Monsignor Argüello: “Normalizing abortion is normalizing social Darwinism.” 

The Spanish bishops are meeting in Madrid until next Friday. This is the first assembly under the pontificate of the Augustinian Pope, who on Monday, November 17, received the members of the Executive Commission. 

In his traditional opening speech, the president of the Spanish bishops, Luis Argüello, did not avoid several of the topics that mark these days of the meeting, both because they are matters of work and because of the current situation in which this Plenary is taking place. 

Catholic revival, a manipulable fad?

One of the topics that Argüello did not want to forget is the spiritual rebirth that, in recent years, seems to have gained strength in Spain. In this sense, he emphasized that “There are signs that warn that Catholicism is in fashion or, if you prefer, that there is a return to spiritual coordinates that seemed outlawed. The process is constant and is increasing” and has given as an example the album of the singer Rosalía, Luz or the film “Los Domingos“. 

This return to the faith was the theme of much of the first part of this speech in which the president of the bishops warned that “listening more intensely to the rumor of God and the «Catholic turn» can be a fashion or an object of ideological manipulation of the confusion and difficulties that young people are experiencing today,” and attacked the “‘technological authoritarian complex’ that has in Vice President James David Vance, a Catholic convert, its political link. With all this, the power of money and algorithms at the service of money and power emerges with force”. 

Abortion, the issue “hidden” by sociopolitical powers

“In recent weeks the issue of abortion has reappeared in various ways: the pretension of elevating this supposed right to constitutional rank; the conscientious objection of health personnel; the information to mothers of all that the intervention that causes abortion means; data offered by the Ministry of Health, in 2024 there were 106,173 abortions and 322,034 births.” With these data, the president of the bishops addressed the terrible reality of abortion in Spain. 

Argüello quoted Matthieu Lavagna, interviewed by Omnes a few weeks ago, who emphasizes in his book “La raison est pro-life” how “daring to talk about it in public has become a taboo, almost an intrusion into people's private lives. To state publicly that abortion is objectively immoral, because it means ending the life of a person other than his or her mother and father, is to risk hearing strong personal, social and political disqualifications: «To question this conquest, to doubt this right? It is the paroxysm of fascist and authoritarian thinking that deserves the immediate label of extreme right»”. 

The President of the Spanish Episcopal Conference recalled that “it is enough to open any medical embryology manual to see that scientists unanimously affirm that from the moment of fertilization a living and independent human organism is created in the mother's body with its own genetic patrimony. It is not necessary to go to the Bible to affirm this, even if it does provide that its dignity is sacred and that it is endowed with an immortal soul”. 

The Archbishop of Valladolid has put his finger on two key issues in this matter: the hiding of the reality, selfishness and consequences of abortion “under the carpet” and the servility of certain bioethics committees “at the service of biopolitics”. 

She also pointed out that in every pregnancy it is necessary to take into account not only the unborn child but also its parents and circumstances. For this reason, he wanted to “extend a hand of closeness to pregnant mothers so that they do not hesitate to ask for help if they have to deal with the drama of a pregnancy that may be unwanted; that the solution to a situation, so often very difficult to cope with alone, is not the elimination of the life that is in their womb”. In this sense, he denounced that “the normalization of abortion expresses the normalization of social Darwinism” in which not all lives are worth the same.  

“The Church does not sponsor any political form.” 

Another of the topics addressed in the speech of the President of the Spanish Bishops was the anniversary of the death of Francisco Franco and the beginning of democracy in Spain. On this point, Bishop Luis Argüello recalled how “fifty years ago most of the bishops of Spain, men who had known war and post-war, dedicated words of praise and gratitude to Franco”, without avoiding the unequal development of the relationship of the Spanish bishops with the Franco regime. 

The speech was especially clear when the president of the bishops quoted Cardinal Tarancon when, in his homily on November 27 at the Hieronymites, he stressed that “the Christian faith is not a political ideology nor can it be identified with any of them, given that no social or political system can exhaust all the richness of the Gospel nor does it belong to the mission of the Church to present concrete options or solutions for government in the temporal fields of social, economic or political sciences. The Church does not sponsor any political form or ideology and if someone uses her name to cover his or her own factions, he or she is usurping it”. The president of the Spanish bishops has asked that “the next three years should be of ‘purification of the memory’ contaminated by the ideological biases of the laws of historical and democratic memory that, rightly, want to rehabilitate and honor the victims of the dictatorship and to bury with dignity those who were still in graves and ditches, but are, mainly, an instrument of ideological polarization at the service of the political interests of the present rather than a channel to deepen the reconciliation that the years of the Transition achieved, to a large extent”. 

It is not enough to be a conscientious objector 

The president of the Spanish bishops especially encouraged the lay faithful to be present in public life. In this sense, he emphasized that “it is not enough to be a conscientious objector. It is necessary to promote conscience from one's own conscience”.  

Argüello wanted to point out that the latest information regarding alleged cases of abuse within the Church “enlivens in us the desire to continue promoting the work to eliminate these behaviors from two areas: The presumption of innocence, also for members of the Church, and also the freedom of denunciation and its course” in case it is considered true.