Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
3,094 posts, read 3,575,683 times
Reputation: 1036
Advertisements
Quote:
Originally Posted by Monbus
The southern Europe-Northern Europe divide concerning religion is extremelly ignorant. Catholic fanaticism was reintroduced in Spain by Flemish..the Hapsburgs.
I don't think so. Spaniard catholics has always been fanatics by themselves, especially since they began to support their fanatics catholic friends of the Vatican.
Those protests were not big at all, but few people presured by the higher echelons of the Church directed by the far-right rot where most Spaniards bishops belong as they see themselves as the European championships of Catholicism versus 95% of Spaniard popultation who don't support catholic rules anymore about pre-marital sex, condoms, euthanasia and so on, although many people in Spain still appreciate Holy Week parades as a cultural heritage.
I would say France and Portugal experienced almost the same during the recent years, although the government of France works as a pure, strong secular one while the higher government echelons of Spain and Portugal are secular in a weaker way and their goverments still give a lot of money to the catholic church every year, which is a waste of money because most churchs are empty since 15 years ago or so.
While most people from northern European countries became secular after WWII and their religious decline was soft and prolonged during the last 70 years, the southern European catholic countries such as Spain began their religious decline during early 80's but it was a sharp, hard decline, so that's why nowadays the society of Spain is even less religious than Scandinavian ones and at the same level than Benelux countries.
Just take a look to this nationwide Spanish chart and look how the percentage of church marriages (dark blue) is falling sharply versus the raise of civilian ones (red):
Well 200 000 or more would be very large. According the anti same sex marriage protest in Madrid in 2005: Priests, nuns, adults and children from all over Spain converged on central Madrid, with police estimating around 200,000 marchers and organisers saying up to one million.Spanish church leads rally against gay marriage - World - theage.com.au
Also Spain has a lot of Muslims, and not many of them are pro same sex marriage and I do believe there were Muslims in the anti same sex marriage rally. In Australia there was a same sex survey and the places that was most against same sex marriage were in heavily Muslim areas.
Of course in Spain the Catholic church supported the government when the country was under dictatorship under Franco. However after the Franco regime, there was a big decline in religion and an factor that influnced the decline would be on how the Catholic church supported the regime.
It is probably correct that only 10% of Spain population is Catholic, just like France.
Actually most Scandinavian countries still have a state church. However most people that are members of the church do not go to church, unless it is for some cultural events like Santa Lucia. Even their churches are liberal and the state churches in Scandinavia allow or support same sex marriage. However not all state churches there support it, yet it is a total different prospective compared to the Catholic church in Spain where same sex marriage or blessing same sex unions are forbidden, (except for rebel catholic churches).
In Australia the vote on same sex marriage went 60/40 in favour. There was an 80% return rate so it certainly was not just Muslims voting against it. The areas with a high Muslim population also have a high number of Asian voters, who tend to be quite conservative. Older Anglo voters also often opposed it, but there were no large scale rallies. It has happened and most of us accept the majority decision in our democracy, whichever way we voted.
The proportion of church attenders here is about 15%, from what I can find. The rate of babies born out of wedlock is around 30% but many of these are children of de facto couples.
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
3,094 posts, read 3,575,683 times
Reputation: 1036
Quote:
Originally Posted by other99
Also Spain has a lot of Muslims, and not many of them are pro same sex marriage and I do believe there were Muslims in the anti same sex marriage rally. I
Foreign Muslims who live here for work are as fanatics as fanatics Catholic ones about same-sex marriage and euthanasia, but fortunately we natives secular Spaniards are bigger and we disagree fanatic religious rules so much.
I live in Portugal and have Irish relatives and acquaintances. On quite a few occasions people I know who have zero religious belief have had church marriages for their kids or have baptized their newborn infants. In every case their reason for doing these things was for the ceremony of it.
I suspect this may inflate church marriage figures in many countries.
A friend in the U.S. told me about two guys who found an ordained clergyman to do their wedding in a chapel...replete with white tuxes, lots of white flowers, music, etc. I asked if they were religious believers, he said no, it was just that they wanted the whole nine yards like straight people have traditionally done it.
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
3,094 posts, read 3,575,683 times
Reputation: 1036
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevxu
I live in Portugal and have Irish relatives and acquaintances. On quite a few occasions people I know who have zero religious belief have had church marriages for their kids or have baptized their newborn infants. In every case their reason for doing these things was for the ceremony of it.
I suspect this may inflate church marriage figures in many countries.
Sometimes those young people who get married by the catholic church are not religious at all, but their grandmothers still coerced them to do so.
Our neighbouring catholic country Portugal is also doing pretty well. In fact, Portugal approved same-sex marriages in 2010 whereas Finland did so too late in March 2017!
One big reason was why it took so long for Finland was that the Christian Democrats were in the government. The majority of the people supported it ten years earlier.
According to the most recent polls 67% of Finns support voluntary euthanasia.
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
3,094 posts, read 3,575,683 times
Reputation: 1036
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ariete
One big reason was why it took so long for Finland was that the Christian Democrats were in the government. The majority of the people supported it ten years earlier.
According to the most recent polls 67% of Finns support voluntary euthanasia.
Fortunately here in Spain the PP Christian Democrats who rule Spain since the elections of November 2011 seems to be a joke.
In October 2011 they told they really would change both the abortion and the name of the same-sex marriage by removing the word "marriage" as an attempt to support the catholic church.
So, they won the November 2011 election with qualified majority so far, and then few months later they decided they had nothing to change, so they betrayed the catholic church and some of their most fanatic voters.
So, now in 2017 the PP Christian government is the same and both the abortion law and the same-sex marriage still applies, so the catholic church lose.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
