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Catholic World News News Feature

Spanish cardinal explains support for pro-family rally June 20, 2005

Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards rallied in the streets of Madrid on June 18, demonstrating their opposition to the government's plans to give same-sex unions the legal status of marriage. And Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela said that Church leaders felt compelled to join in the event, "to suppot the family organizations that called it."

The Family Forum, which organized the mass demonstration, claimed that 1.5 million people participated. The city of Madrid-- which had actively discouraged the protest-- claimed that there were only 200,000 in attendance. Neutral observers put the crowd size as somewhere around 1 million.

Cardinal Rouco Varela, explaining why the Spanish bishops had taken the unusual step of throwing their support behind a political event, told the Italian dailiy Corriere della Sera that the need to protect the legal status of the family was an issue of "notable gravity." We explained: "The family will be completely without protection" if the government carries through with its existing plans. He added that the organizers of the rally had appealed for help, and "many of them are Catholics, and deserve our support."

The Madrid prelate said that the Spanish bishops did not wish to become the main actors in the unfolding political struggle. "The protagonists are the organizations and the lay people who planned and prepared this demonstration," he reminded Corriere. He repeated that bishops took an active role only because of the "extraordinary gravity" of the sitution.

If the government does not change its plans in response to the massive public show of opposition, the cardinal said that provisions must be made for "conscientious objection" to the new policy. He added that "conscientious objection is a universal right that allows no exceptions."

Questioned as to why the Spanish bishops' conference had chosen to make an explicit public statement of support for the June 18 demonstration, and not for other public rallies such as an earlier rally against world hunger, Cardinal Rouco Varela said that the distinction flowed from "the nature of the problem and the need for a response." The bishops are already engaged in the fight against famine, he said, through charitable agencies such as Caritas. And no proposed governmental action would endanger that charitable work, as the proposed change in marriage law would endanger the family. "If a law prohibited or suppressed aid to the Third World," he said, "you can be sure that we would demonstrate against it."