Spain is no longer a de facto Catholic country, the nation’s leading Catholic prelate has stated, with numbers of Catholics falling and the hierarchy also mired in a controversy to sell off Church assets.
“The time has passed, settled for centuries, when we said: I’m Catholic because I was born in Spain,” said Archbishop Luis Argüello last week. The Archbishop of Valladolid was speaking at the recent plenary assembly of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Spain (CEE) in his capacity as president of the CEE.
Commenting on the dramatic loss of practice of the Catholic faith in the country, Argüello said that it “in principle, is not bad news, as it is making us aware of the need not to take conversion for granted, nor, even less so, Christian initiation.”
“It is a major challenge, both quantitatively and qualitatively, when it comes to making the first proclamation and Christian initiation,” he warned, adding that the crisis of loss of faith “requires discernment on our part. How many baptismal fonts are we capable of maintaining in the diocese? How many tables that summon us to the Eucharist on Sunday?”
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