The CS Monitor has a piece out today about the role of religion in Europe vis a vis its role in America. Most of what’s said isn’t really news if you’ve been paying attention, but it’s still worth a read. Here’s a tidbit:
Luis Lopez Guerra, the Spanish government’s point man in its campaign to wrest from Catholic influence social legislation on questions such as abortion, divorce, and gay marriage, sees things differently.
He wonders why, in a country where less than half the population ever goes to church, he should have found a Bible and a crucifix on his desk, along with the Constitution, when he was sworn in as undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice a year ago.
The Spanish government’s plans to legalize gay marriage this spring, to liberalize divorce and abortion laws, and to permit stem-cell research, do not represent an attempt to impose an atheist state religion, he insists. Rather, he says, they “extend civil rights and make the law independent of Catholic dogma.”
*sigh* I really wish I had been more interested in learning to speak, rather than to sing, a second language when I was younger. Europe’s looking better and better as the years go by.