The Spanish Catholic Church will deny communion to members of parliament who have voted in favour of a bill to make abortion more readily available, the spokesman of Spain’s Bishops’ Conference said on Friday.

“This is a warning to Catholics, that they can’t vote in favour of this and that they won’t be able to receive communion unless they ask forgiveness,” Rev. Juan Antonio Martinez Camino told a news conference in Madrid. “They are in an objective state of sin.”

The government-sponsored bill, which passed the first of a series of votes in parliament on Thursday, will allow abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy and, in cases of extreme foetal deformity, at any time in the pregnancy. The bill will also allow girls to obtain abortions from the age of 16 without parental consent, a clause that has generated dissent even within the governing Socialist Party.

In the United States, Congressman Patrick Kennedy has said his bishop has slapped a communion ban on him for his support for abortion rights.

Read our full story from Madrid here. See also Reuters in Spanish –Votar a favor del aborto es pecado, según los obispos.

(Photo: Rev. Juan Antonio Martínez Camino, 18 June 2009/Sergio Pérez)

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In a country like Spain, where a large majority still identify themselves as at least more-or-less Catholic, you’d think the government would shy away from taking on the Roman Catholic Church.  In fact, there are probably few things Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero likes better than a brawl with the bishops.

Lingering anti-clerical sentiment in sectors of Zapatero’s Socialist Party, particularly on its left-most fringes, means the PM has few more effective tools for rallying his voters than the sight of a protest march led by priests and nuns.

(Photo: Prime Minister Zapatero, 5 June 2009/Juan Medina)

At a time when unemployment is closing in on 20 percent, Zapatero knows matters economic are not going to provide anything to cheer his supporters. So there was little surprise when the government rolled out a bill to liberalise abortion laws, including a provision to allow 16 year olds to abort without parental consent, in time for the European elections. At present, Spanish law allows abortion only in certain circumstances, such as if the birth poses a psychogical risk to the mother, although in practice it is easily available.

Just in case the bill didn’t drive the Church into a sufficient paroxysm of rage, the government’s Equality Minister Bibiana Aido, defended the proposal to allow legal minors to seek terminations without their parents’ knowledge by comparing the procedure to breast-enlargement surgery. So, last Friday it must have seemed like mission accomplished to the Socialists when Spain’s bishops duly rebuked them for undermining the country’s moral fabric (see Spanish text of their statement here).

Only one thing is now missing for the manoeuvre to attain political perfection, i.e. to lure the main opposition Popular Party, traditionally allied to the Church, into aligning itself with the religious authorities.  From there, thanks to the historical closeness of the Church to the former dictator Francisco Franco, it is but a short rhetorical jump for the Socialists to accuse the PP of being on the extreme right and out of touch.

From a political point of view, it looks like a neat way of keeping your voters amused while you wait for 150 billion euros in extraordinary public spending to revive the economy. And using the strategy of exploiting Spain’s deep divides on social issues has already been very profitable to Zapatero over the past few years, becoming still more important as it has allowed him to steal voters from the fading force of Izquierda Unida, the United Left coalition located to the left of the Socialists.

But this time, the abortion battle looks like it is in danger of proving a miscalculation.  The Popular Party is doing its best not to fall into the prime minister’s trap, claiming that its opposition to the law has nothing to do with the position of the Church. Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy now bases his strategy on targetting moderate centrist voters and would sprint across across a busy motorway to avoid getting drawn into any heated debate on social issues.

(Photo: Spanish nun at Madrid anti-abortion rally, 29 March 2009/Sergio Perez)

Even more damagingly, Socialists don’t seem to like the law either, with one poll showing 56 percent of Socialist voters against allowing 16 year old girls to abort without parental consent.

Spain’s main left-wing daily El Pais, which has little love for the Popular Party, recently had an interesting take on how Zapatero’s apparent dependence on pleasing his most socially liberal voters might backfire on him. El Pais quoted a senior member of the PP, who gave thanks for Zapatero: “If he turned towards the centre, the PP wouldn’t know how to respond. But he won’t …. He’s making it easy for us, because he’s always doing things that the middle classes, the moderate people, don’t like.”

