If anything reveals the exhaustion of the Sanchist political project, it is the constant recourse to outdated political jokers to pass off the desire to perpetuate oneself in power as heroic resistance.
After the extreme right, the “rich”, the “powerful” and Franco, Pedro Sánchez’s new imaginary enemy seems to be the Episcopal Conference.
“The era when bishops intervened in politics ended with the advent of democracy in this country,” Sánchez said this Sunday during a campaign event in Cáceres.
This rhetoric with populist connotations is laughable in a context where the Catholic Church is far from preserving the status of de facto power that it held during the era of national Catholicism.
If Sánchez is now attacking the bishops, it is because the president of the Episcopal Conference dared to express, in an interview this Sunday, his opinion that in the face of the “blockade” of legislative action, his request for “a question of confidence, a motion of censure or to give voice to citizens” is ratified.
Luis Arguello He made these statements in a personal capacity, not even as president of the Episcopal Conference. However, Felix Bolanos considered these “partisan statements” serious enough to respond officially by letter to Argüello.
He accused him of having violated “the political neutrality of the Church” for speaking out “in favor of the end of the current government”, and urged him to act with respect for democracy” and the Executive.
Not without adding that from Argüello’s statements “he seems to infer that he would prefer that his interlocutor” be “a right-wing and far-right government”.
It is ironic that the government is trying to link the Episcopal Conference to the far right.
Because if Argüello asked to unblock the political situation, it is not due to an ideological preference, but rather to the inability to advance (in the absence of a parliamentary majority and budgets) the popular legislative initiative on the regularization of immigrants.
Furthermore: under Argüello’s mandate, The Episcopal Conference distinguished itself by discussing precisely with Vox for his dehumanizing anti-immigration speech.
For the bishops or anyone else to say so, confirming an empirical situation of political paralysis and invoking the political mechanisms provided in the supreme law to undo it, does not constitute contempt for the Constitution or national sovereignty.
If Sánchez presents them like this, it is because he is trying to qualify as insurrectionary declarations which are only transversal expressions of a national clamor about the non-viability of his government. In fact, this is why he is resisting calling elections.
In reality, Moncloa is not so much concerned with the ecclesial neutrality due to “a non-confessional State” as with silencing criticism of its bad practices, by disavowing them because of their origin.
That the who counts more than the what is demonstrated by the fact that the Sánchez government and all the official media have declared and continue to declare a convict innocent in a final sentence such as Álvaro Garcia Ortizwhile disregarding the presumption of innocence, accusing the bishop emeritus of Cádiz who faces accusations of sexual abuse.
Sánchez’s funnel law is noisy: He criticizes the bishops for giving their opinion on government decisions, while he, as head of the Executive, questions and disqualifies the decisions of the judiciary.
Sánchez also extended the scope of his polarizing strategy to the Spanish Church, thus displaying an almost Caesaropapist conception of political power.
As if it were an accidental confession, Maria Jesus Montero He asked Argüello to “step back” on her criticism of the government “as a woman of the progressive Church.” And, in fact, it would seem that the last faithful of Sanchismo, even in this agony of corruption and scandals, They show signs of aversion to heterodoxy bordering on sectarianism.
About The Author
