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07/07/2004:

"Spain "being taken back to Moorish times""

by Giles Tremlett The Guardian UK
 Archbishop attacks new government over religion

Spain's leading archbishop, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco, yesterday denounced the new socialist government, saying its policies were taking the country back to medieval times, when Muslim invaders swept across the Straits of Gibraltar.

His comments came after the government's decision to cancel the reintroduction of compulsory religious classes and to find ways of financing other faiths, including Islam, with public money.

"Some people wish to place us in the year 711," Cardinal Rouco said. "It seems as if we are meant to wipe ourselves out of history."

The Catholic church is coming to terms with a sudden and dramatic dwindling of its power following the socialists' victory, in March, over the conservative, pro-Catholic People's party of the former prime minister José María Aznar. Mr Aznar's government had planned to make religion a compulsory exam subject.

But the socialists have already announced that the law reintroducing compulsory religion lessons, a feature of the Franco dictatorship, will be scrapped.full article

Well bummer. 'Back to Moorish times,' when Christianity, Judaism, and Islam lived and thrived in mutual tolerance under MUSLIM rule. I guess the poor guy is nostaligic for the auto da fe of the Inquisition, and those grand old days of Franco. It is really stunning how irrelevant and just silly the Catholic Church is these days.