|
|
Article: Two to tangle: church and state clash heads in Spain.
- Article from:
- Conscience
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Catholics for a Free Choice. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
"IN SPAIN, THE PEOPLE ALWAYS FOLlOW the priests; sometimes holding candles, sometimes clubs." It took a home-grown existentialist like Miguel de Unamuno to underscore the peculiar nature of the church-state conflict in Spain that came to a boil soon after Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero became prime minister in March 2004. On the surface, the dispute is driven by sharp differences over money, privilege and hot-button social issues like abortion. But as Unamuno also cautioned, in Spain, everything has to be contextualized in terms of the past, and that is where you find the roots of the Socialist government's irritation over the church's tenacious toehold in Spanish society, ...