Spain's Loss of Religion Yields Benefits

[Doug]

What Happens When a Country Gives Up Religion: as Spain Shows, Nothing Much
Martin Varsavsky

During Franco´s dictatorship Spain was a very Catholic country. After three decades of democracy, as the Catholic Church likes to say, Spain is not a Catholic country anymore. Loss of religion first became apparent with the legalization of divorce, contraceptives, and the promotion of sex ed all opposed by the Church. This was followed by the decriminalization of abortion, the acceptance of drug possession for personal consumption (drug users are not criminals in Spain, but treated instead as medical patients) and a general acceptance of premarital sex in society.

Later more controversial activities were legalized like gambling in public places, prostitution and recently gay marriage. Presently other than euthanasia there´s nothing left for the Catholic Church to oppose. All battles were lost including the one for the hearts and minds of the Spanish people. While 95% of the Spanish youth declared in the 60's that religion played some role in their life now only a third do. And that is only "some" role.

Religion in Spain is mostly becoming tradition. People marry in churches because they are beautiful and full of history, not because they actually practice. Sunday church attendance is in the single digits...

In the meantime, Spain´s abandonment of religion has been accompanied by decades of tremendous economic and social development. Spain is now 10 times richer per capita than it was 3 decades ago. Cultural production is thriving and science which was mostly non existence after centuries of a tough ban on scientific research by the Catholic Church is now beginning to develop with the number of papers written and patents filed growing every year. During the last decade Spain has been the growth engine of the large countries in Europe. Indeed the economy grew so fast that Spain accepted 6% of its population in the form of immigrants in the last 5 years in order to cope with the labor shortages.

If anything, Spain proves that societies do not fall apart when they give up religion and almost everything that was illegal for religious reasons, becomes legal...

Read the rest here.

[Dardedar]

...science which was mostly non existence after centuries of a tough ban on scientific research by the Catholic Church is now beginning to develop...

DAR
Remember what Richard Howe was saying about religion, historically, not holding back science?

the economy grew so fast that Spain accepted 6% of its population in the form of immigrants in the last 5 years...

DAR
Wow. That's like 18 million coming into the US since '02.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

If we had 18 million immigrants coming to the U.S. the wingnuts would get stockpiling weapons to repel the invaders. (Come to think of it, they're doing that anyway.) Spain also surpasses the U.S. in education (per capita spending and attainment). Of course, the U.S. is trying to revoke the "establishment clause" and turn us into the very thing we were established to avoid.