Reflections on the Spanish document

Sandro Magister has had a piece up as of late last week, "The Church in Spain Is Sick, but It's not Zapatero's Fault" in which he reports that the Spanish bishops are saying, the sickness is the loss of faith among the people, and the poor instructors are above all the progressive theologians.

Apparently this came in a document coordinated with Rome, as a model for other episcopates.

This is very good news indeed.

Here is Magister's preface:

ROMA, July 28, 2006 The document was written by the Spanish bishops, and focuses on Spanish theology. But its horizon is much broader. It was planned in conjunction with the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when this was headed by cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now pope. And it presents itself as a working model for the bishops of other nations. L'Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Holy See, is preparing to issue it with a significant publicity effort...

The document is in the form of a �pastoral instruction, and is entitled "Theology and secularization in Spain, forty years after the end of Vatican Council II." ...

The sickness is “the secularization within the Church”: a widespread loss of faith caused in part by “theological propositions that have in common a deformed presentation of the mystery of Christ.”

The cure is precisely that of restoring life to the profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), in the four areas where it is most seriously undermined today:

– the interpretation of Scripture,
– Jesus Christ as the only savior of all men,
– the Church as the Body of Christ,
– moral life.

The original source and full document is here: Chiesa

It is worth reading and gets into the matters of dissent, relativism and progressivism.

One thing that should be noted is that a significant part of this problem of secularization is not only that of our thought, but also our praxis: that is, the sacred liturgy has often become secularized itself.

What we see in our liturgies can be at one and the same time both a symptom and effect of the secularization that is being spoken of, but as well, it can also be the further cause of secularization within the Church, for if our worship becomes horizontal and secularized that is bound to have an effect on the faithful.

Hopefully, in this welcome development, this important, even central aspect, that is the sacred liturgy will be remembered.