Spaniards and the Church

Date: 12/04/03

It used to be spoken of as Catholic Spain. Not these days

THE pope will visit Spain in May, and he has been fiercely hostile to the war in Iraq. So are 90% of Spaniards. The curiosity is that Spanish opposition is led by the left, traditionally anti-clerical, while pro-war feeling is led by the decidedly Catholic government. The defence minister, Federico Trillo, is a member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic lay order, and he and two other ministers were in Rome last October when Pope John Paul canonised Josemara Escriva, the Spanish founder of the order. Vote-catching? No: a recent survey of religious belief in Spain shows that this historically Catholic country may be ceasing to be so.

The church for years claimed that 90% of Spaniards “considered themselves” Catholic. Recent surveys say 80%. That is still a lot. But what does it mean? Antonio Mara Rouco Varela, Madrid's cardinal-archbishop, has admitted that for most such Spaniards “Catholic” is a label - to some extent of national identity - but not a way of life. A recent survey by a state-run research group attaches some figures to this. In 1975, 61% of Spaniards claimed to go regularly to church; now 19% do, while 46% of those who say they are Catholic concede that they “almost never” go.

That dramatic fall in the figures is not wholly fair to the church. Franco died only in 1975, and his regime had kept artificially alive the old integration of state with (an increasingly restive) church, and the idea that decent people went to church. So while even today's figure for church-going (19%) may be exaggerated - similar surveys elsewhere in Europe suggest that respondents' claims of church-going can be double the reality - the 1975 figure was probably still more inflated. Yet more reliable figures say the same. In 1952 Spain had 77,800 priests; last year, only 18,500, and 10-15% of parishes have no priest. In 1952 there were 7,050 seminarians studying for the priesthood, today only 1,800. Some seminaries began their courses last October without a single new student.

Look around the country, and - away from Madrid's bishops and the vast ecclesiastical citadels like those in Saragossa or Leon - the storks seem to have taken over Spain's dilapidated parish churches. The old saying was that “a Spaniard is always behind a priest, either with a candle or a stake”. Today he can't be bothered.

Yet, despite this burgeoning secularism and the occasional row between government and clergy, many Spaniards, often but not only on the left, still detect an unhealthy entente between church and state. The church, they complain, is buttressed by public funds.

Not so, it replies. Under an accord with the government in 1979, Spaniards can give 0.52% of their income tax to the church by ticking a box on their tax returns. Some 40% used to do so; even now 32% do. The church says this brings it roughly $100m a year, and it will benefit from the system at least until a review in 2005. But this, say the bishops, is each taxpayer's choice.

There's worse, say the critics. Under another church-state agreement, the church was to have become self-sufficient by 1988; yet governments have not only let the tax-donation system run on but also go on topping up the proceeds to levels enjoyed in the Franco years. Further money is funnelled to the church through schools and hospitals. Some public-sector banks like Caja Madrid make large tax-free donations to help maintain church buildings.

What irks the left even more is the church's continuing influence on education. Religious orders still run most of Spain's private schools, which also get government grants. The accord of 1979 put all teachers of religion under the church's sway. Recently, however, “sinful” teachers sacked for not going to mass, for instance, or for marrying divorcees, have started to appeal against such decisions.

But don't overstate this government's obeisance to the church. At a meeting of senior officials this year, it was Mr Trillo who pointed out that, in matters of Iraqi war and peace, the pope's word was not the word of God. Which is true doctrinally, but, given their readiness to back George Bush rather than John Paul, suggests that they did not much care anyway.