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Reservoir_Dog
Guest
You and your compatriots have convinced me, franco just wasn’t thorough enough.
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Kaninchen
Guest
I think we should take it that re-fighting the Civil War is a lot easier than considering the problems of the Spanish Church now.
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StevieD
Guest
If anyone really wants to understand the complexities of the Spanish Civil War, could I recommend - ‘The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939’ - by Antony Beevor. He is not a Catholic but is a highly respected and qualified historian. It is a good read as well as being highly informative.
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Adeodatus
Guest
It’s essentially a re-write of his first book on the Spanish Civil War, which even he admitted was too biased in favor of the Reds.
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Reservoir_Dog
Guest
If only we had killed more, none of this stuff would be happening.
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clinoforms
Guest
here is a really simple question for the anti-franco team. if this guy was the monster you say he is, show me an offical denunciation or rebuke of franco and his nationalists from the catholic church. not a random priest or basque bishop, but from a pope or encyclical or some other writings from a vatican congregation like there is for freemasonry, atheism, communism and nazism.
if this guy was so bad, how come the church supported him?
if this guy was so bad, how come the church supported him?
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Kaninchen
Guest
Because the War was really a power struggle - to maintain landowner power and army power and the Church was a major landowner, its position entrenched by the 1851 Concordat where the State paid its salaries and gave it control over all the schools, universities etc in Spain.
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Reservoir_Dog
Guest
yes, the Church definitely backed him. Its a shame that franco didn’t kill even more.
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inocente
Guest
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree with a lot of what you said, but believe religion played its own part in the rise of secularism. Franco didn’t invent francoism and may have been devout, but his devotion represents a version of religion where a dead god speaks only through rules, rituals and outward appearances, a pointlessly inconsistent faith for those who have eyes to see:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. … You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. … and perhaps tellingly for some on this thread - ] You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started! - Matthew 23 NIV
My experience since moving to Spain is that the Franco era is viewed as an unrelentingly dull monochrome world, not as bad as the Soviet Union or Orwell’s 1984 but painted the same shade of gray. One difference is that the USSR actively suppressed religion - its regime and religion were never connected in people’s minds. I think this difference played a big part in perceptions when the regimes ended. In the USSR religion was part of the new world of color, while in Spain it was still painted in the old battleship gray. By naming it francoism, I mean that Franco’s regime and the society it produced sucked the color out of everything, and that bland world is now indelibly associated with him.
But in Spain it’s more complicated than a simple descent into secularism. Undeniably there is aggressive secularism but many people hold on to the core of the faith, the freedom in Christ, while preferring to go to the bar with the family on Sundays instead of to church. For those people religion needs to add to the spiritual color in their lives to become relevant again, and that probably applies in other countries too. Not a quick-fix happy-slappy version, but more along the lines of Taizé or Santa Teresa de Ávila.
As an example of how different it may be here to the US, this short video shows Holy Week (Semana Santa) in a local town. It was made to attract tourists, but shows a tradition that has nothing to do with Disneyland. It may look secular but everything relates to the Passion, it all starts from the church building and ends with Christ. The supporters shout across main street as their teams (pasos) try to outdo each other in horsemanship, floats, their tapestries and so on. None of those taking part do it for a living (for instance, the guy who sold me my car is in there). All of them and almost everyone in the crowd would be Catholic, and none of them are ashamed of the Gospel.
That happens on Good Friday. On the other days of the week there are solemn processions. These take place in all towns and any village with a church during Holy Week, and in some places more take part than there are spectators. For example, see these photos from Hellín (Note to Americans - the dudes in pointy hats in some photos are not KKK
).
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
That won’t work. There were NO denunciations or rebukes of Nazi Germany by the Church, either. The Church doesn’t denounce individuals. Even the Encyclical, Mit Brennender.Sorge did no more than condemn breaches of the Reichskonkordat agreement signed between the German government and the Church in 1933, and contained only veiled criticism of Nazism.
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Reservoir_Dog
Guest
I agree and think we need another shooting revolution, to restore the church’s flagging role in the state. This time, no one escapes.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Things were pretty gray and grim in the U.S. and elsewhere during the Franco era. I question whether floats and processions and such were absent during Franco’s rule, except to whatever extent nobody could afford to do such things. Spain was very poor during that era for a number of reasons.Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree with a lot of what you said, but believe religion played its own part in the rise of secularism. Franco didn’t invent francoism and may have been devout, but his devotion represents a version of religion where a dead god speaks only through rules, rituals and outward appearances, a pointlessly inconsistent faith for those who have eyes to see:
My experience since moving to Spain is that the Franco era is viewed as an unrelentingly dull monochrome world, not as bad as the Soviet Union or Orwell’s 1984 but painted the same shade of gray. One difference is that the USSR actively suppressed religion - its regime and religion were never connected in people’s minds. I think this difference played a big part in perceptions when the regimes ended. In the USSR religion was part of the new world of color, while in Spain it was still painted in the old battleship gray. By naming it francoism, I mean that Franco’s regime and the society it produced sucked the color out of everything, and that bland world is now indelibly associated with him.
