The new archbishop of Tarazona, Monsignor Demetrio Fernàndez Gonzàlez, has asked the priests of his diocese to return to dressing formally as priests (dog-collar and all), “a habit that has by now been lost in Spain, with few exceptions”. “How I would like to see you all dressed as priests in an unmistakeable manner”, said Fernàndez Gonzàlez. According to the bishop, “people are happy when they able easily to identify the priest and the consecrated person”. In his view society “is asking us loudly and clearly” to dress in the right way. The bishop of Tarazona, an expert in christology, is convinced that “the simple people of our communities want to see in their priest a man of God, the man who administers the Word and the sacraments, who acts in the name of Christ, with the power and authority of Christ. The ‘buddy’ priest, still more the rebel or revolutionary priest, has gone out of fashion”. He also thinks that the decline in vocations is connected with this fact: “Only if we are priests through and through can we arouse the desire to be one among children and young people”. According to him, it is priests themselves who have “cancelled every trace of God in themselves by dissimulating our role and not dressing as priests”. This trend has not even spared women religious, who have done the same, and he added: “we lament a secularised society, and yet it is we ourselves who have been the first to eliminate the signs that distinguish us, signs of God for man in our time”. Meanwhile in Spain the bishops, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, have published a message in which they re-affirm, “human life is sacred and inviolable”. “We have all been embryos they write : the embryo is not a mere assemblage of living cells, but the first stage of the existence of a human being”. While recognising that “science has made great progress during the ten years that have elapsed since the publication of the encyclical Evangelium Vitae”, “we cannot forget that these advances are also powerful means to be used at the service of man, taking ethical principles into account”. The Spanish bishops appeal to scientists, healthcare professionals and journalists to “make their presence felt in the mass media to ensure that the voice of the Gospel of life be heard in them”.
