Warning from the Church

"We are now aware," said Father Laurel at Barcelona's Monastery of Sarria, "that to follow the principles of the Gospel and of the Vatican Council to their utmost meaning in our country, one may come under the definition of 'unlawfulness.' But this does not frighten us. Jesus Christ was the first to go against the law--against the law of the Caesars, of the Jews and of occupying powers."

Rare words for a Catholic priest, and rarer still for a Catholic priest in Spain, where the church has always hewed closely to the gospel according to Franco. But last week throughout Barcelona, one priest after another was echoing Father Laurel's sermon in the wake of the bloody police attack on 120 black-robed priests in Barcelona early this month (TIME, May 20). The clash erupted when the priests staged a march protesting alleged police brutality in connection with anti-government student unrest at Barcelona University.

But the roots of the trouble went far deeper--to the core of the Catholic Church in Spain. Involved is a struggle between a rising new generation of social-minded priests and the elderly, hidebound church hierarchy bent on maintaining a cautious and comfortable status quo. Over the years the Spanish church--in the pay and shadow of the Franco government--has drifted out of touch with almost everything it stands for. Its religion has become one that is imposed rather than preached. "We must identify ourselves with the people, their frustrations and their fulfillment," said one young priest. "The problem is vital, not only for the church in Spain but for Spain itself. Authoritarian governments do not solve problems. They merely postpone them." And what will happen if the church continues its old course? "The lid may blow off and carry the scandal sky-high."

Last week Barcelona's aging (76) Archbishop Gregorio Modrego Casaus was doing his best to keep the lid on. Calling all publicity "harmful," he appealed to the press to forgo any further news or comment on the police attack; he also sent a bland message to his parish priests, to be read at Sunday Masses. Since the message virtually ignored the question of police brutality to clergymen, many priests added a few choice words of their own at the end. "One of our newspapers' slogans," snapped Father Narciso Saguer Vilar of San Ildefonso's Church, "is that we priests should only preach the Gospel and stay closed in our sacristies. This is simply a meaningless slogan that is picked up and repeated by enemies of the church when they fear the voice of truth and the voice of God."

As the church crisis deepened, Spain's eager young priests could count on a valuable new ally: Monsignor Marcelo Gonzalez Martin, 48, who was installed last week as coadjutor, chief troubleshooter and heir apparent of Barcelona's archbishop. Though Monsignor Gonzalez is non-Catalan in a rabidly Catalan diocese, he very quickly won over his first congregation at Barcelona's Gothic Santa Eulalia Cathedral, shunning the tiresome platitudes that his audience was so accustomed to. "I promise you," Monsignor Gonzalez said with feeling and warmth, "that I will learn Catalan to understand better and to be understood. I will love it--and you." It was a start.

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