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author, Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, is Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and author of the novel A Delightful Compendium of Consolation.

(Photo: Muslim sheikh and Jewish rabbi address interfaith meeting in Brussels, 4 Jan 2005/Thierry Roge)

By Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky

Jewish-Muslim engagement in an international context is inevitably more than interreligious dialogue. Muslim representatives, for the most part, do not come from countries that have a separation of mosque and state. Practically speaking, these dialogues are a form of second-tier diplomacy. In the United States, this is made apparent by fact the State Department sponsors Muslim visitors through its Foreign Leadership Visitor Program.

Under the aegis of the State Department, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS, where I teach) has welcomed imams from Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Imam Shamsi Ali of the 96^th Street Mosque in New York has brought the heads of the Indonesian Muslim community to visit JTS. I have been privileged to visit Muslim colleagues in Cairo (2004), in Doha (2005) and Madrid (2008), the latter for the first Saudi Arabian interreligious dialogue, sponsored by King Abdullah and hosted by Spain’s King Juan Carlos.

As a representative of Judaism at these dialogues, I am often called upon to represent and/or defend the state of Israel. It has been my personal practice as a rabbi participating in such international dialogues to contact the Israeli Foreign Ministry either directly or indirectly in advance of my participation, so that I have the opportunity to hear their views on these conferences (which may not have invited any Israeli representatives). This sometimes leads me to feeling conflicted personally, when our views may diverge.

(Photo: Rabbi Visotzky and King Abdullah in Madrid, July 2009)

Jews reacted to September 11^th and its aftermath in complicated ways. I recall giving a public address in lower Manhattan on the first anniversary of the tragedy in which I suggested “we all live in Jerusalem now.” To me, the horror America experienced echoed the terror Israelis know daily. As a Jewish American, it is important to me to represent and advance Israel. On the other hand, my own dismay at the Israeli government’s overreaction in Gaza earlier this year and my personal disapproval of the impediments that the “settler movement” has created to a two-state solution have been a part of what pushes me to participate in international Jewish-Muslim dialogue. I do so in order to help, in whatever small way I am able, to move Israel and the Palestinians toward a mutually agreeable accord. I am, however, not naïve about the apparent intractability of the problem and the chasm between the narratives on each side in the dispute.

I also believe there is a genuine Jewish imperative for dialogue with our Muslim colleagues. From a religious perspective, we share much in common. For the past five years, I have represented the JTS in a variety of dialogue and social-action projects with the Muslim community in the U.S. as well as abroad. Locally, we joined with members of New York City’s 96^th Street Mosque for dialogue, exchanged mosque and synagogue visits and worked side-by-side in a soup kitchen run by a local Presbyterian Church.

Nationally, JTS has joined with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on a number of projects, including matching Conservative synagogues with local mosques for dialogue. We have also surveyed the 1,200 Conservative Rabbis in the United States both to see what Jewish-Muslim projects they are engaged in and to encourage other congregations to participate.

(Photo: New York Islamic Cultural Center, 23 April 2008/Tom Heneghan)

Personally, as an American who disagrees with Bush-era policies, I want to demonstrate that there are U.S. citizens who are respectful of and eager to dialogue with Islam, despite that administration’s Manichaean world-view. One hopes that the more open face of the Obama administration toward the Muslim world is a harbinger for more productive dialogue and encounter.

Of late, there has been a marked increase on the part of Muslim, particularly Arab Muslim moderate countries, for interreligious engagement. This can be attributed to the horrific events of September 11^th, to a reaction to the Bush declarations against so-called “Islamo-fascism” and the perceived “clash of civilizations,” and as a response to Islamic extremism. It may also be a reaction to the influences of radical Islamic elements in Iran. But we must recognize that the move toward interreligious dialogue is also a genuine Islamic sentiment toward engagement with the “other,” particularly “religions of the Book.”

In the end, it is incumbent upon Islam to deal with its violent religious radicals, much as it is equally incumbent upon Judaism to deal with its violent religious radicals. For those of us who consider ourselves moderates or progressives, it is a religious obligation to continue the Jewish-Muslim engagement on the local, national, and international levels.

