Catholic Church in Spain fights Franco-era image

[inocente]

Europe seems supine to what truly does threaten to be their ultimate cultural extirpation by Islam.

One large group of immigrants into Spain is from Western Europe, just free movement within the EU, who are unlikely to be religious.

The other two large groups are from South America and North Africa. Both are more likely to attend church/mosque when they first arrive, but whether this continues in the long term is hard to tell – all children born in Spain are automatically Spanish citizens unless the parents ask otherwise, and South Americans can in any event request Spanish nationality shortly after arriving.

It’s then a mixed picture when it comes to immigrants’ differential religious observance and birth rates holding-up long term, but the notion that Islam will inevitably take over in the face of secularism and materialism seems a trifle exaggerated.

Let’s just face it, popular culture in the west largely embraces self-indulgence (sin, if you will), and can naturally be expected to resent anything that purports to disapprove of it.

However, denying the priesthood to half the population and warning-off gays (who in any event can now openly take any other career in Spain) leaves only those heterosexual males who, in any other career, can have a wife and family. We can call them self-indulgent, but that combination of factors seems to be why the replacement rate falls well below what is required.

It’s possible, though not certainly so, that the greater observance of religion in the U.S. (still woefully low) is due to the fact that America really never bought into those philosophies. Europeans, in very large numbers, did.

But there you’re arguing that cultural factors have an influence, while denying them in Spain’s history.

 

[Ridgerunner]

One large group of immigrants into Spain is from Western Europe, just free movement within the EU, who are unlikely to be religious.

The other two large groups are from South America and North Africa. Both are more likely to attend church/mosque when they first arrive, but whether this continues in the long term is hard to tell – all children born in Spain are automatically Spanish citizens unless the parents ask otherwise, and South Americans can in any event request Spanish nationality shortly after arriving.

It’s then a mixed picture when it comes to immigrants’ differential religious observance and birth rates holding-up long term, but the notion that Islam will inevitably take over in the face of secularism and materialism seems a trifle exaggerated.

However, denying the priesthood to half the population and warning-off gays (who in any event can now openly take any other career in Spain) leaves only those heterosexual males who, in any other career, can have a wife and family. We can call them self-indulgent, but that combination of factors seems to be why the replacement rate falls well below what is required.

But there you’re arguing that cultural factors have an influence, while denying them in Spain’s history.

One would be hard put to deny that de-Christianization in Spain is a product of the left presently. It remains to be seen whether militant Islam will fill the void. Certainly there are immigrants into Spain from elsewhere, but the legal in-migration from North Africa now exceeds that from Latin America and approaches that from all European nations. Illegal immigration into Spain from North Africa is also on the increase, and significantly so. Since the birth rate of Spanish natives is disasterously low, very significant cultural change is only a matter of time if nothing changes.

Leftism is not a “culture”, it’s an ideology, as is atheistic existentialism. It is not a natural outgrowth of popular traditions, but an imposition by elites. I do not doubt that the hatred of Franco by some (but obviously not all) Spanish has become a sort of superficial aspect of popular culture; not dissimilar with the idealization of the Republicans by leftists in the U.S. But that does not mean hatred of Franco and everything he did or supported is truly part of the culture of Spain, any more than romanticization of the Republican cause, or condemnation of Joe McCarthy is in the U.S.

I don’t really understand what you are saying in your second to last paragraph. Are you saying that limitation of the Catholic priesthood to males who are not active homosexuals is somehow responsible for the fact that the Spanish birth rate is so disasterously low?

If that’s your point, I would take very serious issue with it. There are no more than about 30,000 priests in Spain. To say that is responsible for a birth rate of close to 1.1 per woman, strains credulity well past the breaking point. Very roughly calculating, each of those priests would have to father 750 children to get the birth rate to replacement rate, and that’s without taking into account that the average age of priests in Spain is quite high. When one further considers that immigrants tend to have more children than natives, the native rate is probably below 1.1, an absolutely catastrophic number all by itself.