But in Spain it’s more complicated than a simple descent into secularism. Undeniably there is aggressive secularism but many people hold on to the core of the faith, the freedom in Christ, while preferring to go to the bar with the family on Sundays instead of to church. For those people religion needs to add to the spiritual color in their lives to become relevant again, and that probably applies in other countries too. Not a quick-fix happy-slappy version, but more along the lines of Taizé or Santa Teresa de Ávila.
As an example of how different it may be here to the US, this short video shows Holy Week (Semana Santa) in a local town. It was made to attract tourists, but shows a tradition that has nothing to do with Disneyland. It may look secular but everything relates to the Passion, it all starts from the church building and ends with Christ. The supporters shout across main street as their teams (pasos) try to outdo each other in horsemanship, floats, their tapestries and so on. None of those taking part do it for a living (for instance, the guy who sold me my car is in there). All of them and almost everyone in the crowd would be Catholic, and none of them are ashamed of the Gospel.
That happens on Good Friday. On the other days of the week there are solemn processions. These take place in all towns and any village with a church during Holy Week, and in some places more take part than there are spectators. For example, see these photos from Hellín (Note to Americans - the dudes in pointy hats in some photos are not KKK
It’s awfully easy to observe externals that are otherwise unappealing and assume they have a cause/effect relationship with a decline in religious observance or fervor. We have, for instance, people in the U.S. now, who attribute it to unappealing church structures or silly music. Maybe there is a connection and maybe there isn’t. But there are also people who feel more traditional structures and classic music have that effect. Personally, I question whether either one has a significant effect on religious fervor or observance, and certainly not as compared to the pervasive and virtually obsessive consumerism, blatant, constant attacks on religion and incessant appeals to the attractiveness of sin in this society. But it’s easily observable that the decline in religious observance has occurred almost in lockstep with material prosperity and individual obsession therewith.
I have long been dubious of claims that “dull, empty formalism” and the like, are destructive of religious fervor. First of all, because such attributes are in the eye of the beholder and may not be in the mind of the observant person. Not to offend anyone, but one might very well look with disfavor on what some think of as an excessive formalism in Eastern icons and prayer practices relating to them. They are almost mathematical formulations that, as a consequence, doubtless have to some an unattractive, dull, even repetitious aspect. Yet, when you study the subject and its purpose, and “get into it” you see that they actually are, or can be, a doorway to a genuine piety. One’s own shallowness is what causes one to think of them as dull and lifeless expressions. Look at the orthodox Jews who stand at the “Wailing Wall”, bowing incessantly while reading things they have read innumerable times before. It’s hard to imagine anything more “dull, gray and lifeless looking” than that. Yet I personally don’t doubt their sincerity or their fervor.
I will agree with you that “religion” (various churchmen, actually) has its own part of the blame to share. Religious fervor and excessive materialism and permissiveness are impossible to reconcile. Nevertheless, many try to do so.
But I have never seen anybody actually connect any of that with Franco with anything remotely approaching an objectively persuasive foundational basis.
Despite being accused on here of favoring Franco’s rule, I don’t. I simply don’t think a case has been made for the proposition that he had anything to with declining religious observance in Spain or anywhere else. I think he’s simply irrelevant to a phenomenon that has other, more likely, causes.
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clinoforms
Guest
you know what they say about excuses. here’s what jpii had to say in a holocaust speech
here are posted two encyclicals condemning national socialism and communism.
i’m sure i can find something written against freemasonry.
again, can one of you who hate franco show me where the church condemned him or his regime or at least a pope saying something negative about franco?
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inocente
Guest
If religion can’t stand on its own terms then it has no purpose. Whatever the outward appearance (the icons or the Wailing Wall) it’s the inner experience that counts. Without it we are not relating to God, in Dennitt’s phrase simply believing in belief.
When everyone observed the same practices, religion was part of everyone’s life. But once society becomes pluralized, whether by multiculturalism or from any other cause, religion must stand on its own merits and then the dry francoist version quite rightly fails.
Spain spent a generation in isolation and then suddenly the mass tourism industry was born and the coasts were flooded with Northern Europeans. Thousands of others came here, rented cars, and toured inland. Quite a few decided to live here. Many Spanish learned English and German to do business with all these extranjeros. Spain joined the EU and the infrastructure was transformed with the help of grants. Per capita incomes, for many lucky ones, rose rapidly. Democracy replaced dictatorship.
So very quickly, within one generation, there was a culture shock. The francoist version of religion, which once made a kind of sense in an isolated monoculture, no longer made any sense with different social and peer pressures.
In Spain then, we see a fast-track and more extreme version of what happened in other countries. Just as society has transformed, religion must also transform, not by music or ritual or digging in its heels but by reconnecting people with the living God. The antidote to francoism is spirituality and if people find that in a secular lifestyle because religion fails to provide it, then in a way I think good for them and out of that, eventually, will come something worthwhile. We’re all human after all, and God has His own plan.
