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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