Socialist politician says Spanish bishop should be 'muzzled'

Madrid, Spain, Jan 7, 2013 / 12:09 pm

A socialist government official in Andalusia, Spain, called for a local Catholic bishop to be "muzzled" for arguing that men and women are both different and complementary.

Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Cordoba should be silenced for leveling attacks against "real and effective equality between men and women," charged Miguel Angel Vazquez, a member of the Socialist Party and spokesman for the Andalusian provincial government.

In a Jan. 4 post on his personal blog, Vazquez labeled Bishop Fernandez "a true representative of religious fanaticism" and said that the prelate provokes "controversies that are at odds with the individual and collective rights embodied in the constitution."

Calling the bishop's defense of marriage and the family "backwards," Vazquez said that he would "rather burn in hell (if it exists) than renounce equality."

In a recent pastoral letter, Bishop Fernandez critiqued sexual philosophies that hold the differences between men and women to be a social construct rather than a biological reality.

Such ideology, displayed in radical feminism and the push for universal acceptance of homosexual behavior, "destroys the family and breaks every tie man has with God through his own nature," he warned.

"A series of educational, medical and academic programs exist at the service of this ideology in an attempt to force it upon everyone, causing tremendous harm to the consciences of children, teens and young people," the bishop said.

The Catholic Church draws the ire of those who promote such sexual philosophies, Bishop Fernandez acknowledged, because it is "emphatically opposed" to this view of human sexuality, "which breaks with God and with nature itself as God has designed it."

"Herod is still alive and is not only killing the innocent in the womb but also trying to instill this ideology in the minds of our children, teens and young people" by undermining the family and its intrinsic importance, he added. 

"The future of humanity is in the family, in the family that fulfils God's plan," the bishop stressed.