But perhaps it wasn’t your point. My point regarding self-indulgence is that refusing to have children is self-indulgent. Granted, childlessness in Spain (as in much of Europe) is multifactorial. Certainly, the appetite for consumer goods competes with the desire to have children. But that’s not all there is to it. One factor seems to be the increasing reliance on retaining women in the workplace combined with the economic necessity of women doing so. Scandinavia is possibly the most striking example of that. The governments take so much of peoples’ earnings that family formation is difficult; a problem that is also beginning to show in the U.S. The U.S. birth rate is right at replacement rate, or 2.1 per woman. However, that is bumped upward by immigrant birth rates, legal and illegal. Among native-born, it is only 1.8, which is below replacement rate. Increasing government benefits is also a self-indulgence. Sure, a Frenchman can retire at 50 and spend the rest of his life sipping wine and living off the labor of others. But he never really has much chance of acquiring assets to support himself in his older years, and is reliant on governmental confiscation from others, because his earnings were (for example) considerably lower than those in the U.S. and his taxes were significantly higher. So, knowing from his earliest years that confiscation from others is his only reward in life, his motivation to be economically independent is replaced by a motivation to exact even more from others to support his early indolence. It’s not too great a stretch to imagine that people who have no vision for their own creative role in the future in an economic sense might have none in a generational or even spiritual sense. It is for this very reason that the Popes, from Leo XIII on, have opposed socialism and favored a society in which it is possible for individuals to acquire productive, individual and inheritable assets. Governmental overdependence, (like overdependence on big business, which is another story) is a vicious cycle, and it’s not too hard to see the result.

 

[brumano]

There’s a maelstrom on this thread, sucking us into an alternate history where everything is as clear as night and day.

One sub-plot seems to be (a) True Christians must have right-wing politics and turn up for church regularly. (b) All who don’t are secularists. (c) Secularists are immoral commies intent on the downfall of civilization. (d) Ergo, Franco was obviously a really nice fluffy guy.

Well, no. I’ve lived in many places and chose to settle in Spain because they are the best and the worst people on Earth. With all the problems here they’re still much happier without Franco, even if they do tend to yawn when monochromatic historians say they’re all destined for hell.

After the transition, many Spaniards turned away as democracy and secularism became synonymous. – from the OP (hint ).

You’re viewpoint is of course more qualified then most of the others including mine and this thread like the previous one about Franco is bound to be a referendum on the overall state of Spain now and during the early and mid twentieth century under Franco; so it becomes a controversy about Marxist communism versus ultra conservative authoritarianism, or Fascism if you prefer.
There were recently two news items which I think could help further shape varying opinions which really are retrospective concerning Franco, what he did, why he did it, was it justified or should he be condemned and the church in spain along with him, etc. etc.,
One are the recent threats of Kim Jung Il’s Communist N. Korea which should remind everyone of the sheer evil of Marxist Atheism that has been inflicted on Koreans since Mao’s revoloution in China was quickly spread throughout Indonesia.
Another was that the government of Poland issued a statement concerning the bloody massacre of some 15,000 Polish Army officers during the 2nd World War was carried out by the Red Soviet Army not by the Nazis as had been claimed. The communist party in Poland knew they really couldn’t deny this statement, so they just vehemently opposed the decision by government to release it.

 

[Raskolnikov]

One would be hard put to deny that de-Christianization in Spain is a product of the left presently. It remains to be seen whether militant Islam will fill the void. Certainly there are immigrants into Spain from elsewhere, but the legal in-migration from North Africa now exceeds that from Latin America and approaches that from all European nations. Illegal immigration into Spain from North Africa is also on the increase, and significantly so. Since the birth rate of Spanish natives is disasterously low, very significant cultural change is only a matter of time if nothing changes.

The cultural changes happening in Spain (and the rest of Europe) would be occurring just the same if there were no Muslim immigrants; do you honestly think that if every Muslim suddenly left the continent, that things would be any different? Personally, I find it strange when Americans lament the cultural degeneration of Europe, because I don’t think they have any idea what kind of culture they are talking about. Do you lose sleep at night because Germans no longer read Goethe or listen to Beethoven? Or because the French have a McDonald’s in the Louvre? If you really do, I sympathize with you, but I sincerely doubt that it is really European culture that concerns you so much. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, the Europeans are not adopting “Muslim culture” in place of their own, listening to Arab chants instead of Mozart, reading the Koran instead of classical European literature. They are listening to Rammstein instead of Mozart, and reading Günter Grass instead of Goethe. They are not converting form Christianity to Islam, but, gradually, from Christianity to irreligion. Islam has nothing to do with it.

