A bit upset, on the verge of the summer vacations, a good friend sent me a message on my cell phone with one of the news of the day: "The PSOE proposes to review the agreements with the Vatican and guarantee 'religious freedom'". I had to force myself to look up the date of the news, because for a moment I felt transported back many years... And the fact is that when the socialist governments have nothing better to do, they launch two "fairground rockets" to the public opinion: the revision (suppression) of the Concordat with the Catholic Church (read, the block of Agreements of 1976-1979) and the repeal-substitution of the Organic Law of Religious Freedom of 1980.
With respect to the "concordat" (read, the agreements) it can be subject to revision when both parties deem it necessary. Whether the time has come for its revision is for the agreeing parties to determine. Has that time come? It seems that for the government it has. Or rather that the time comes whenever it has nothing better to do. As to whether the Church thinks the same way, it seems that what the Spanish hierarchy wants is to build bridges and that what has been agreed upon is complied with -that it is fully complied with-.
And with respect to a new Organic Law on Religious Freedom, what surprises me is that the socialist governments have it in for this fundamental right. Because they are not concerned about the revision of other organic laws on fundamental rights. The obsession with religious freedom is already tiring, like a kind of clericalism in reverse. Is it worth it for the government to launch itself into battle again? I think not. And not so much because it is necessary or not, because it is a requirement of non-discrimination or not, because religious freedom must yield to a right that can be extended to believers and non-believers... But because, if it opens the melon, it will have to determine once and for all the content and scope of conscientious objection. And the Constitutional Court has not even dared to do so.
It is a pity that the government's religious policy is still anchored to the last century. That it has not convened the Advisory Commission on Religious Freedom (or the main religious denominations in Spain) to coordinate efforts and wills in the struggle and overcoming (moral and economic) of the pandemic. That he continues to imagine a social actor of the first order as the enemy to be defeated. It wastes time, loses resources, loses allies. And as with fireworks, in the end it all remains just noise and little more.
