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Zapatero attends his first Evangelical event....in the USA

MADRID, - February 13, 2010

Prime Minister Zapatero participated for the first time in an official Protestant event this week, when he was asked to give a three-minute contribution at an American National Prayer Breakfast. The mini-talk had to include a Bible reading.

Zapatero was in Washington, USA, in his role as President of the European Union, which rotates between member states.

The Prayer Breakfasts are attended by more than 3,500 invited guests, including politicians, diplomats and church leaders. Accompanying the Spanish Prime Minister was Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, spokesman for CiU and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Parliamentary Committee. Traditionally, two people speak at the Breakfasts: the American President, and a guest whose identity is kept secret till the last moment. Last year´s ´key speaker´ was Tony Blair, and on previous occasions speakers have included Mother Teresa, Bono and the King of Jordan. Each speaker is also expected to read a portion of the Bible during their talk.

Although details were not given beforehand, it was expected that Zapatero would speak about his ideas of tolerance and coexistence between those of different faiths, a subject not without resonance for Christians in Spain, many of whom feel the government is pursuing an aggressive, secularist agenda. He was also likely to say something about helping poorer nations. Last year Blair criticised both religious extremism and aggressive secularism.

The Prayer Breakfasts date back to the great depression of the 1930s. Many people lost their jobs and poverty spread, so Christian leaders in the city of Seattle decided to organise breakfasts where apart from feeding them, they could talk to them about God. Soon these breakfasts spread across the country and in 1953, President Eisenhower asked a group of senators to join him in a prayer breakfast. Since then, it has become a regular event, with Ronald Reagan making it annual in the 1980s. The Washington Hilton has been the location for this event since 1980 and the Breakfasts normally include a Bible reading and prayers for the family and for peace. Other nations such as Great Britain and Canada have similar events.

In the USA, the breakfasts are organised by a Christian group, The Fellowship Foundation, in coordination with the American Congress and the White House. Although the National Prayer Breakfast started as just that, a breakfast, currently it involves a whole week of activities around it where there are up to 3,500 guests from over one hundred different countries.

In Spain, Zapatero has never been to any of the events organised by Evangelicals and he has never offered an official invitation to a Protestant representative.

The most recent occasion which caused an intense public debate on relations between the government and religious minorities was after the plane crash at Madrid Airport, an accident in which at least one Evangelical was killed. The Spanish Evangelical Alliance criticised the fact that they held a Catholic State funeral even for the victims who were not Catholics. Zapatero was present at the funeral, held in (the Catholic) Almudena Cathedral though as “compensation” the Justice Minister attended a memorial service for the Evangelical victim at a Baptist Church in Madrid. That itself was a first.

Zapatero expressed surprise when a journalist asked why he (a very well-known defendant of secularism) was going to go to this event. Zapatero did not want to
“interpret” the invitation to this act: “It´s the ones who´ve made the invitation who have to explain it, and I am certainly not going to put myself in their shoes (and try and interpret it).”

Although both Zapatero and Obama will be present at the Breakfast and will have the chance to talk to each other, a formal meeting is not planned. Their next meeting will be the summit between the USA and the European Union, scheduled for May in Madrid. Both leaders had their first formal encounter in Prague on April 4th, 2009. After the cold bilateral relationships existing when George W. Bush was the President of the USA, the change in this diplomatic relationship was sealed when Obama said, referring to Zapatero:
“I am glad that I can call him friend”.

Source: EFE, a3Tv, E. Press, COPE, Europa Press, Religión Digital / ProtestanteDigital


Catholicism in Catalonia in freefall

MADRID, - February 6, 2010

Jordi Serrano, vice-chancellor of the Universitat Progressista d´Estiu in Catalonia, published the book «¿Catalunya, has dejado de ser católica?» (Catalonia, have you stopped being Catholic?), where he presents facts and figures that reveal the decline of the Catholic Church in Catalonia. Non-believers represent 29% and non-practising Catholics 48% of the population. At this rate, Catholics will be a trifling minority within 20 years.

In 1970, Catalonian citizens claiming to be non-believers were less than 2%. Today, they are a staggering 29.1% of the population. In 1980, practising Catholics were 33.8%, but today they hardly reach 18.7%, which means a 15% decrease in a short period of time.
«I was astonished by this fast transition to a post-Catholic Catalonia» says the author. The conclusion after comparing the autonomous regions of Spain is that Catalonia is the most secular, along with the Basque Country and the Balearic Islands. «But the process is similar everywhere and has evolved very rapidly, although maybe other regions are 10 or 15 years behind Catalonia», states Serrano.

There are more figures supporting this change. Civil marriage in Catalonia has gone from 9.7% in 1983 to 62.8% in 2006. The decrease in religious practice and in the number of seminary students, or the reduction in the number of pupils studying Religion as an optional subject at school, are other elements that corroborate the main theory.

All this information leads Jordi Serrano to conclude that
«Catalonia has stopped being Catholic», and that it has done so «at an impressive pace». The author says that the power that the Catalan and the Spanish Catholic church still have is more a hangover from the past than a reflection of sociological reality.

YOUNG PEOPLE DON´T GO TO MASS
According to Jordi Serrano,
«this spectacular generational change reflected in the religious sphere has no precedents in any other field related to values or attitudes». A three-year-old survey among Catalans aged between 18 and 24 showed that 87% never went to mass, and less than 4% did so on a weekly basis.

A 2002 survey from the Observatori Català de la Joventut (Catalan Youth Observatory) highlights the fact that young people distrust the Catholic Church. Only 17.8% of people between 18 and 29 claimed to be
«very or quite» confident in the Church. In a list of 17 institutions, the Church occupied last place, behind the Armed Forces.

An analysis based on gender shows that religiosity is still higher among women. The percentage of Catholic women in Catalonia who attend church is 15% above men´s (and in Spain, this difference goes up to 21%). Nevertheless, this difference tends to disappear in young people. 75% of Catalan boys claim to be non-religious or atheistic, while 67% of girls say the same.

OTHER CONFESSIONS GROW
However, other confessions are growing, although they are not the subject of this study. MP Mohammed Chaib, the leader of Ibn Batuta, explains that
«the crisis has caused an increase of religiosity among Muslims. Maybe this is because the mosque is a social place, and a meeting point where people gather and talk».

This is not the only confession whose practice has increased, always encouraged by immigration. Eastern European immigrants have fuelled the growth of the Orthodox Church. Some Orthodox priests have even reached isolated agreements with Catholic churches to hold their services there. The Evangelical church has also grown, thanks to Latin Americans.

But there are no precise data of these phenomena. Chaib thinks that, instead of changing the religious scenario, immigration
«has made clear that there are more confessions, and this is something that can help us to create a framework that is more neutral in religious affairs and more respectful towards different beliefs».

Source: ReL, La Vanguardia / ACPress.net


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