Though I really do lament the fact that fewer Europeans are interested in their rich cultural heritages, as well as the concomitant decline in Christianity, I think the Arabs and Turks are, if anything, bringing a little culture to Europe. It is ironic that American conservative Christians are so antipathetic to European Muslims, because, from the accounts I’ve read, many German Turks have criticized German (and by extension European) society on the very same grounds as them: that Germans have lost sight of family values, are overly materialistic, etc.

But perhaps it wasn’t your point. My point regarding self-indulgence is that refusing to have children is self-indulgent. Granted, childlessness in Spain (as in much of Europe) is multifactorial. Certainly, the appetite for consumer goods competes with the desire to have children. But that’s not all there is to it. One factor seems to be the increasing reliance on retaining women in the workplace combined with the economic necessity of women doing so. Scandinavia is possibly the most striking example of that. The governments take so much of peoples’ earnings that family formation is difficult; a problem that is also beginning to show in the U.S. The U.S. birth rate is right at replacement rate, or 2.1 per woman. However, that is bumped upward by immigrant birth rates, legal and illegal. Among native-born, it is only 1.8, which is below replacement rate. Increasing government benefits is also a self-indulgence. Sure, a Frenchman can retire at 50 and spend the rest of his life sipping wine and living off the labor of others. But he never really has much chance of acquiring assets to support himself in his older years, and is reliant on governmental confiscation from others, because his earnings were (for example) considerably lower than those in the U.S. and his taxes were significantly higher. So, knowing from his earliest years that confiscation from others is his only reward in life, his motivation to be economically independent is replaced by a motivation to exact even more from others to support his early indolence. It’s not too great a stretch to imagine that people who have no vision for their own creative role in the future in an economic sense might have none in a generational or even spiritual sense. It is for this very reason that the Popes, from Leo XIII on, have opposed socialism and favored a society in which it is possible for individuals to acquire productive, individual and inheritable assets. Governmental overdependence, (like overdependence on big business, which is another story) is a vicious cycle, and it’s not too hard to see the result.

In my opinion, the declining birth rates have more to do with cultural changes than political ones. Governments (I know especially the German one in particular) have been going to great lengths to get women to have more children, as they are desperate to avoid a demographic and economic collapse; they’ve offered very long maternity leaves, many benefits that seem quite lavish compared to the US. So far, such measures have failed to accomplish much. I don’t think it has much to do with dependence on the government; welfare states have, in the past, had higher birth rates. It’s more a sociological problem than a political one. Only time will tell how permanent it is.

 

[inocente]

Illegal immigration into Spain from North Africa is also on the increase, and significantly so.

A few years ago the almost weekly reports from the Guardia of people desperately trying to get away from poverty and then drowning when their little boats failed to make the sea crossing was heartbreaking. The government made an amnesty by which the survivors were made legal, no questions asked, so they could pay their dues. The numbers coming have now dropped as a result of the economic downturn here, but it’s a Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me kind of thing.

Are you saying that limitation of the Catholic priesthood to males who are not active homosexuals is somehow responsible for the fact that the Spanish birth rate is so disasterously low?

No, not that.

I simply meant that the replacement rate for priests is too low and isn’t helped by the recruitment criteria being so stringent. While I understand the reasoning behind the criteria, the fact that priesthood is both confined to a portion of the population and precludes having a family does nothing to help the replacement rate. Then, with fewer priests to get people into church, there are fewer people who would consider it as a career and we have the makings of a vicious circle.

My point regarding self-indulgence is that refusing to have children is self-indulgent.

There are a whole bunch of factors though. I read somewhere that male fertility has dropped everywhere due to pollution. Then, as you say, there’s the large number of hours people spend at work – with all this technology people work longer hours than hunter-gatherers!

But if every married couple had a child every two years, they would have say, ten children. The fact that such large families are rare means very few couples could be labeled as unselfish by that logic. I don’t buy the political argument either – under complete socialism they wouldn’t have to worry about health insurance and college fees for all their kids. People are just being sensible, even while knowing that the bigger picture doesn’t make sense.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The cultural changes happening in Spain (and the rest of Europe) would be occurring just the same if there were no Muslim immigrants; do you honestly think that if every Muslim suddenly left the continent, that things would be any different? Personally, I find it strange when Americans lament the cultural degeneration of Europe, because I don’t think they have any idea what kind of culture they are talking about. Do you lose sleep at night because Germans no longer read Goethe or listen to Beethoven? Or because the French have a McDonald’s in the Louvre? If you really do, I sympathize with you, but I sincerely doubt that it is really European culture that concerns you so much. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, the Europeans are not adopting “Muslim culture” in place of their own, listening to Arab chants instead of Mozart, reading the Koran instead of classical European literature. They are listening to Rammstein instead of Mozart, and reading Günter Grass instead of Goethe. They are not converting form Christianity to Islam, but, gradually, from Christianity to irreligion. Islam has nothing to do with it. **Never did I say Europeans are embracing Islam. I said Europe is supine in the face of militant Islam. No, militant Islam imposes religion, and it may eventually do so in Europe. **

