VATICAN CITY — It was billed as a “potentially explosive” situation, and in many ways, it was. The bishops of Spain, once the most Catholic country in Europe, came to Rome last month on their ad limina visit at a time when the Spanish government is pushing through a gamut of anti-Catholic legislation.

 The Socialist administration, under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, plans to relax laws on divorce, loosen limits on abortion and make religious education optional. And as legislation allowing same-sex “marriages” and adoptions by same-sex couples is likely to be passed in the spring, some Catholic commentators believe the government’s policies are turning Spain into “the Netherlands of the South,” a reference to Holland’s radically liberal social laws.

But while this legislation is of great concern to Pope John Paul II and the Holy See, the Pope adhered to protocol and avoided explicit references to the internal political matters of the country. Instead, in an address to the visiting bishops Jan. 24, he warned that “a lay-inspired mentality” is spreading an ideology that leads “to the restriction of religious liberty.”

It is an approach, the Pope added, that promotes “scorn or ignorance of religious matters, relegating faith to the private sphere and opposing its public expression.”

The thrust of the Holy Father’s speech was a simple warning that Spain’s deep Christian roots simply cannot be pulled up. This new mentality in Spain, he said, “does not form part of the most noble Spanish tradition, because the mark that the Catholic faith has left on the life and culture of the Spanish is too profound to yield to the temptation of silencing it.”

John Paul alluded to the government’s legislative program only by emphasizing the right to religious education that, he pointed out, was established in a 1979 concordat between Spain and the Holy See.

Madrid Miffed

Even so, when government officials heard the remarks, they made no secret of their displeasure. The papal nuncio, Archbishop Manuel Monteiro, was summoned to the offices of the foreign ministry in Madrid and told the government was “surprised” at the “explicit reference” in the Pope’s speech.

A formal complaint was lodged, and an irritated Zapatero said that “never before has Spain enjoyed as much religious, ideological and political freedom as it does now.” In response, the Vatican issued a cool and direct statement, asking that the government re-read the Holy Father’s message.

Yet there is more to this dispute than a simple church-state fracas over encroaching secularism. The Vatican sees it as a battle for fundamental human values, not just religious ones. “It’s not like we’re telling a member of the Spanish Communist Party that he has to believe in God, or imposing on a German Protestant the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist,” one senior Vatican official told the Register.

The Church, the official continued, is “putting forward values of human dignity and the natural moral law” and the tragic inability of some Europeans to realize this is “what upsets the Pope so much.”

The Vatican also sees this legislative program as the betrayal of acceptable norms for democracy. “What democracy is worth its name that doesn’t protect the unborn?” the official said. “Democracies should protect the innocent.”

For its part, the Spanish government’s reaction has much to do with the country’s deeply troubled and complex Church-state relationship, dating back to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Father Robert Gahl, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, explained that Spaniards “mourn both the religious persecution of the leftist regime during their civil war and the intermingling between Church and state during Franco’s dictatorship.”

Since then, the Church has been largely viewed as right wing and conservative. “The Socialists have been anti-clerical, and this is popular among left-wing voters,” said Enric Gonzales, Rome correspondent for the Spanish daily El Pais. “It’s probably good for them to be that way.”

But Gonzales added that this is the first time a Socialist government has been involved in such a crisis with the Church, making it a very political, “left-right confrontation.”

A Spanish professor of Catholic media communications agreed, stressing there is a “Catholic and an anti-Catholic Spain.” But he added that many Catholics were also not pleased with the previous conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar, who, despite preventing initiatives to liberalize abortion, also pursued a largely secular agenda.

Disillusioned

Now many practicing Spanish Catholics who voted for Zapatero’s government feel deluded, having never expected the administration to pursue such an anti-Catholic agenda. Defense Minister José Bono, believed to be the only committed Catholic in the government and a friend of the archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco, has already sounded a warning to his government.

“If this war is declared against the Church,” Bono said late last year, “the Church and the Socialists would lose, and the only ones to win would be the Conservatives.”

The Socialists are beginning to realize the danger and are now trying to behave more diplomatically. Zapatero’s administration recently restated its commitment to the 1979 church-state accord, and the Vatican responded by welcoming the government’s commitment to “a permanent dialogue animated by mutual respect.” The statement stressed that this “has been and always will be the policy of the Holy See.”

But in a country where there is currently reported to be little groundswell of support for the Church’s position — a recent poll showed 60% of the population in favor of the government’s program — few commentators see enough Spaniards heeding the Vatican’s pleas to uphold and protect human dignity, at least during this government’s term.

Edward Pentin writes

from Rome.