Education for Citizenship seeks to dominate emotions in order to control people, Spanish cardinal warns

Toledo, Spain, Feb 1, 2008 / 15:43 pm

In an interview with Libertad Digital Television, the Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, said the purpose of the controversial Socialist propaganda course “Education for Citizenship,” is to take control of the way an entire generation of students think by controlling their affections.

“To conquer the affections is to dominate the nucleus of the person in order to destroy him,” the cardinal said during a discussion with philosopher Gabriel Albiac.  The interview has become the video with the most views in the category of education on YouTube.

Cardinal Cañizares stressed that some of the ideologies presented in the course, “such as the ideology of gender, tend to destroy the truth about man.”  He said the state is using the course in an attempt to “form the moral consciences of all citizens and impose one way of thinking—its own.”

The cardinal noted that Spain’s constitution recognizes parents’ “right to choose the kind of moral and religious formation they want for their children.  And 80% of Spaniards have requested, at least for primary school, Catholic moral and religious formation.”

“The application of Education for Citizenship is a question of power for the indoctrinating State,” he asserted, because in the control of the affections and moral ideas “lies the power, the control over citizens, the control of the will and of morals.”