In my opinion, the declining birth rates have more to do with cultural changes than political ones. Governments (I know especially the German one in particular) have been going to great lengths to get women to have more children, as they are desperate to avoid a demographic and economic collapse; they’ve offered very long maternity leaves, many benefits that seem quite lavish compared to the US. So far, such measures have failed to accomplish much. I don’t think it has much to do with dependence on the government; welfare states have, in the past, had higher birth rates. It’s more a sociological problem than a political one. Only time will tell how permanent it is.

Thank you for supporting my point, though I doubt that was your intent. I do not think leftism is a “cultural” thing in the sense that it arises out of the traditions of a people. It’s always imposed by elites. However, it can certainly have an effect on the culture; generally a destructive one, the Soviet Union being perhaps the best case in point.

My impression of German attempts to raise the birth rate bespeaks both a sense of desperation on the part of a government that views (rightly) with alarm the oncoming decline in its population. Second, it’s not all that generous anyway. France has also attempted this, as has Russia. One hopes not, but it might be too little, too late.

Welfare states have had higher birth rates? I think I would want to see some definitive information on that, establishing a cause/effect relationship, since welfare states presently have disasterously low birth rates. It’s possible that it simply takes time to work through peoples’ consciousnesses that “the future is now”.

 

[Raskolnikov]

Indeed, i did reinforce half of your point, with the intent of refuting the other half. I don’t doubt that secularism and a general cultural malaise threaten Europe (and to lesser extent other regions), but that malaise has nothing to do with Islam “conquering” Europe. My point is that what is going on throughout Europe would be going on even without immigration from Muslim countries. Muslims are merely a scapegoat; the real enemy lies within, so to speak, rather than without. The idea that re-Christianizing Europe and defeating Islam go hand in hand is nonsensical; why do we have people like Dutch politician Geert Wilders, the most rabid opponent of Islam on the continent, and an outspoken atheist defending western secularism, not Christianity, in the face of Islam?

And for most of the states of Europe, low fertility rates are a fairly recent phenomenon. West German birth rates rose after the war, even as welfare-statism was on the ascendant, as did birth rates throughout most of Europe. The decline, I believe, began within the last few decades. One might also note that in formerly communist regions like East Germany and the Baltic states, where dependence on the state was once total, birth rates have been declioning even since their communist regimes fell (they were, of course, already low by the 1980s). If you want statistical proof of that, then just look up Lithuania’s birth rate (it’s about 1.2 I think); if it had been that low for thirty years, there’d barely be any Lithuanians today.

One might also note that countries with the most socialistic governments (the Scandinavian ones) generally have relatively high fertility rates by European standards. To be sure, I’m not defending welfare state economic policies; I just think the cause of current demographic problems lies elsewhere. Generally, though, I tend to disagree with the belief that American style, small government, conservative republicanism is the panacea for all countries’ social, economic, and religious definiencies.

Now, what this has to do with Franco and the Falange, I have long since forgotten.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Indeed, i did reinforce half of your point, with the intent of refuting the other half. I don’t doubt that secularism and a general cultural malaise threaten Europe (and to lesser extent other regions), but that malaise has nothing to do with Islam “conquering” Europe. My point is that what is going on throughout Europe would be going on even without immigration from Muslim countries. Muslims are merely a scapegoat; the real enemy lies within, so to speak, rather than without. The idea that re-Christianizing Europe and defeating Islam go hand in hand is nonsensical; why do we have people like Dutch politician Geert Wilders, the most rabid opponent of Islam on the continent, and an outspoken atheist defending western secularism, not Christianity, in the face of Islam?

And for most of the states of Europe, low fertility rates are a fairly recent phenomenon. West German birth rates rose after the war, even as welfare-statism was on the ascendant, as did birth rates throughout most of Europe. The decline, I believe, began within the last few decades. One might also note that in formerly communist regions like East Germany and the Baltic states, where dependence on the state was once total, birth rates have been declioning even since their communist regimes fell (they were, of course, already low by the 1980s). If you want statistical proof of that, then just look up Lithuania’s birth rate (it’s about 1.2 I think); if it had been that low for thirty years, there’d barely be any Lithuanians today.

