The huge crowd and the Pope’s words were a clear rebuke of the policies of Spain’s Socialist government. You might think that the sight of 2 million people demonstrating against your policies would cause government officials to at least reconsider those policies.
You would be wrong. Government officials called the rally an impermissible intervention in political affairs—and then demanded an apology from the Catholic bishops!
So, in Britain you have elites downplaying evidence of creeping Islamic sharia, while in Spain, Christian defense of the traditional family prompts a demand for an apology.
What makes this juxtaposition even more ironic is that both countries have recently experienced the dangers of Islamic extremists: the horrible transit bombings in London and Madrid.
Bishop Nazir-Ali is right when he draws a link between creeping sharia and secularism. The denial of the “distinctively Christian character of [Britain’s] laws, values, customs and culture” leaves a vacuum that Islamists will eagerly fill.
The same, of course, is true in Spain and the rest of Europe. Secularism, however, will fail because it cannot provide the “moral and spiritual vision” every society needs. The question becomes, “Who will?”—the faith that made Europe possible or ones wholly alien to its values and culture?
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