Priestly Soul-Searching in Spain

...Last year 339 priests in the region signed and presented to their bishops a 4,000-word protest against the "oppression, injustice, torture, brainwashing and servility" which, in their view, characterize Spain's present regime...

...and the surviving prelates mentioned in them have tried—with the aid of the Spanish Foreign Ministry and the papal representative in Paris— to obtain assurances that no more books will follow...

...The divergence of opinion between lower and higher clergy on the issue of the Church's relations with the Franco regime is nowhere more marked than in the Basque provinces of Northwest Spain...

...It has become normal practice," the Basque priests wrote, "for men to be imprisoned for months or years, according to the whim of an official, and then charged before a special tribunal with 'rebellion against the State,' merely because they do not consider those who govern us infallible...

...Book Two describes the Church hierarchy's role in the first six months of the Spanish war: There is the same sober concern for detail, the same withering contempt for the pharisees...

...Similarly, the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat in Catalonia—a "notorious" center of anti-Franco Catalanist feeling—is one of the most popular excursion- and pilgrimage-centers in the entire country...

...An immense propaganda machine, controlling all information media, has built up a quasi-idolatrous cult around the Chief of State...

...The hierarchy obviously feels it cannot afford to neglect this eventuality...

...The HOAC now constitutes the back-bone of the new underground organization...

...therefore, the Cardinal reasons, let us serve both Church and State by allowing the HOAC to campaign and lobby within the official unions and even to compete with Falangist nominees for union posts...

...Book One is based largely on the personal papers of Cardinal Gomâ, a former Primate of Toledo, and of a Jesuit dignitary in Rome...

...Democratic party's victory in November (interpreted throughout Western Europe as heralding a liberal trend in American foreign policy), the cadres of the Hermandades Obreras de Actión Católica, (HOAC, the Catholic Action workers' fraternities) and a lively Catholic youth movement, the Juventud Obera Cathólica (JOC), were authorized by their ecclesiastical mentors to form a clandestine political movement, the Christian Democratic Left, that would cooperate with the non-Communist opposition to the Franco regime...

...And since the end of World War II nearly 300 have gone into exile abroad...

...It has become normal practice to torture and beat the innocent simply because a policeman or a civil guard suspects them...

...General Franco would grant the concession only if he were convinced that the Falange had outlived its usefulness and the time had come to alter the nature of his regime...

...Shortly after the U.S...

...But it would split, and might even destroy, the Falange...

...Juan March and the landowners are flirting with the Monarchists, ready to abandon the General at the drop of a hatchet...

...A "radio padre," Fra Benancio Marcos, is quoted as having told his Madrid listeners that there are now fewer practising Catholics in Spain than 30 years ago, and that far too many of those who do go to church are chiefly concerned with obtaining a priest's recommendation for a job, a permit or an apartment...

...Cardinal Pla's task is a delicate one...

...Ray Alan is a British correspondent who has reported on Europe, Africa and the Middle East for many years...

...This would spare Spain the resumption of a feud which in the 1930s degraded both Church and Republic...

...It describes in merciless detail the part played by the Spanish hierarchy, the papal nuncio in Madrid, and the Jesuits, in the preparation of the "Crusade" against Spanish democracy...

...In Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, the HOAC says, fewer than 15 per cent of the population go to mass...

...This summer the Socialists, Catalan autonomists and a few smaller Republican groups, published a joint manifesto announcing the formation of a "Union of Democratic Forces" whose aims are to fight the Franco dictatorship "by all useful means" and set up a provisional government entrusted with the task of re-establishing essential liberties and ascertaining the views of the Spanish people on the future shape of their institutions...

...However, a copy was communicated to the socialist underground which printed it, whereupon whole congregations signed it in support of their priests...

...It drew attention to two passages in the protest referring to "the abyss which is widening day by day between the clergy and the public" and "the clamor of accusations made against us [because of] the contradictions between Christian doctrine and the conduct of this regime which calls itself Christian and enjoys the firm support of the Catholic hierarchy" HOAC militants point out that, while religious fervor has cooled off in other areas, 40 per cent of the Basques still go to mass regularly...

...If so, the Sindicatos are simply a totalitarian organization, like the Hitlerite and Soviet labor unions...

...On both occasions they were called to order by their bishops and publication ceased...

...Such a concession would probably win the Catholic Action brotherhoods a greater measure of working-class confidence and support than they enjoy at present and equip the new Christian Democratic Left with substantial trade-union foundations...

...The order is surprisingly unpopular...

...Cardinals and bishops still welcome the dictator unctuously on his provincial tours and employ his Vatican-approved title, "Caudillo of Spain by the Grace of God.' They still give thanks for the "National Crusade" which, at a cost of one million casualties, imposed him on his nation...

...But Cardinal Pla has more than one investment in his portfolio...

...Today, only two pillars of any substance remain to uphold the Franco regime: the Army and the Church...

...Twice recently, groups of Basque priests have published clandestine anti-Franco periodicals...

...No one would dare say that in the West today...

...One cannot act today as one did 20 years ago...

...According to a responsible local source, about 10 Basque priests were shot and more than 160 imprisoned for defying the Franco dictatorship in its early years...

...Despite intense religious indoctrination, 80-85 per cent of Spanish university students have serious reservations about the comportment of the Church, according to private surveys...

