In The Pink: Catholic Church and the PP

Were you aware that in twenty years time half the world's population will be homosexual? This won't be as a consequence of some type of gender modification technique, but as a consequence of a programme set out by the United Nations.

Have I gone mad? No, not me, but the Bishop of Córdoba and Cardinal Antonelli of the Papal Government. In all seriousness, it would appear, the Cardinal has been telling the Bishop that UNESCO has a programme of ideology that will turn 50% of the world gay.

The claim would be hilarious (well, it is hilarious) if it weren't for the fact that the Catholic Church, or at least parts of it, seems to believe this nonsense. The Church has been fighting a losing battle in Spain and its best response is to parrot some complete drivel that the Vatican has dreamt up.

The wholesale global pinking that the UN allegedly has in mind is social-engineering manna from heaven for the Spanish Church as it eyes up its opportunity to reclaim territory lost during the Zapatero administration. With that nice conservative, Sr. Rajoy, now in charge, the Spanish Cardinals will be hoping for a return to the good old days of religious orthodoxy.

Spearheading the campaign is the tough guy of the Spanish Church, Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela, the Archbishop of Madrid, and president of the Episcopal Conference. During his year-end address he laid into the previous government and called on the new one to repeal the socially liberal legislation that Zapatero had presided over.

Zapatero and the Archbishop were not exactly on the best of terms. The former prime minister was the devil incarnate where the Archbishop was concerned, liberalising abortion, permitting same-sex marriage, all the sorts of things designed to bring Spanish and Western Christian civilisation crashing down.

Prior to the election in 2008, the Archbishop and the Church had gone into full propaganda mode on behalf of the Partido Popular. Not that the party was named specifically, but there was no doubt as to where the Church's sympathies didn't lie. Arguably though, the Church's intervention then didn't help the PP, indeed it may well have helped the PP to lose some support, while a similar pro-PP line before the 2011 election was wholly unnecessary given that the election was about one issue and one issue alone - the economy - and that the PP was bound to win in any event.

With the PP restored, the Church now has its opportunity, and the question is to what extent the Rajoy government will backtrack on Zapatero's liberal agenda. Rajoy is, as Rajoy has so far proven to be very adept at, singularly vague as to what he might propose. He has said that there will be a change to the abortion law that the Zapatero administration had brought into line with most of Europe, but he hasn't been specific.

Rajoy himself is cast as a moderate, but rather like a Conservative government in the UK has to bend to the right on the Europe issue, so the PP has its archly conservative element when it comes to socio-religious matters. The "theocons*" of the PP, as they have been described, are likely to bring pressure on Rajoy to undo pretty much everything that Zapatero did, and the Church will be there, egging them on, content in the knowledge that the Vatican, as has historically been the case, sees Spain as the great upholder of Catholicism.

The bizarre beliefs of the Bishop of Córdoba and Cardinal Antonelli are just a part of how the Church would now like the government to be thinking. They are so preposterous that one would hope that a sensible chap such as Rajoy can see through them. The trouble is, though, that Rajoy has not always been particularly sensible. He is, after all, the politician who said that there was no evidence as to global warming because his cousin had told him there wasn't. To base a case on one person's word (who, it just so happens, is related to you) is not really a trait one would hope for in a politician.

The Archbishop, who one could somehow imagine being played by Robert de Niro, as he looks as though he has stepped out of some of de Niro's flims, represents a still powerful force in the land despite it having lost support in recent years. The Church is desperate to reclaim that power and the theocons in the PP could well enable it to.

* "Theocons" was a term first coined by the newspaper "El País".


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.