(For a fuller account of the JTS participation in Jewish-Muslim engagement, see the inaugural issue of The Journal of InterReligious Dialogue, www.irdialogue.org )

Did Rick Warren’s Saddleback Civil Forum with John McCain and Barack Obama violate the separation of church and state? Was it right for a pastor to ask U.S. presidential candidates about their belief in Jesus Christ or their worst moral failures? Will the success of the Saddleback Civil Forum mean that major televised interviews or debates about faith will become a regular fixture in American political campaigns?

I didn’t think questions like this got enough of an airing in U.S. media before Saturday’s event. The fact that Warren made it such an interesting evening made me think the fundamental question — should there be a televised “faith quiz” at all? — would be crowded out of the public debate. The initial reactions angled on the winner/loser question or the “cone of silence” issue seemed to bear this out. But some commentators and blogs are now zeroing in on the deeper question.

In the New York Times, columnist Willian Kristol (Showdown at Saddleback) applauded the event and said: “Rick Warren should moderate one of the fall presidential debates.” That says a lot about the quality of the usual televised debates but little about the church-state question. Ruth Ann Dailey’s op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette put her answer about the church-state question right in the headline: At Saddleback, the wall stands firm.

On the other side, Kathleen Parker wrote in the Chicago Tribune that Candidates’ church chat erodes U.S. principles. DeWayne Wickham of USA Today wrote the Next president need not be the vicar of Saddleback.

Hat tip to the Washington Post On Faith blog for probably the most comprehensive selection of views for, against and in the middle. This is not a simple question and it was good to see so many thoughtful responses.

As religion editor, I naturally have a strong professional interest in seeing religion discussed in public. I also think a candidate’s religious views are relevant when they clearly shape his or her political stands. So I’m not against asking such questions in principle. But a session like the Saddleback Civil Forum raises some fundamental questions about the role of religion in politics and where lines between the two should be drawn. There is no hard and fast rule. Anyone who reads religion news from around the world regularly, though, has surely seen enough cases of politics interfering too much in religion or religion interfering too much in politics to take the issue of church-state relations lightly. Just saying “it can’t happen here” isn’t good enough.

Since television loves to repeat a successful formula, it’s a good bet we’ll see more of these sessions in campaigns to come. With that in mind, here are a few questions I hope to see debated before the next “God quiz” rolls around:

• Has this “soft” kind of interview created a “soft” religious litmus test? One that does not require a certain religious belief, but some religious belief, to pass?
• Is there a border line between appropriate and inappropriate questions? Are some questions too prying, something only for a private session with a spiritual advisor?
• If there is going to be one televised faith “showdown,” should it should be conducted by only one interviewer from a specific faith tradition? Does that skew the questions to the kinds of questions that faith tradition asks, and favour answers that faith tradition gives? Does it give the impression that questions that are high priority for that tradition — in this case, evangelical — are the only faith questions out there?
• What about Jews, Muslims and others, even other Christian denominations? Are they overlooked in this process? Would a mixed panel of interviewers be more inclusive?
• What about atheists and voters who believe such events violate the separation of church and state? Will they have a televised forum?

P.S. Since we take a world-wide view of religion news, I did a quick search for comments on the event in some non-U.S. media. It’s striking how many chose the term “confession” to describe the event.

U.S. religious forum would not have happened here - The separation of church and state is more notional than real in the U.S. (Montreal Gazette, Canada)

Obama&McCain:Confession in front of puritans (Journal du Dimanche, France)

McCain and Obama confess their sins (Elsevier, Netherlands)

Campaign launched for religious voters – Obama and McCain “confessed” to the pastor of the nation (DieStandard.at, Austria)

McCain trumps Obama at faith summit (Spiegel Online, Germany)

“Television Confessional” (Financial Times Deutschland, Germany)

Religion test for Obama and McCain - an unusual event in the U.S. campaign (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland)

Obama and McCain proceed to the media confessional (Libération, France)

Obama and McCain reveal their dark sides on stage (La Stampa, Italy)

Confession road to the White House (El Periódico de Catalunya, Spain)

“Do Catholic countries have better football players?”

