Spaniards 'turn their backs' on the Catholic Church

[lemonbeam]

Carla Royo-Villa-Nova does not go to church but she prays every day before she goes to bed. “I like to spend a few moments talking with the Lord. There are also moments in the day when I like to thank Him for the good things or the mere fact I am alive,” she says.

Carla likes to think of herself as a believer but not as a practising Roman Catholic. The 41-year-old businesswoman is typical of a new breed of Spanish Catholics who have not abandoned the faith but have turned their back on the established Catholic Church.

Her relationship with God is symptomatic of a complex religious change under way in this once traditionally Catholic country. Surveys have repeatedly shown that fewer people are attending Catholic church services in Spain. In 1998 a poll for the government-run Centre for Sociological Investigations (CIS) found that 83 per cent of Spaniards called themselves Catholic. But ten years later, in 2008, another survey, for the Bertelsmann Foundation, found that the number had fallen to 75 per cent. The same survey found 53 per cent said that they almost never attended any religious ceremonies.

Read more here: timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7051620.ece

 

[rep140]

I’ve been to Spain and the rest of Europe and find that the churches are always nearly empty and those that attend are mostly age 60+. It puzzles me why we always have European popes as well as Europeans in the majority in the curia given the way that Catholicism has fallen on hard times there.

I would speculate that the close relationship between Church and state in Catholic European countries may be the cause for this. Especially since before Vatican II the Church taught against religious freedom. In Spain you saw the Church and dictator Franco together. In the 19th century a lot of Italy was under Church political control.

I think that religion is stronger in the U.S. because Church and state have always been separate.

 

[Adeodatus]

Rep, without the “dictator” Franco the Communists would have wiped out every believer in Spain. They did kill most of the bishops, priests and religious in their zones of control.

Spain used to be a righteous land. Now the Socialists have taken over again and seem to be doing everything they can to plunge the country back into the Hell of irreligion.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

Rep, without the “dictator” Franco the Communists would have wiped out every believer in Spain. They did kill most of the bishops, priests and religious in their zones of control.

That vile dictator did his own share of killing and keeping his boot on the necks of the Spanish people.

Spain used to be a righteous land. Now the Socialists have taken over again and seem to be doing everything they can to plunge the country back into the Hell of irreligion.

In Spain, the overly close ties between the state, whether monarchist or fascist, and the Church fed that country’s anticlericalism and exacerbated it.

 

[tzarno1]

‘Overly close ties led to anti-clericalism’…

Oh, please! Try reading some non-revisionist history of Spain before the 1930’s…

As for the US, the so-called separation of Church and State had much more to do with protecting Faith - via what Henry the VIII did to the Church - than protecting the State from the Church. That there is some kind of absolute wall that separates the two would be very much alien to the founders. This country had a very-much Christian beginning but with a robust anti- Catholic bigotry.

 

[Adeodatus]

In Spain, the overly close ties between the state, whether monarchist or fascist, and the Church fed that country’s anticlericalism and exacerbated it.

Yeah, did you see how those priests were dressed? They were just asking to get murdered. Just asking for it! And same thing with the nuns. And the bishops. And the faithful. And anyone who disagreed with Socialism. They were just asking for it!

Franco was a great man… far greater than his detractors. Not perfect by any means, but a warrior of righteousness. Well… what can you do? History isn’t always written by the victors.

He sure ripped those Reds a new one, that’s for sure.

 

[KC91]

It is truly a frightening measure of the power of Satan and his ideology, secularism, that one of the Church’s most faithful lands which in the words of Pope Pius XII, was chosen by God to evangelize a new cotinent, has turned it’s back on the faith which helped form it’s independence and national identity. There would have been no Spain without Catholicism.

While Franco was not perfect, in the interests if the Church and of the rights of the unborn it would have been better if his regime remained in place after he died with no ‘transition to democracy’. Unlike Zapatero at least he was a Catholic, granted the Church power and banned abortion, which Spain’s so ‘cafateria Catholic’ King recently signed into law.

Pope Pius XII sent Franco a radio message of congratulations when Franco won the Civil War in 1939. Pope John XXIII, a Pope beloved by liberals and author of Vatican II, himself said that he considered Franco a good Catholic and gave him his apostolic blessing through the Nuncio privately. Pope Paul VI, a Pope who was also considered liberal, sent Franco his apostolic blessing as Franco lay dying which gave the General spiritual comfort in his last days and sent Franco’s wife a private message of condolence. Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI raised to Sainthood thousands of the Spanish Priests murdered by the Reds. As a young man in Karol Wojtyla supported the Spanish Bishop’s 1937 pastoral letter which supported Franco. Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book ‘Salt of the Earth’ called the end of the Franco Regime a crisis.