Madrid, Spain, Feb 6, 2008 / 13:22 pm
The secretary of Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE), Jose Blanco, said this week the bishops’ voting guide encouraging Catholics not to vote for policies that go against Church teachings will not go unanswered after the general elections to be held on March 9.
“The relations between the Catholic hierarchy and the government will not be the same after March 9,” Blanco said, threatening that the government will “go from words to deeds” and promising that the legislature would take “definitive steps” to eliminate the economic aid the Church receives in Spain.
The leader of the Popular Party in Catalonia, Daniel Sirera, called Blanco’s statements “intolerable blackmail.” “It’s unbelievable that the Church is threatened like this by saying it will not receive aid only because it does not share the opinion of the government,” he said, calling Blanco’s attitude “inappropriate for a democratic regime.”
Sirera slammed the criminalization of “those who do not think like the government,” and he noted that even those “who do not agree with the Church’s statement do not share” the reaction of the PSOE.