SPAIN
The Spanish episcopate has once again intervened on the new school subject introduced by the Zapatero government, “Education in Citizenship”: the Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, urged that the Catholic Church should intervene against the new subject because “the government cannot impose a model of moral education”, also because that would be in contravention of the Spanish Constitution. The cardinal then defended “the right of parents to choose the education they consider more suitable for their children”. But “by the imposition of the new subject in the curriculum, Education in Citizenship, the State – he said – is transformed into the moral educator of citizens”. The new subject will be taught in eleven autonomous communities in the new school year. According to the Archbishop of Toledo, by the imposition of the new subject the government would like to promote the idea that “the Catholic Church has been transformed into an enemy to be defeated”, a clearly “mistaken” position, whose first consequence is “the reduction of the liberties of citizens”. Cardinal Cañizares appealed to the members of the Church and to believers who feel themselves victimized by the new subject, urging them to “use all the existing means of opposing this imposition”. Cardinal Cañizares ended by underling the need to put in place new alternatives to Zapatero’s social model. The Catholic Church, he said, possesses a powerful instrument to this end: “the Catholic school”.
