A SECULAR, NOT A CHURCH:

The Church in Spain Is Sick, but It’s not Zapatero’s Fault: The sickness is the loss of faith among the people, and the poor instructors are above all the progressive theologians. The accusation comes from the Spanish bishops. In a document coordinated with Rome, as a model for other episcopates (Sandro Magister, July 28, 2006, Chiesa)

The document is in the form of a “pastoral instruction,” and is entitled “Theology and secularization in Spain, forty years after the end of Vatican Council II.” It is the outcome of three years of work, and was prepared by the commission for the doctrine of the faith of the Spanish bishops’ conference. But then it was examined by all of the bishops, who in two voting sessions, in November and then in March of this year, approved it by a margin of over two thirds. The bishops most active in promoting the document included the two most “Ratzingerian” cardinals of Spain, Antonio Cañizares Lovera, of Toledo, and Antonio María Rouco Varela, of Madrid, together with one of the latter’s auxiliary bishops, Eugenio Romero Pose, president of the doctrinal commission.

What prompted the instruction, and what are its aims? In an interview with “Il Regno,” Romero Pose said that with this document the Spanish bishops intend to indicate “both the sickness and the cure.”

The sickness is “the secularization within the Church”: a widespread loss of faith caused in part by “theological propositions that have in common a deformed presentation of the mystery of Christ.”

The cure is precisely that of restoring life to the profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), in the four areas where it is most seriously undermined today:

– the interpretation of Scripture,
– Jesus Christ as the only savior of all men,
– the Church as the Body of Christ,
– moral life.

The instruction is organized under these four main headings. In each section, the document first presents the features of correct Christological doctrine, and then denounces the theologies that deform it.

It denounces the theologies, not the theologians. The instruction does not target particular authors, but limits itself to denouncing erroneous tendencies. [...]

In Spain, the instruction could be the basis for the Church’s return to doctrinal order.