The Catholic Church in Spain​—Why the Crisis?

“They sow the wind, they will reap the whirlwind.”​—Hosea 8:7, “The Jerusalem Bible.”

ON MAY 20, 1939, in the church of Santa Bárbara, Madrid, General Franco presented his victory sword to Archbishop Gomá, primate of Spain. The army and the church celebrated together the triumph that the pope described as the “desired Catholic victory.” The civil war had ended, and apparently a new dawn of Spanish Catholicism was breaking.

The church triumphant received generous State subsidies, control of education, and wide censorship powers over anything not conducive to national Catholicism. But the successful military-​religious crusade had also sown the seeds of the church’s decline.

In the eyes of many Spaniards, the church was implicated in the atrocities of the victorious forces. True, during the immediate postwar years, the majority of the population went to Mass. To get a job or a promotion, it was wise to be a good Catholic. But had genuine faith been fostered by armed might and political pressure?

Forty years later, a series of crises were to answer that question.

Crisis of Faith: By 1988 only 3 out of 10 people in Spain were regularly practicing the Catholic religion, and most people considered themselves “less religious than they were ten years ago.” A survey, carried out for El Globo, a Spanish weekly, showed that although the majority of Spaniards believe in God, fewer than half of them are convinced that there is life after death. Most surprising of all was the finding that as many as 10 percent of those who considered themselves practicing Catholics said that they did not believe in a personal God.

Crisis of Vocations: Spain used to send priests to the four corners of the globe. Thirty years ago, 9,000 were ordained every year. Now, that number has fallen to a thousand, and many large seminaries lie idle. As a result, the average age of Spanish priests is increasing​—16 percent are now over 70 years of age, while only 3 percent are under 30.

Crisis of Funding: The new Spanish constitution separates Church and State. Formerly, generous State subsidies were automatically assigned to the Catholic Church. The present government has introduced a new system whereby a small percentage of each person’s taxes is allotted either to the church or to some worthy social cause, depending on the wishes of the taxpayer. Surprisingly, only 1 out of every 3 Spanish taxpayers preferred to have the church receive his money. This was a blow for Catholic authorities, who had estimated that almost double that number would assign this “religious tax” to the church. It means that a self-​supporting church is still a long way off.

Meanwhile, it appears that the government will reluctantly have to keep on subsidizing the church to the tune of $120 million a year. Not all Catholics are happy about this situation. One Spanish theologian, Casiano Floristán, pointed out that “a church that does not receive sufficient contributions from the faithful either does not have the faithful or is not a church.”

Crisis of Obedience: This crisis affects both priests and parishioners. Younger priests and theologians are often concerned with social rather than religious issues. Their “progressive” tendencies clash with the conservative Spanish hierarchy and also with the Vatican. Typical is José Sánchez Luque, a priest from Málaga, who feels that “the Church does not have a monopoly of the truth” and that it should “orientate the citizens, but without dominating.”

Many Spanish Catholics think similarly​—only a third of Spanish Catholics generally agree with what the pope says. And the Spanish episcopacy is viewed even less favorably. Of the Catholics interviewed in a recent poll, one fourth explained that they “couldn’t care less” about the bishops, while 18 percent said they could not understand them anyway.

“A Second Evangelization”

In the face of this alarming situation, the Spanish bishops published in 1985 an extraordinary series of confessions. Among other things, they admitted:

The bishops also acknowledged that the country was becoming more and more secularized, or religiously indifferent. They recommended a “second evangelization” of Spain. Few, however, heeded their call. Two Catholic ladies who went from house to house had a surprise. They spent more time explaining to householders that they were not Jehovah’s Witnesses than they spent giving their Catholic message.

This should not have been surprising, for Jehovah’s Witnesses spent more than 18 million hours last year visiting the homes of people in Spain in a genuine nationwide evangelization. All Witnesses​—like the first-​century Christians—​feel obliged to “do the work of an evangelist.” (2 Timothy 4:5, Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition) And although they may find widespread apathy toward the church, the evangel, or good news concerning God’s Kingdom, that they impart does find many a hearing ear.

One elderly man they met was Benito. When the civil war broke out, he found himself in the area controlled by the military insurgents. He was forced to enlist as a soldier, but in his heart he felt that it was wrong to take up arms. He refused to accept that it was a “holy war.” Rather than kill his fellowman, he deliberately shot himself in the hand so that he would be unable to pull a trigger.

Forty years later, he and his wife started studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Benito was delighted to learn that God himself urges his people to “beat their swords into plowshares,” just as his conscience had urged him to do many years earlier. (Isaiah 2:4) Despite failing health, before long he too was doing the work of an evangelist.

“A Beautiful Bubble”

Gloria was a Catholic who had resigned herself to worshiping God in her own way. For years she had devoted her life to the church as a missionary nun in Venezuela. But she had become disillusioned when she was unable to find answers to her questions regarding church doctrines, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary, purgatory, and the Trinity.

When she sought explanations, she was always told that it was a mystery. ‘Why does God make things so difficult to understand?’ she asked herself. On one occasion she was warned that if she had lived in the time of the Inquisition, she would have been burned. ‘And that’s probably true,’ she thought.

Because of such rebuffs, she was skeptical when Jehovah’s Witnesses visited her. But when she realized that everything they were teaching was confirmed by the Scriptures, that she could at last understand God’s message for mankind, she was overjoyed. She now devotes much of her time to the preaching of the good news of God’s Kingdom.

“Now, when I think about all the religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church,” Gloria says, “I compare them to a beautiful bubble, glistening with many colors, but empty​—if you try to probe further, it just disappears.”

Benito, Gloria, and thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses like them in Spain, have found real spiritual refreshment by turning to the unadulterated waters of truth contained in the Holy Scriptures. Such refreshment was missing in that venerable Iberian institution, the Spanish church​—so rich in tradition but so poor in spiritual content, so powerful for centuries but now so helpless to allay the apathy of her dwindling flock.

Jesus Christ once said, referring to the need to identify and avoid religious error: “Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits. . . . I repeat, you will be able to tell them by their fruits.”​—Matthew 7:15-20, JB.

We leave the reader to judge for himself the fruits of Spanish Catholicism.

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 12]

Catholic bishops called for a second evangelization of Spain. Few heeded their call

[Picture on page 9]

Only 3 out of 10 Spaniards regularly attend church

[Picture on page 10]

The Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona is still unfinished after a hundred years of building and soliciting donations

[Credit Line]

Photo: Godo-​Foto