...But "Juan de Iturralde" is himself in France now —under the protection, it is said, of an influential anti-Jesuit bishop— and there are rumors that Cardinal Pla y Deniel has no objection to seeing the die-hard wing of the Spanish Church lose a few feathers provided "Juan de Iturralde" continues to restrict the circulation of his work to the clergy...

...Last October, with the Vatican's blessing (and over the opposition of the Jesuits, who are contemptuous of the new order), Opus Dei even created a new university at Pamplona—the only private university in Spain—one of whose aims is to inculcate the order's beliefs among students from abroad...

...Franco's own fascist movement, the Falange, fattened for so long on privilege and graft, is now a wizened caricature, abandoned by all but the beneficiaries of its patronage...

...Leaving only a little slime behind them, here and there, German Nazism and Italian Fascism have been flushed down the drain of history...

...Scores of copies of both volumes have been destroyed in Spain...

...Last year, too, individuals claiming, to represent Catholic Action fraternities known to be obedient to the Cardinal-Primate's political guidance established contact with the Spanish socialist underground and the socialist party's exiled leaders in France...

...Many industrial workers first pay their compulsory dues to the official Sindicatos, the Cardinal points out, and they make "voluntary contributions to the local cells of clandestine socialist or Communist organizations...

...So long as there is no legitimate Left-wing opposition, the workers will be bound to gravitate towards the socialist and Communist undergrounds...

...And he must somehow bridge the gap that has developed within the Church between, on the one hand, the prelates and older priests who played an active part in Franco's "National Crusade,' and, on the other, the younger ecclesiastics, including at least two bishops, who are frankly appalled by the corruption and moral apathy bred by a generation of "Crusader" rule...

...While holding in his left hand the clandestine Christian Democratic movement, the Cardinal-Primate appears to be staking a good deal with his right—if only in terms of public sympathy—on the empirebuilding of Opus Dei, a wealthy secret lay order whose 12,000 or so members occupy influential posts in General Franco's cabinet (four or five portfolios, including those of Commerce and Finance), the civil service, the Instituto Nacional Industria (which controls most of the nationalized industries), banking, real estate, journalism, broadcasting and the universities...

...The Primate of Spain, Cardinal Play Deniel, who has publicly supported the Caudillo for a quarter of a century, still praises his "model" concordat with the Vatican, and has approved the use of a catechism which teaches children to denounce democracy and freedom of the press in crudely totalitarian terms...

...It is against this background that one must view the emergence of the Christian Democratic Left and Cardinal Pla's recent protests against the monolithic nature of the official trade-union movement...

...They are sold only to members of the priesthood—their author does not want to discredit the Church but to "help it cleanse one of its limbs"—and they are expensive: The sales of the first two volumes must help finance the three yet to come...

...While seeking to preserve the Catholic Church's present privileges within the Spanish state—in particular its monopoly of religious instruction and its right to inspect and supervise the orientation of all other forms of education—he cannot be unmindful of the anti-clericalism its association with oppressive regimes has provoked in the past in Spain, France and Latin America...

...The machinations attributed to Opus Dei are—like the realestate dealings of its Jesuit rivals —a standard subject of gossip, and it is even accused of hiring strongarm gangs to beat up its critics...

...The bishops again came to the regime's rescue and tried to suppress the protest...

...But the Church is beginning to look a somewhat unsteady pillar...

...Among the founder-members of this alliance were "Cardinal Pla's friends" —as an angry Falangist put it—in the young Christian Democratic Left...

...When a gang attacked Barcelona law students who had made fun of Opus Dei during their rag last January, policemen present refused to intervene, saying: "They are from el Opus" But the Opus formula will presumably pay dividends should another authoritarian regime succeed the present one...

...With ecclesiastical support, military aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and the financial backing of Juan March, a billionaire smuggler-turned-banker, and a group of aristocratic landowners, the military brought General Francisco Franco to power...

...The controversial volumes are the first of five being published privately in France under the collective title El catolicismo y la Cruzada de Franco by a Basque priest who signs himself "Juan de Iturralde.' (One authority believes that the pen-name covers a group of priests...

...The inclusion of the Christian Democratic Left in the recently formed Union of Democratic Forces is widely interpreted in Spain as signifying that if a Republican government succeeds General Franco the Catholic Church will not oppose it...

...The army remains solid, though it is increasingly sensitive to Monarchist and ecclesiastical pressure...

...Of this there is no sign...

...After having coexisted with the Falangist Sindicatos for a generation, he now writes: "Is it true that the trade-union movement does not allow its members to petition it...

...Then, it was officially believed in Spain that the totalitarian states would win the war and that the totalitarian system was the best...

...Two books now circulating illegally in Spain have scandalized the clergy—the older ecclesiastics because of the books' indiscretions, the younger priests because of the light they cast on events hitherto obscured by propaganda...

...But in 1960 Cardinal Pla issued a sharply worded protest against illiberal practices in the official (and only) labor unions, the head of which, José Solis Ruiz, has for years been one of Franco's most faithful collaborators...

...The papal nuncio angrily accused the 339 of being "like soldiers guilty of treason" But Cardinal Pla y Deniel expressed more moderate disapproval, and the HQAC, in which he takes a special interest, was frankly sympathetic...

...So it is probable that Book Three will shortly be crossing the Pyrenees Mountains in the customs-exempt trunks of itinerant Spanish ecclesiastics...

...The Spanish press and radio have become instruments for distorting and deforming public opinion—responsible public opinion has been uprooted and destroyed—and we have no representative parliament, no political freedom, no free trade unions...