I was surprised to see this headline on the Austrian Catholic website kath.net today… and even more surprised to see they seemed to mean it seriously.

“A look at the participants in the final round of the European football championship in Switzerland and Austria suggests this,” kath.net writes in a report from Vienna. “In seven of the 16 participating countries, Catholics are clearly in the majority: Poland (95 percent of the population), Spain (92 percent), Italy (90 percent), Portugal (90 percent), Croatia (77 percent), Austria (69 percent ) and France (51 percent). Only one Protestant stronghold confronts them, Sweden. Of the 8.8 million inhabitants of the northern European country, 80 percent are Lutherans.”

There’s no hint of analysis of why this should be relevant, or mention of the personal faith — or lack thereof — of the players on these national teams. This purely statistical view (sports fans love stats, don’t they?) goes on to point out which participating countries have large numbers of both Catholics and Protestants (Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands).

The article notes that only 32 percent of all Czechs call themselves Christians, making the Czech Republic the most “de-churched” participating country, i.e. the country where religion has retreated the most. Even there, though, the Catholics make up the largest group among the believers (26.5 percent of the population). So maybe they still have a chance after all.

No religion story in Europe is complete without a mention of Islam, so the Vienna-datelined article ended up with a comment about Turkey. The Turkish team, by the way, beat Austria’s co-hosts Switzerland 2-1 on Wednesday in Basel and face the “de-churched” Czechs on Sunday in Geneva, aka “the Protestant Rome”.

“The only Muslim-dominated country in the European Championship is Turkey, where 98 percent of the 72 million inhabitants are Muslims. The 120,000 Christians there have a hard time because of much discrimination,” it wrote. “In Europe there are 224.5 million Catholics, 57.8 million Protestants, 39 million Orthodox, 15.7 million Muslims and 1.6 million Jews.”

These statistics appear to be completely irrelevant to Euro 2008. In fact, with the large Catholic majority in Europe that kath.net mentions at the end, it’s almost inevitable that many countries with a Catholic majority will end up in the final rounds every time the championships are held. Can any football fan tell me if there’s something this religion editor is missing?

German soccer blogs are not a place I usually go to for a story about religion, but an interesting one has popped up on the forum of the Eintracht Frankfurt team. The team let its fans vote over the Internet late last year to pick a 2008/2009 season jersey among 16 proposed models. Despite the fans’ enthusiasm for this innovation, Eintracht has ignored the result and chosen to use the runner-up design. As the team explained on its website:

After a close examination, we have decided that the winning jersey with the cross unfortunately cannot be used because the symbol on the front has a religious background. Inter Milan, an Italian club with a long tradition, has appeared in the current Champions League competition in a similar jersey and been strongly criticised for it. So after careful consideration, Eintracht Frankfurt has gone back and chosen the second jersey, which came in a close second in the vote.

The runner-up that came out on top has what Eintracht calls “hints of eagle claws on the front and a stylised eagle on the shoulder”. The city’s coat-of-arms has a red eagle that also figures on the Eintracht team logo.

So why the change? It turns out that a Turkish lawyer (and Fenerbahçe fan) asked UEFA in December to invalidate an Inter Milan victory over the Istanbul team in the Champions League last November because the red cross on the Italian jerseys recalled the Knights Templar crusaders. Shortly afterwards, the Barcelona daily La Vanguardia reported that fake FC Barcelona jerseys were on sale in Saudi Arabia with the crossbar removed from the cross on the team’s emblem. Eintracht doesn’t mention this Christian/Muslim angle explicitly, but it takes only a few clicks to find it.

Eintracht’s fan forum erupted with comments. The main thread on the jersey is up to 1,728 and climbing, many defending the loser as simply a better design. Almost 500 fans have signed a petition against the winner. The religious angle seemed irrelevant to most of them.

Do you think that teams should pay attention to possible religious overtones on their jerseys?