otherwise we would end up with a totalitarian State.” These statements were made in the context of those made on Friday – the day after the approval of the reform of the Civil Code in Congress – by the Colombian Cardinal López Trujillo, chairman of the Pontifical Council for the Family, who severely criticized the bill proposed by the Spanish Government. In statements to the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, the Vatican minister for the family described the law as “inhuman” and “product of a strange idea of modernity.”
For his part, the retired archbishop of Barcelona, Ricard María Carles, said yesterday that obeying the law rather than one’s own conscience is something that “leads to Auschwitz.” In an interview with TV3, Cardinal Carles said that “the people who created Auschwitz were not criminals, but people who were forced to do so or who believed that they had to obey the laws of the Nazi government rather than their own consciences.”
Ping to some folks on yesterday's thread about the "Rainbow Sash."
Ooops! Didn't mean to leave you out of the list!
It will be interesting to see what happens in Spain. The Spanish are much more docile and government-oriented than Americans, and the whole concept of not doing what they are told is alien to them. So far, all of the mayors of the big cities have said they will do it, but in big cities, the mayors are not actually the ones who have to marry people - they can delegate to a city council member. But at some point, it's going to arrive at somebody who feels in his conscience that he is going to have to say "no," and we'll see what happens then.
Ooops again - the article was published in 2005 (today) and not 2004. More coffee...must have more coffee...
Nice to see bishops with backbone and elected official who are willing to take a moral stand! God bless what they are doing.
The Church and Spain's Socialist government have been on a collision course since the first day of Zapatero's term (when he announced that the was going to do this). The Socialists are actually trying to force it, which is the reason there is no conscience clause. Spain is becoming aggressively anti-Catholic.
They voluntarily and with much rejoicing, voted in this despicable government. Maybe you guys haven't been following what's been happening on the Iberian peninsula in recent years.
Back in the year 2000, the Spanish birth rate was the lowest in the world. Right there is a big red flag. It tells you precisely how seriously they take their Catholic faith.
Their election of this viscerally anti-Catholic government was really just a natural step along the road of secularism which they have been traveling for some time.
Meanwhile, next door in Portugal, a socialist government was recently elected with an absolute majority. Their first priority? To try and free up Portugal's abortion law by holding a referendum on the subject.
Wherever Catholics become lukewarm and apathetic, the secularists are always more than happy to fill the vacuum.
John Paul II threw out the atheists in Eastern Europe. He was helped in large part, by the underlying faith of the people who rejected the official atheism of their communist oppressors. Getting rid of the atheists in Western Europe will be much more of a challenge as they are supported by an underlying apostasy of the Catholic rank and file.
Actually, the only thing I can say in defense of those who were stampeded by the press into voting Socialist after the March 11 terrorist attack was that Zapatero had never really announced his program. Nobody expected the Socialists to win, so the party ran ZP, a party hack who was a failed lawyer who had never held a real job in his life, because they didn't want to waste a "serious" candidate.
When he unexpectedly won, he came out almost immediately and announced the things he was going to do: gay "marriage," speedier divorces, extension of the legal period for abortion, etc. The Church was a little slow to believe that he was actually going to go through with it, except for the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid, who has been very aggressive in fighting back.
And, as you say, for years Catholics had been tolerating the undermining of religion in Spain and like everybody else in the world after VatII, had been receiving inferior religious education with virtually no moral or doctrinal component. The result was that Catholics in Spain are just slowly waking up to the fact that they are under attack.
-- Wherever Catholics become lukewarm and apathetic, the secularists are always more than happy to fill the vacuum.--
Ain't that the truth. Which is why we can't slack off.
I think there's going to be a long period of steady pressure first; they have already started a campaign of referring to Catholics as right-wingers, reactionaries, making fun of them, etc. and I think their approach for awhile will be the marginalization of the Church and the building up of feelings against its clergy and faithful members. And then they will probably start with money judgments against churches, dioceses, etc. for refusing to obey the unjust laws that they are passing.
The Archbishop of Santiago (Galicia) is quite firm and has been outspoken in opposing the Government on these issues, btw.
When is the next general election in Spain? I suspect that the Socialists will take measures before the next election.
They have at least another three years. I think you're right. The Socialists are on a roll, and I think it's important for them to get these things done before there's any organized resistance.
The new head of the Spanish Bishops' Council, btw, is somebody known for his willingness to "dialogue" - in other words, give in. The Socialists were high-fiving each other after he was elected last month. Fortunately, I think B16 takes a dim view of national Bishops' Councils, regarding them as the way bishops pass the buck.
very well said.
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