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inocente
Guest
I’m not a Catholic and have no idea what the Vatican thought of Franco.
But hypothetically, if the people of Spain were to hate Franco and perceive the Church as thinking otherwise, could that have something to do with the OP?
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estesbob
Guest
No doubt if not for Franco the Church would be as vibrant in Spain as it is in France,Belgium and Holland
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JW10631
Guest
The ideas of the Enlightenment were very late in coming to Spain. Queen Isabel, Servant of God, completed the Reconquest, defeated the Muslim invaders and united the country under one King and one Queen and one Faith. It is not a coincidence that it was Spain who was the first to colonize the New World. It was thought that the Empire was a gift from God for destroying the Moorish invaders.
Queen Isabel cleaned house in the Catholic Church during her rule. Scheming and corrupt bishops were retired and the convents were put in order. Spain, along with Portugal (Brazil) and France (Quebec, Haiti and significant parts of the present USA) evangelized two thirds of the Western Hemisphere.
American independence, of which the war really was a world war, set off a chain of events to cause Spain to lose her Empire. Spain was an ally of the American cause but did not realize what the new ideas of the Founding Fathers would do in her Empire. The Napoleonic invasion and events subsequent led to a loss of prestige for the Church in Spain in the 19th and early 20th century.
The Spanish Civil War had no “good guys”, but since the Republicans were supported by Stalin and took it upon themselves to murder clergy and religious, were the worst of two evils.
France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Holland, Ireland, Germany, Italy…all have seen a marked decline in the practice of the Catholic faith. Some of the reasons are different, and some are the same. The “elite” of these nations, who usually control higher education and politics, have little use for religion. To them, the state is the Supreme Being. Popular culture is much more provocative than in the USA, and as in the USA, pop culture digs its claws into the young, mocking everything but its present self. Belief systems, morality, respect for parents, it’s all “lame”.
Where things go from here…only God knows.
Queen Isabel cleaned house in the Catholic Church during her rule. Scheming and corrupt bishops were retired and the convents were put in order. Spain, along with Portugal (Brazil) and France (Quebec, Haiti and significant parts of the present USA) evangelized two thirds of the Western Hemisphere.
American independence, of which the war really was a world war, set off a chain of events to cause Spain to lose her Empire. Spain was an ally of the American cause but did not realize what the new ideas of the Founding Fathers would do in her Empire. The Napoleonic invasion and events subsequent led to a loss of prestige for the Church in Spain in the 19th and early 20th century.
The Spanish Civil War had no “good guys”, but since the Republicans were supported by Stalin and took it upon themselves to murder clergy and religious, were the worst of two evils.
France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Holland, Ireland, Germany, Italy…all have seen a marked decline in the practice of the Catholic faith. Some of the reasons are different, and some are the same. The “elite” of these nations, who usually control higher education and politics, have little use for religion. To them, the state is the Supreme Being. Popular culture is much more provocative than in the USA, and as in the USA, pop culture digs its claws into the young, mocking everything but its present self. Belief systems, morality, respect for parents, it’s all “lame”.
Where things go from here…only God knows.
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estesbob
Guest
No doubt if not for Franco the Church would be as vibrant in Spain as it is in France,Belgium and Holland
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inocente
Guest
True, you could include Portugal as well. On his way there Pope Benedict said:
The greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside, but is born in sin within the church … We have to re-learn the essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues. - CathNews
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inocente
Guest
I agree about similarities and differences.
*Spain’s traditional image as one of Europe’s religious strongholds looks set to take a serious dent after it emerged that not only are half its parishes now without priests but also the average age of clerics has risen to nearly 65.
The situation here mirrors that in some other countries. In the United States 40 years ago, there was one priest for every 772 Catholics, now it is one per 1,603. In 1970, there were 8,000 students in US seminaries, today it is around 1,300. Scotland’s only seminary has announced it will close, and in Ireland the average age of priests is 63. The archdiocese of Dublin has 46 priests over 80 years of age but only two under 35.
But Spain’s crisis still has the power to shock. In his keynote speech to the Spanish Ecclesiastical Congress recently, the Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco, indirectly acknowledged the problem when he said the average age of Spanish priests has risen to over 63, while in some regions it has reached 72. In Spain, the usual retirement age for men is 65.
The general lack of Spanish interest in the priesthood as a career appears to clash with the religious spectacle and fervour of the country’s Holy Week processions – one of Spain’s biggest tourist attractions. Preparations for the Semana Santa begin months in advance and, as early as November, large groups of strong-armed Spaniards can be seen gathering in parks and under motorway flyovers to practise lifting the huge Easter thrones that dominate the processions. The most popular of them all, in Seville, invariably brings Spain’s third largest city to a standstill for days on end. - Independent*
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