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The Catholic Church in Spain—The Abuse of PowerAwake!—1990 | March 8
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Civil War—A Cruel Crusade
The army generals who led the coup were motivated by political considerations, but soon the conflict took on religious overtones. Within a few weeks of the uprising, the church, whose power had already been undermined by recent legislation, suddenly found itself the target of widespread and vicious assault.b Thousands of priests and monks were killed by fanatical opposers of the military coup, who equated the Spanish church with a dictatorship. Churches and monasteries were plundered and burned. In some parts of Spain, just wearing a priest’s cassock was enough to sign a man’s death warrant. It was as if the monster of the Inquisition had returned from the grave in order to engulf its own progenitors.
Faced with this threat, the Spanish church turned once again to the secular powers—in this case the military—to champion its cause and to restore the nation to Catholic orthodoxy. But first the civil war had to be sanctified as a “holy war,” a “crusade” in the defense of Christianity.
Cardinal Gomá, archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, wrote: “Is the war in Spain a civil war? No. It is the fight of those without God . . . against the true Spain, against the Catholic religion.” He called General Franco, the leader of the insurgents, the “instrument of God’s plans on the earth.” Other Spanish bishops expressed similar sentiments.
Of course, the truth was not that simple. Many on the Republican side of the conflict were also sincere Catholics, especially in the Basque region, a traditionally Catholic stronghold. Thus, the civil war found Catholics fighting Catholics—all in the cause of Spanish Catholicism, according to the bishops’ definition of the conflict.c
When Franco’s forces finally overran the Basque Provinces, they executed 14 priests and imprisoned many more. French philosopher Jacques Maritain, writing about atrocities committed against the Basque Catholics, observed that “the Holy War hates the believers that don’t serve it more fervently than the unbelievers.”
After three years of mutual atrocities and bloodletting, the civil war came to an end, with a victory for Franco’s forces. From 600,000 to 800,000 Spaniards died, many of them because of the harsh reprisals of the victorious forces.d Unfazed, Cardinal Gomá asserted in a pastoral letter: “Nobody can deny that the power that has resolved this war has been God himself, his religion, his statutes, his law, his existence, and his recurring influence in our history.”
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The Catholic Church in Spain—The Abuse of PowerAwake!—1990 | March 8
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[Box on page 8]
The Spanish Civil War—The Bishops’ Pronouncements
Soon after the outset of the war (1936), Cardinal Gomá described the conflict as a fight between “Spain and anti-Spain, religion and atheism, Christian civilization and barbarism.”
La Guerra de España, 1936-1939, page 261.
The bishop of Cartagena said: “Blessed are the cannons, if the Gospel flourishes in the breaches they open.”
La Guerra de España, 1936-1939, pages 264-5.
On July 1, 1937, the Spanish bishops issued a collective letter outlining the Catholic position on the civil war. Among other things, it stated the following:
“The church, despite its peaceful spirit, . . . could not be indifferent to the fight. . . . In Spain there was no other way to reconquer justice, peace, and the benefits that derive from them than through the National Movement [Franco’s Fascist forces].”
“We believe that the name National Movement is appropriate, first because of its spirit, which reflects the way of thinking of the large majority of the Spanish people, and it is the only hope for the entire nation.”
Enciclopedia Espasa-Calpe, supplement 1936-1939, pages 1553-5.
Catholic bishops in other countries were quick to support their Spanish colleagues. Cardinal Verdier, archbishop of Paris, described the civil war as “a fight between the Christian civilization and the . . . civilization of atheism,” while Cardinal Faulhaber of Germany exhorted all Germans to pray in behalf of those who “defend the sacred rights of God, that He may grant victory to those who fight in [this] holy war.”
Enciclopedia Espasa-Calpe, supplement 1936-1939, pages 1556-7.
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The Catholic Church in Spain—Why the Crisis?Awake!—1990 | March 8
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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.
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