Surviving History, Surviving Irrelevance
Ah, the Iberian Peninsula, that hot and sunny Mediterranean where exotic species of flora and fauna abound. Where, also, Jews had a traditional home as elsewhere throughout the world in the Diaspora. Not entirely a friendly atmosphere to be sure, where Sephardic Jews found refuge and were tolerated, to a degree. How does a thousand years of Jewish culture and tradition in Spain sound? That much of that time was spent under Muslim rule of semi-tolerance speaks volumes about the position the Catholic Church took post re-conquest. The Catholic Church was no friend to its Spanish-Jewish community. The Catholic Church bred and encouraged not only greater intolerance of any religion but Christianity but the dreaded Inquisition, and its Master of Torture, Torquemada, (himself reputed to be of Jewish origin; a highly successful converso).Jews were, in Spain and Portugal, encouraged to convert to Christianity. There were such encouragements as mass slaughters, the burning of Talmuds, unspeakable torture of young and old, and under the tender solicitations of the Inquisitor General's purpose, death to any and all who would not agree to the reasonableness of suggestions of full conversion to Christianity. The choice was, after all, fairly simple: utter rejection of Judaism or certain death. Under the majestic rein of Their Excellencies, Ferdinand and Isabella, Jews converted in huge numbers to Christianity, becoming marranos: "swine". These marranos gave the outward appearance of being good Christians, while stealthily in the privacy of secret recesses retaining their Judaic traditions.
Nothing was ever quite enough, and in 1492 their majesties expelled the Jewish community from Spain. They sought refuge nearby, in Portugal, until that country too obeyed the edicts of the Roman Catholic Church and they were expelled from Portugal as well, to scatter and find refuge elsewhere, notably in Holland, where the great Baruch Spinoza centuries later gave his great gifts of philosophical reasoning to the world. Other Jews, albeit not perhaps in great numbers, found passage with Cristobal Columbo on his great mission to find the New World - 1492 was, after all, a fateful year.
Now, what do we read in the news? Roman Catholic Spain is fading into oblivion. Laws on abortion, in-vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research and euthenasia, all anathema to the Roman Catholic Church have been happily loosened. The government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has announced an end to mandatory Catholic education in public schools - coincident with the introduction of classes in Islam and Judaism. And the history of both within Spain, one would assume.
Even the hot issues of sexual choices, same-sex unions and the baptism of children from common-law relationships have been met head on and passed into general acceptance. There is, understandably, great tension between the Spanish government and the Vatican. The Vatican sees the upheaval in Catholicism within Spain as being the thin edge of the wedge to the secularization of Europe in general. The principal battleground for the Vatican within Europe to save the Church's traditional role within European society.
Any society that practises a low-key and permissive approach on abortion, contraception and premarital sex is clearly not practising "traditional family values", and as such is a direct threat to the primacy of the Vatican in matters religious. But Spaniards no longer feel compelled to follow Vatican directives on the mores of their social lifestyles; they reject the Catholic Church which clearly does not recognize nor represent all elements within Spanish society. The Catholic Church has become irrelevant to the daily lives of Europeans in general, Spain in particular.
How history resonates; how human priorities, values and events overtake the future. How present imperatives and value judgements transcend a divisive institute whose stated purpose was the celebration of God, while suborning His ingathering intent and dispatching His creatures to eternity.
Secular humanism has much to teach mankind; religion has failed miserably throughout the historical record and yet continues to set faction upon faction, religion against religion, mankind against self.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 10, 2006
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