Much has been said in recent weeks about the bishop of Tenerife and the Catholic Church. On the one hand, the request for the removal of the Tenerife bishop for being homophobic, through the change.org platform, reflected the outrage that his statements provoked in the population, collecting 50,000 signatures in a weekend. The bishop reiterated that his statements transmit the teaching of the Catholic Church, which he represents. And in that statement, he is not far from reality. If we go to the Catechism that establishes the bases of this religion, it states "Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered... They are contrary to the natural law... Under no circumstances can they be approved" (Part 3, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 6).
On the other hand, civil society has also shown its most forceful outrage after the minimum agreement, signed between the Spanish Government and the Spanish Episcopal Conference, which shows the immense power that the Catholic hierarchy still has. With the commitment to return to the State only 2.8% of the 34,961 properties registered by the Catholic Church in its name between 1998 and 2015, including places of worship of great heritage and historical artistic value, such as the Mosque, the Giralda..., a looting of decades is being resolved; to which is added the one produced between 1947 and 2015, in which more than one hundred thousand rustic and urban properties were registered as their own, with the only requirement of the signature of a bishop.
Likewise, the publication of new cases of sexual abuse by the clergy has caused great commotion, which adds to the thousands covered up by the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities, with the consequent damage caused to the victims, who have been ignored and stigmatized for decades.
But the history of the Catholic Church does not end there. We cannot forget the alleged thousands of stolen creatures with their approval for more than half a century, nor the privileges that they are allowed to maintain in the 21st century.
While the statements of the Tenerife bishop are absolutely detestable, I believe that we must go further and ask ourselves, why does the most progressive government in history, without blushing, deliver a new gift to the Catholic Church in the midst of great theatricality? A gift that is specified in an enormous fortune (as an example, in 2018, the Church obtained an income of 15.8 million euros from the sale of tickets to the Cordoba mosque), while they continue to pay with public money for the conservation of those false properties of the Church, which do not even pay taxes.
Why is a bishop given airtime on public television, who already in 2007 described homosexuality as a detriment to society and excused sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church, blaming them for it? How, in a State of law, can there be doubts about the need to investigate the crimes of sexual abuse that occurred in the Catholic Church, to do justice and repair the damage caused? How can the agreements signed with the Holy See 43 years ago (revision of the Concordat of 1953) remain in force, to guarantee unconstitutional economic and educational privileges to the Church?
But the state servitude to the interests of the Church goes beyond the Agreements with the Holy See. Some of these privileges are evident in the specification of holidays linked to the Catholic religion, the official presence of public authorities in all types of confessional acts, such as masses, processions and offerings, the participation of religious authorities in civil acts (for example, participation of the bishop in the Honorary Committee of the I Centenary of the Villa de San Juan de la Rambla), the presence of religious symbols in public institutions (for example, a crucifix presides over the Plenary Hall of the La Laguna City Council) and even elements that insult intelligence, such as the appointment of the Virgin of Candelaria as Honorary and Perpetual President of the Cabildo de Tenerife.
It is striking that all these privileges are maintained when the secularization of society has increased considerably in recent years. The truth is that, given the decline of the pulpit, the Church has clung even more to the State, allowing the non-denominational nature of the State to be disrespected in many spaces, which poses serious dangers to the rights and freedoms conquered. At the same time, there is a worrying increase in religious fundamentalisms, allied to far-right political organizations and neoliberal economic sectors that operate internationally, attacking the public, sowing xenophobia, machismo and lgbtiphobia, while seeking to impose their doctrines on the entire population.
But when listening to the debate that took place regarding a PNL presented by Sí Podemos Canarias in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, which included the proposal not to invite the bishop of Tenerife, for his homophobic statements, to any institutional event held in the Canary Islands, it became evident that even the political parties of the government team - which theoretically defend secularism - do not know what the non-denominational nature of a State means (included in the Spanish Constitution), which entails the necessary neutrality of public powers in relation to the different religious denominations; and that, much less, they are going to take a step to advance the secularism of this State. On the part of all, the defense of the omnipresence of the Catholic Church in institutional acts was palpable, turning Catholicism, in fact, into the official religion of the State.
We cannot tiptoe around, staying only in the rejection of the bishop's statements. It is necessary to go further and seriously commit to respectful understanding and the coexistence of all people around what unites us, human rights and mutual respect. We will agree that the Catholic Church is a private organization of believers (curiously, this is how the PP of the La Laguna City Council defined it, in the last Plenary Session). Therefore, I do not understand why it is so difficult to make the Church governed by the Law of Associations, with all its rights and all its duties, without privileges. I wonder when the taxation of the Church, the doctrinal education of religion in schools, the financing of the clergy, the registrations, the privileges granted to private entities dependent (in very diverse ways) on the Catholic Church through the outsourcing of very varied public services, the crimes committed within it, as well as many other issues that remain embedded in the legal order and in social life, will be subjected to the criteria of secularism and democracy, of confessional neutrality of the State. In short, when will the Constitution be strictly complied with, is it too much to ask?
Mary C. Bolaños Espinosa. Harimaguada Collective
