Posted on 02/12/2010 7:31:17 AM PST by marshmallow
A group of lawyers in the Spanish city of Murcia (Autonomous Community of Murcia) has asked the Government Delegation in Murcia to remove a statue of Our Lord, the "Cristo de Monteagudo" (built in 1951 in the fashion of the Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro). The statue is "a relic of the Catholic totalitarianism imposed by the Franco regime, and remains on top of the Muslim castle of Monteagudo, whose beauty it ruins," according to the Association for the Precedence of the Law, an association of secular lawyers, and its president, José Luis Mazón. The Association mentioned in its petition to the government, among other arguments, the decision of the European Court of Human Rights banning the image of the Crucified Lord in Italian public schools.
The Bishop of Cartagena, José Manuel Lorca Planes, has come out in defense of the religious symbol.
Though this will almost certainly be dismissed as a ridiculous petition, it is another sign of the hatred for religion in contemporary Spain, reaching levels unseen since the Second Republic. Will Spain die silently or with a bang (as the last Civil War)?...
I was in Spain toward the end of Franco’s regime. It was a happy, economically vibrant place - quite a contrast to the Soviet Union, which I had also visited. Moreover, it was a far better place than any of the Muslim countries I had been in a few years before.
“Catholic totalitarianism”...what a preposterous lie.
“This just in: Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead!”
OK, ill admit a little ignorance here. When the Spanish Civil war happened, i know the USSR and American left was on one side,,, was that side a marxist insurgency? Anybody recommend a good site or book?
Spanish civil war is so saturated with propaganda from the American left that i never know what’s really an accurate telling of the story.
This just in: Islamists conquered Spain and oppressed Christians in 711. This occupation continued until 1492.
Just read what the left writes and assume the opposite was true ;-)
Most Americans don’t know about the atrocities the Spanish “Republicans” (communists) committed on Catholics. They committed mass murder against lay Catholics, priests, and religious, anyone who stuck up for traditional Spanish culture and religion.
Hugh Thomas’ “The Spanish Civil War”
in fiction, “La Guerra” by Stephen Frances
these are two even handed accounts
Catholic ping!
I grew up in Spain but the Spanish Civil War was not covered in high school history books. It seems that it was “too close”, “too painful”. My mom gave me the trilogy of Jose Maria Gironella: “The Cypresses Believe in God”, “One Million Dead” and “Peace after War”. WARNING, this is historical fiction, the main characters are fictional, but the historical background is extremely accurate and the books are very readable. I strongly recommend them!
In the old Soviet Union, they would print true news stories with the obvious Commie-sarcastic spin. The Ruskies who had no other news source and did not agree with the regime learned to siphon off the crap and read just the facts of the article.
Come to think of it, we have to do that whenever we read any American MSM newspaper.
“Most Americans don’t know about the atrocities the Spanish “Republicans” (communists) committed on Catholics. They committed mass murder against lay Catholics, priests, and religious, anyone who stuck up for traditional Spanish culture and religion.”
Thats what i’d like to find a good accurate description of.
Franco’s regime was a direct response to the flagrant and violent killings of Catholic clergy by rdical leftists at that time.
Similar to the Crusades in a way - a defense of the Christian way of life - not what the leftists in the edia portray it to be.
Thanks all, a cornicopia of suggestions. You guys never cease to amaze.
It was the traditional Andalusian peasantry/tenant farmers, many of which worked on land the the Church had enjoyed a monopoly on since the reconquest, who were most violent toward the Church. These were not "communist agents" but just the angry "common people" taking arms against the aristocratic Church.
The actualy military civil war was indeed between a "right" comprised of landowners, aristocrats, and the Church versus the southern peasantry, the proletariat, and various leftist groups, the latter of which wound up in civil war once the Soviets got involved.
That being said, more people were killed by the White Terror of Franco than by the Red Terror in Andalucia. He even had the Luftwaffe firebomb the devout Catholics of the Basque Country because they wanted to preserve their traditional cultural/political autonomy.
It should be no surprise that so many Spaniards became anti-religious after the Franco years, and his glorification of an idealized/rural past did not jibe well with a 20th century urban society. All the Catholics who whine about how the left has "destroyed" the clerical authoritarian regime fail to acknowledge that it is the Spanish people themselves who have rejected the RCC, largely due to its perceived irrelevance, as well as its support for the Franco regime.
I'm not one to defend Franco completely, but he was certainly the "lesser evil" of the two.
All the Catholics who whine about how the left has "destroyed" the clerical authoritarian regime fail to acknowledge that it is the Spanish people themselves who have rejected the RCC, largely due to its perceived irrelevance, as well as its support for the Franco regime.
It's a lot more complicated than that. There's also the cultural war from the 1960s onwards that manifested itself much more virulently after Franco died. Despite all that, you still get millions of people in Spain who stood with the Church at recent pro-life rallies.
As a conservative, you shouldn't be defending these leftists, because they're only setting up something worse- the reconquest of Spain by the Muslims.
*********************
Excellent point.
The fall of Franco meant that Spain was "liberated" at the height of the "sexual revolution" in the United States, which lead to an embrace of swinging, pornography, etc. so sudden and unprecedented that it made Hugh Hefner blush. Things have calmed down since then on that front. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church has been dying in Spain with each successive generation, even in areas of historical strength (the Basque Country, Galicia, etc.). While Nihilism is NO replacement for ANY faith, I don't think that we can count on a "Catholic revival" anytime soon from the plodding bishops who can't compete with soccer and television.
I should point out that the one-sided depiction of the Civil War by the usual suspects (Hollywood and the press) while it was going on and in the decades since has greatly skewed the perspective of a rather complex conflict. Franco was NOT a "fascist" but a traditionalist authoritarian who used the fascists (JPDR's Falange), along with other factions in Spanish society to gain power. It is true, however, that he gave the Church a privileged position and monopoly on culture that basically left the institution fat and complacent once the regime fell.
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