9 December 1978 The international Catholic weekly 28p
The alternative life: John F. X. Harriott Impartial Amnesty: Antoni Pospieszalski Patmore & Vatican 11 [: Felicitas Corrigan Reviews: Steve Biko: Byron in Switzerland: Gonville ffrench-Beytagh : Elizabeth Longford
Constitutional Spain
The charm and danger of the Spanish people lies partly in the fact that its behaviour is unpredictable to a degree scarcely found elsewhere in the western world. What will have happened, for instance, to the nation by the time these lines are in print? By that time the result of the referendum on the new constitution will be known. Taking a calculated risk, we predict that it will be a massive success for the bloodless revolution which the country has witnessed in three years, after four decades of dictatorship.
Latterly every adult in the country has received a neat little 48-page booklet setting out the 168 articles of the constitution, to which everyone is asked to respond with a simple yes or no. It is the work of a mixed commission representing the whole spectrum of Spanish political parties, from the right wing to the Communists. Its agreement has been reached after over a year of closed sessions and open debates. It has been approved by the Cortes and the senate separately, and in joint session, and it covers practically every aspect — political, social, economic and regional — of the country’s life. With its acceptance Spain will have merited first-class citizenship in the free world. If it is rejected, chaos will come again, and the country will be a prey to violent minorities principally stemming from the last-ditch supporters of the Franco régime, including military and clerical elements, and the desperadoes of Basque separatism.
The Church, or rather a section of it represented by the hierarchy, is a special case. The bishops met in plenary session last week to confirm the advice given two months ago by its permanent commission, which sanctioned the Spanish people’s option to vote either way. Of the 75 bishops, present 50 voted in favour, there were 15 dissenters and another eight, led by the cardinal primate, have denounced the referendum and through a pastoral, ordered to be read throughout their dioceses last Saturday and Sunday, have virtually instructed their flocks to vote against it. The majority of the bishops had admitted that the proposed constitution had “ an undeniable intrinsic value” that had been forged by “ an effort of collaboration and coexistence.” Archbishop Gonzalez Martin of Toledo, however, objected that the constitution made no reference to God and said that an agnostic constitution was being foisted on “ a nation of the baptised.” The absence of any reference to the supreme principles of natural or divine law, he said, could lead to legal aggression against the inalienable rights of man and to a nefarious permissive society. The position taken by the cardinal primate is one which the Franco regime always maintained in establishing the confessional character of the State and in making religious teaching obligatory. His views will be supported in integrist circles amongst the clergy and laity and to some small extent in the Armed Forces, but will have little or no effect on the Ghurch as a whole.
As far as the national press is concerned, even the typically conservative Catholic Ya takes quite a different line in a recent editorial: “ . . . the constitution is a political text, not a philosophical or dogmatic one . . . Let us start from the cold fact that the parliamentarians, elected by the people and divided into political parties which range from the professedly Catholic to the professedly dialectical materialist, have produced this text which begins not by invoking God but with its feet on the ground, affirming the ideals of liberty, justice, equality and political pluralism . . . Is that a valid reason for rejecting the constitution as an atheistic document when in fact it is nothing of the kind? Our bishops called attention to certain ambiguities where it touches on the family and education, but have not mentioned atheism as something to be concerned about in this referendum. To speak of an atheistic constitution suggests a mania for tilting at windmills.”
The importance of this editorial is that it is the voice not of
