THE SPANISH CATHOLIC CHURCH, DICTATORSHIP AND TRANSITION (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion and State in Secular Europe Today Theoretical Perspectives and Case Studies (Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia, 79), 2019
In this volume on the relations between Religion, secularism, and politics in Europe today, the Spanish historical evolution could be used to help us throw some light on the subject thanks to the particularity of its case. The purpose of this chapter will be to reflect about the implications of this religious metamorphosis happened in Spain taking into account three levels: the Spanish state, the civil society and the Roman Catholic Church. I will be especially focusing on the importance of the evolving changes in the role of the Catholic Church in this concrete case and its interaction with both the Spanish state and civil society.
Political Catholicism and the Secular State: A Spanish Predicament
RECODE Working Papers Nr. 20 (reprinted in Francisco Colom González and Gianni D'Amato (eds.): Multireligious Society. Dealing with Religious Diversity in Theory and Practice, Abingdon – New York, Routledge, 2017, pp. 77-91), 2013
This paper explores the origins of the religious/secular cleavage in Spanish modern politics. Such cleavage emerged within a broader historical process, namely the response of the Catholic Church to political secularization. ‘Political Catholicism’ appeared in this context as a reaction against modernity and as an attempt to create a new social and political environment for the Catholic worldview. Here, this term does not merely refer to the involvement of Catholics in political activities, but to the political strategies that have consistently and steadily claimed a Catholic inspiration for their aims and values. The paper concludes that the historical status of the Catholic Church in Spain reflects the changing cleavages of Spanish society and the corresponding weight of organized religion in it. Although Catholicism is still a prevailing cultural force in the country, it has lost much of its former clout as a political lever. Nonetheless, the organizational expertise of the Catholic Church and its mobilization vis a vis the state, combined with the inertia of its historical hegemony, have compensated for this loss of influence. This is a doubled-faced process though, since it also reveals the deep-rooted dependency of the Church on public resources and state cooperation.
The Spanish Catholic Church and the Secular Institutions
2020
The inquisitorial institution of the Iberian Peninsula (XV-XIX) was the instrument of the society's religious control in the hands of the absolute monarchy, while its mixed nature was recognized in its dual character based on the status of an ecclesiastical court concerning to the origin of its legitimacy and functions. At the same time was presenting a royal court due to the administrative framework. This article will analyze the relationship between the Spanish Catholic Church of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly referring to the regions of today's Spain, towards the secular institutions of the society with an emphasis on the processes conducted by the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition that was authorized by the Pope's in supperssing heresy. In the narrower plan, the elements of the procession of the auto da fé will be analyzed where its dual origin, intertwined with liturgical and profane elements will become more prominent in the typology of sanctions and penalties that transcend the legal frameworks of the canon law and transposed under the jurisdiction of the secular authorities. This study will try to present an analysis of these dual courts, whose systems of operation lead to the confrontation of different strategies, but also to their cooperation.
Politics, Religion and Sociology in Spain: The history of a discipline
The development of the sociology of religion in Spain has been both belated and difficult: Belated in comparison with other neighboring countries where the discipline was institutionalized and acquired an academic grounding many years ago, and difficult for having been caught in the repeated reverses due to the political instability that the country experienced during the twentieth century through the course of two dictatorships and a bloody civil war. This is not a condition specific to the sociology of religion, however, but rather to that of sociology in general. As some authors have noted, "what distinguishes Spanish sociology from that of other European countries is that it was born later" (Miguel and Moyer 1979: 6). In many respects, it was not until the 1980s, and only after the end of the Franco dictatorship, that the discipline was able to develop with assurances of continuity and stability within Spanish universities. This is not to say that the history of sociology in Spain is entirely encompassed within the last forty years. Since the late nineteenth century there have been various attempts to promote sociological thought within the country.
