“The Church is considered a danger for democracy”, observed Archbishop FERNANDO SEBASTIÁN AGUILAR of Pamplona, vice-president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference. Yet, in a letter to the faithful on democracy, he repudiates the assumption that “Catholicism and democracy are incompatible”. “A reactionary movement he writes in his letter continues to provide arguments to individuals and institutions to consider the Church and Catholics as a danger for a really democratic society”. “Democratic principles were born from Christianity”, the archbishop points out: principles such as “equality and human rights”. “The Church understands she can and must live in the space of religious freedom, without privileges or discrimination”, he adds. At the time of the political transition [from Franco’s regime to democracy], “the Spanish people recalls Aguilar adopted a form of non-confessional State different from the secular French State. We thought anticlericalism has vanished, but it seems we were wrong”.
