Spain's Catholic Reformation

...Of the problems with which the Church is now wrestling, birth control interests the widest public, Every year, Church and State honor the progenitors of Spain's biggest families, (The top award for Madrid province at the beginning of 1965 went to a couple with 17 children and 3 bedrooms...

...This is brainwashing of the crudest kind...

...These rumors also disturb Catholic intellectuals who, without considering themselves conservative, have been content, in the past, to accept the Church's guidance and restrain their interest in proscribed subjects...

...Others have noted that the Spaniard who breaks with the Church rarely settles for Protestantism or agnosticism...

...In sermons and articles, individual prelates and priests who appear to lack faith in the efficacy of their own past teaching have expressed the fear that many simple folk may be led astray by wily heretical propaganda if ever the Protestants are allowed freedom to proselytize in Spain...

...It would be more logical to close the seminary...

...Yet we must ask: What will be the consequence when, as must happen, we discontinue this kind of teaching and the Church loses its hold on people's minds...

...that Saint James appeared on a white horse in several battles to help the Spaniards defeat the Moors and the American Indians...

...There is a feeling that termites are in the rafters...

...And when the Church does eventually bring its teaching up to date it will shock not only its diehards but many who will realize for the first time how much unnecessary strain and suffering have been prolonged by its hesitations...

...The philosopher Miguel de Unamuno observed that the mere fact that the Church opposed Darwinism made Darwin's works immensely popular in Spain...

...Conservative Catholics fear that reform and modernization may develop a momentum of their own...

...that the Virgin Mary, in flesh and blood, brought from Palestine the sacred pillar around which the basilica at Saragossa was built...

...Spanish teachers must, by law, be Catholics, and during their training as much as possible is done to RAY ALAN is a British correspondent 'who has reported on Europe, Africa and the Middle East for many years...

...and a few confessors, despairing of the "Ogino method"-its offspring are known as Oginitos-are said to be anticipating the Vatican Council in their tolerance, (Some Spanish doctors say that one of the most effective treatments for women suffering from nervous depression is to advise them to change their confessor...

...The debates of the Vatican Council, the unsettling peripheral discussions it has inspired, the abrupt liturgical changes, and the presentiment of more startling developments to come, have displeased many Spanish Catholics and profoundly shocked some...

...But here, suddenly, is the Vatican Council inserting several shades of grey into the Catholic spectrum...

...But most modern Spanish couples would prefer not to have to compete...

...But many would gladly dissociate themselves tomorrow from the peculiar mixture of history and legend to which they are presently obliged to pay lip-service...

...he generally becomes an all-out atheist, hating not only organized religion but the very idea of God...

...The ideas and attitudes the Reformation is authorizing are too familiar to be shocking-it was their interdiction that was embarrassing...

...The only advice on conjugal relations available to the general public is contained in cautious booklets, written for the most part by members of religious orders, which arouse more curiosity than they satisfy-inevitably, or their authors would be in trouble, As in France, one is apt to be asked unexpectedly by one's middle-class friends for the address of an understanding English pharmacist...

...but, in the long run, in Spain as elsewhere, the Church will gain respect for proclaiming its determination to tackle real problems experienced by real people...

...There is even talk of upgrading certain heretical sects to the status of "separated brethren...

...One, a Gerona man, told me: "I have to teach my class that Saint Narcissus -whose image holds a high rank in the Spanish Army-v-saved Spain from successive French invasions by sending swarms of flies to sting the invaders and their horses to death...

...How much of Spain's rich treasury of relics and miracles will survive their scrutiny...

...inoculate them against the viruses that provoke independent thinking...

...Spaniards have never found it easy to establish a compromise between faith and reason-no doubt because they have had so few opportunities...

...Conservative groups have distributed leaflets at church doors urging Catholics to defend Spain's spiritual unity and resist the advocates of religious tolerance and liberalization, "Liberalism," they proclaim, "is the forerunner of Marxism and must be crushed, in the sacristy as elsewhere...

...Will it be 1936 all over again...

...Where are limits to be drawn...

...Their disquiet is expressed in other ways-for example, in the headline ALARM IN RELIGIOUS CIRCLES IN CHILE printed (in red) by a Catholic paper over a report that Chilean health authorities were considering making information about contraceptive methods more freely available, In Spain, as in France and Italy, ecclesiastical hostility to contraception and sex education has rebounded...

...But the same man continued: "It is difficult for a teacher to retain his self-respect in such circumstances...

...A Catholic paper published in Pamplona has urged its readers to denounce to the authorities any Protestant agents who appear in their neighborhood...

...Other conservative voices have urged the government to refuse concessions to the Protestants even if the Vatican Council does finally approve a liberal schema on religious tolerance...

...As the date for the Council's resumption approaches, many conservatives here are declaring themselves disturbed by reports that a more tolerant attitude is asserting itself in the Vatican toward other controversial issues-among them psychiatry, evolutionary biology and genetics, birth control, and socialism -though some priests dismiss such talk as Protestant-inspired mischief-making, One, a seminary teacher, asked me: "Can you imagine me going into my classroom one morning to announce that Darwin, Freud and Malthus were right after all...

...that cherished slabs of doctrine and tradition are about to come crashing down...

...Liberalization is bound to be something of a Pandora's box...

...Conservative Spanish churchmen give the impression that they prefer this reaction, for this way the issue is clear, and religion, education and morals are reduced to a simple Manichean pattern of black and white...

...sadly, he added: "[Spaniards] seek in them not only anti-Catholic arguments but-this must be stated clearly-anti-Christianity...

...In general, Catholic publicists have toned down their direct attacks on birth control so as not to be caught out on a limb if the Vatican an nounces concessions...

...But in Spain few people under 45 have been exposed to the liberal thought the Church is now ingesting...

...They are beginning to feel like a teetotaller who has learned from his doctor that a daily half-bottle of wine would do him good, From now on they will be inclined to resent ecclesiastical attempts to preshrink their horizon...

...Are even the saints safe...

...But protestantism is not the only problem-or even, for most Spanish Catholics, the major one...

...The issue is beginning to be tinged with anticlericalism...

...They are already sensitive to the gibes of liberals who argue that, in changing its mind about a number of things, the Church is admitting that it has been wrong...