One might also note that countries with the most socialistic governments (the Scandinavian ones) generally have relatively high fertility rates by European standards. To be sure, I’m not defending welfare state economic policies; I just think the cause of current demographic problems lies elsewhere. Generally, though, I tend to disagree with the belief that American style, small government, conservative republicanism is the panacea for all countries’ social, economic, and religious definiencies.

Now, what this has to do with Franco and the Falange, I have long since forgotten.

I never did say Islam had anything to do with the decline of religious observance in Europe, and doubt that it does. What I did say is that European countries seem awfully blase about a phenomenon that is encroaching on them and almost certain to overwhelm them in time. To me, this bespeaks a fecklessness that undoubtedly manifests itself in other ways.

I’m not sure it has anything to do with Franco and the Falange, except that some believe the decline in religious observance in Spain (and evidences thereof like birth rates) is somehow due to Franco’s rule some fifty years past. I mightily doubt that proposition. If my belief is correct, then the thread is almost irrelevant to itself.

I would not say Scandinavian birth rates are relatively high. It depends on who you compare with. They’re a bit lower than the UK, Luxembourg or France, about the same as Germany, Italy and Spain. Greatly below the U.S., of course. But they’re all pretty close together, and massively below replacement rate; less than half what they should be. Also, of course, birth rates by nation don’t tell you who is having the children. Could be that the Poles in the UK account for a big part of it there and that Muslims in Holland artificially inflate the rate there, just as Hispanics in the U.S. raise the overall rate from 1.8 to 2.1. Interestingly, the birth rate of Hispanics in the U.S. is higher than it is in Mexico. One suspects that the age of the immigrants has something to do with that. (as might be the case in the UK with Poles) Increased prosperity among those who value children might as well.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Leftism is not a “culture”, it’s an ideology, as is atheistic existentialism. It is not a natural outgrowth of popular traditions, but an imposition by elites. I do not doubt that the hatred of Franco by some (but obviously not all) Spanish has become a sort of superficial aspect of popular culture; not dissimilar with the idealization of the Republicans by leftists in the U.S.

Oh, I think the fact that Franco came to power as a result of an extremely destructive and bloody civil war, the bloody purge of suspected political enemies that occurred for years after Franco took power, and the way that the Franco regime discriminated against women and non-Catholics, has something to do with the dictator’s current unpopularity

But I shouldn’t be surprised that Franco still has fans. Even the far more brutal dictator Stalin has Russians who miss him. Although that may have something to do with the fact that (unlike Franco) Stalin was able to create a system strong and stable enough to outlive him.

 

[Faith3Faith]

at one time in history Spain was a strong Catholic country

 

[fkjuliano]

Compared to 50 million dead babies, those ‘rights’ are worth about as much as dog **** scraped off the bottom of my shoe.

I think our friend from Texas makes a good point, albeit in an unnecessarily graphic way. If Franco’s regime must be despised by Catholics because of its moral failings, namely political repression, including the deaths of tens of thousands of people, some of whom were most likely innocent of any crime, then what of current secularist regimes in the U.S. and elsewhere? They have permitted–and often funded–the murder not of tens of thousands, but of tens of millions, every single one of whom was certainly innocent. Obviously, I refer to the genocide of legalized abortion. Granted, regarding most issues the secularist regimes do permit greater political freedom than Franco did, but I submit that can hardly negate the monstrous crime committed by these regimes against the unborn, a genocide so vast and unrelenting that in nearly every Western country more people now die than are born (at least among Christians), and consequently populations are falling.

In short, while it is a fine moral stance to oppose any regime whose actions violate some aspect of the teachings of the Church–and Spain under Franco did fall into that category–that stance turns into rank hypocrisy if current secularist regimes are then recognized as upright or even legitimate.

 

[fkjuliano]

The Partido Popular under Mariano Rajoy seems to be gaining in strength, the party of Aznar. The Socialists under Zapatero seem to be weakening.

The Catholic Church in Spain is much smaller but much more committed.

If the Populars PP get in there is hope

That sounds a bit optimistic. What did the PP do to reverse all the “poca verguenza” in the years they were in power?