Madrid, Spain, Jan 9, 2008 / 15:34 pm
A heated debate is taking place in Spain over the meaning of the family. In the wake of a massive pro-family march on December 30 in Madrid, the secretary of the Socialist Party (PSOE), Jose Blanco, has raised the debate’s temperature by asking Pope Benedict XVI to explain to him “just what exactly is the Christian family” and by recommending that “some members” of the Catholic Church “re-read the gospel.”
“As a Christian, I would like the Pope to explain to me just exactly what is the Christian family; maybe by traditional family he means that the woman just stays at home and does housework,” he told Antena 3 TV.
Blanco also called on “some members” of the Church hierarchy to “re-read the gospel,” since in his judgment one cannot “nourish inequality and injustice in the morning, and resolve them by the praying the rosary in the afternoon.”
Some Spanish bishops need to “evolve” in the same way that “Spanish and world society has evolved” in the recognition of rights for greater equality.