Religious Freedom and Democratic Change in Spain
BYU Law Review, 2006
I. INTRODUCTION It is probably not pretentious to assert that in the second half of the 1970s Spain experienced one of the most successful democratic transitions in history. The metamorphosis of Spain's political system was achieved very efficiently, quickly, peacefully, and with the consensus of the vast majority of Spanish citizens and political forces. This is certainly unusual considering Spain's political history, during which democracy had neither deep nor long-lasting roots. Within Spain's turbulent twentieth century, the mid-1970s political reform had been preceded by thirty-six years of General Francisco Franco's dictatorship, which began in 1939 after three years of civil war that put an end to the Second Republic.2 Shortly after Franco's death in 1975,3 Spain rapidly transformed into a democracy, fully complying with all international standards both on paper and in practice.4 The most important instrument of that transformation, and the pillar of the s...
Constitutional Politics and Religious Accommodation: Lessons from Spain
Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2015
This article sketches the struggles over and the shifting role of Catholicism in the Spanish body politic. It begins by providing a brief overview of the deep historical ties between Catholicism and Spanish identity. It continues by recounting the dialectical process through which a serious social cleavage on the role of religion in politics emerged and percolated over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This cleavage ultimately pit a militant and reactionary brand of authoritarian Catholicism on the right against an equally militant group of secularist ideologues associated with both bourgeois-republican and revolutionary working class (mainly anarchist) political forces. Following Juan Linz, the article emphasizes the nefarious role played by constitutionmakers who pursued a partisan secularizing agenda on questions of Church and state in the breakdown of democracy and tragic onset of Civil War. It then delineates the ideology and institutionalization of "national-Catholicism" under Franco, before turning to contrast republican-era constitution-making dynamics with those of the transition to democracy following Franco's death. It concludes with a discussion of the content of post-transition conflicts over religion and politics, highlighting the constitutional resources for coping with the somehow new yet very old challenge posed by the presence of Islam. Recent scholarship has begun to re-evaluate the once "axiomatic" assumption "that modernization inevitably leads to … secularization." In the process, it has begun to recognize that "religion can sometimes play" a positive, even "fundamental role in issues of political representation and
Politics and Religion, 2012
Even though not all European churches can be ascribed a political profile, moral issues have unleashed the protest of some of them alongside Christian-inspired groups and advocacy coalitions. Mobilization against these issues is not surprising in democracy but the different role that churches might play is. Unlike other European churches, the Spanish Catholic Church has acted as a political contender under Zapatero's rule (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011). The new Socialist agenda, with its emphasis on morally-liberal reforms, has triggered a protest in which the church has invested significant resources and helped mobilize the more Conservative quarters of the Catholic society. This adversarial role is distinctive but not unique: the Italian and Polish churches have also opted for confrontational strategies in the face of similar challenges. However, the Spanish case is most relevant because, unlike other predominantly Catholic societies (Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and Poland), it has experienced a most profound and fastest secularization process. Confrontation can then be explained by the supply (a well-endowed Church that enjoys a privileged relationship with a non-confessional state) and not by the demand.
Completing the Religious Transition? Catholics and Muslims Navigate Secularism in Democratic Spain
In Europe, Muslims are often seen as the enemies of secularism and laïcité, the strict separation of church and state pioneered in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century France. Yet the Spanish experience shows that European Muslims should not prima facie be considered opponents of secularism. Indeed, a majority of devout Spanish Muslims have demanded, rather than opposed, state neutrality on religious matters—this in direct opposition to a concerted effort by the Catholic Church and its supporters to maintain a privileged position vis-à-vis other confessions. In the protracted debates over the role of religion in the public sphere in Spain, devout Muslims have shown a preference for the secular Socialist Party over the militant Catholicism of Spanish conservatives. The leaders of the Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic federations demanded in 2011 that Spain complete its “religious transition” so as to ensure the equal treatment of all religious confessions by the state. Muslims in Spain, while they have echoed Catholic demands for the preservation of religion in the public sphere, have opposed Catholicism’s privileged status in the country. By demanding consistency of treatment and state neutrality on religious matters, Muslims have assisted, rather than hindered, the construction of secularism in Spain.