National
Spanish Bishops say they are speaking the word of Christ
By m.p.
Feb 3, 2008 - 10:44 PM

The Spanish Bishops have responded to the adverse reaction from the governing Socialist Party to their public note issued last Thursday calling on the faithful not to vote for a party which is prepared to hold talks with terrorists, with a statement from the Bishops’ No. 2 on Sunday that they are speaking the word of Christ.

Speaking in Toledo Cathedral on Sunday, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, the Archbishop of Toledo and Vice-President of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, said the only words the Church has to say are those of Christ. That word, he said, will never be quiet or silenced, despite all attempts of the powers in this world to do so. The Cardinal referred to the note as in no way an imposition, but as an ‘exhortation’ with no preference towards any political party, and spoke of the Church’s fundamental concerns for mankind as the basis for the note issued last week. He said it referred to the truth of the Gospel rather than to politics.

The cardinal’s words came after the Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, speaking at a PSOE rally in Orense on Friday night, said ‘the Bishops have fallen into the temptation of using terrorism,’ following the note from the Episcopal Conference.

Socialists at the rally started to boo as soon as the word ‘Bishops’ was mentioned by the Prime Minister.

‘The Bishops are in their right to call for a vote for the PP’, he said, ‘but they have fallen into the temptation of using terrorism, and we do not accept that from neither Rajoy nor the Bishops’.

Zapatero said that the citizens needed to know, before the election date of March 9, that he wanted to be Prime Minister again, to defend a country for all, a tolerant, free society where everyone can think as they wish and live in accordance with their beliefs.

‘The essence of freedom is that everyone feels free’, he said, ‘and the essence of democratic coexistence is that all beliefs are respected, the essence of a deep and authentic freedom is that nobody, nobody, tries to impose their morals or their beliefs, and that they respect others’. The Prime Minister’s comments were greeted with loud applause.

On Saturday the Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican held talks with the Vatican ‘number two’ to inform him about the Government’s ‘perplexity and surprise’ over the posture of the Spanish Bishops who have called on the faithful not to vote for the Government.

Spanish Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, went as far as to describe the Spanish Church’s action as ‘reactionary, fundamentalist, and neo-Conservative’. El País headlined on Saturday that the Socialist Party was threatening to revise the relations between the Government and the Church.

Speaking to the press in the Córdoba town of Rute on Saturday, Moratinos said ‘I want to express my opinion, as a Catholic, not only as an active Socialist, and I want to express by indignation and perplexity, because I do not believe that any Catholic from the 21st century can understand it’, adding that he did not believe that the Bishops’ opinions represented the sentiments of the majority of Spanish Catholics.