ETA terrorism condemned ” “” “

The pastoral instruction on the “Moral evaluation of terrorism in Spain, its causes and consequences” was presented on 22 November, on the conclusion of the 79th plenary Assembly of the Spanish Episcopal Conference. The document analyses terrorism and “totalitarian nationalism, source of ETA terrorism”, condemns all the aspirations to independence of the terrorist association and calls for a “conversion of hearts”. We give a brief résumé of the document below. The greatest threat to peace. The bishops recognize that in Spain “ETA terrorism has in recent years been converted into the greatest threat to peace because it cruelly attacks human life, stifles the freedom of the person and blinds awareness of the truth”. That’s why the bishops have sought “a moral evaluation of ETA terrorism that goes beyond the condemnation of terrorist acts, and tries to discover its underlying causes”. Terrorism is, according to the Spanish bishops, “the proposal to kill and destroy people and property indiscriminately, through the systematic use of terror with a totalitarian ideological intention”. It is therefore “an intrinsically perverse phenomenon, that can never be justified”. According to the bishops, ETA terrorism cannot be understood without taking into account the “totalitarian nationalism” that is its source. The nature of terrorism, they explain, is different from that of war or guerrilla war: “If the actions of war, never desirable, may be recognized in some cases as a legitimate response if proportioned to the unjust aggression suffered, terrorism can never be considered a form of legitimate defence, because it is not a proportioned response but the indiscriminate exercise of violence against a whole class of persons”. It is a “threat to everyone, because everyone is, in effect, considered ‘guilty’ and can thus be sacrificed in the name of ‘higher’ political objectives. So the equation of terrorism with war can in no way be accepted”. Terrorism, moreover, is a “totalitarian, idolatrous and gravely immoral form of nationalism”. The bishops extend their moral qualification of terrorism – an utterly negative one – also to those who don’t intervene directly in terrorist attacks but facilitate them by collaborating at the level either of information or organization. Separatism is not moral. The Spanish Episcopal Conference declares that “it is impossible to be neutral” in response to terrorism because it seeks to inculcate “systematic fear and hatred”. “The group called ETA is a terrorist association – the bishops declare – of revolutionary Marxist ideology, inserted in the political and cultural context of a certain totalitarian nationalism that pursues the independence of the Basque Country through all means”. The bishops cite the social doctrine of the Church to recall that the self-determination of peoples is a right but only in the case of “colonization or unjust invasion”, not in that of separatism. They therefore point out that “any way of championing independence and creating a new state – in the pursuit of such separatism – is not moral”. And they recognize that nationalism is legitimate only on condition that it be destined to the common good, not when “nationalism degenerates into an ideology, an exclusive political project incapable of recognizing the rights of citizens”. This type of nationalism is precisely that of ETA, which “claims to absolutize its objectives to justify its terrorist actions”. “ETA’s totalitarian nationalism considers an independent, socialist and linguistically euskaldún (Basque) people an absolute value”. This is a “totalitarian nationalism incompatible with Catholic doctrine”. The document insists on the fact that the indispensable juridical basis for co-existence in Spain remains the Constitution (1978). In response to ETA terrorism the Church proclaims anew “the need for conversion of hearts as the one way of achieving genuine peace”. Dialogue is also a value, the bishops declare, but not dialogue with ETA, “which cannot be considered a political interlocutor of a legitimate State, nor does it politically represent anyone”. Dialogue – the bishops insist – must be conducted with the various social and political institutions that want to eliminate terrorism. In this sense, the Church makes her contribution as a specific action of her pastoral mission”.