There is no space immune to political tension, because everything is politics. It also happens in the Church. The archbishops of Valladolid and Oviedo, and the bishops of Alicante-Orihuela and Huelva, embrace, with their words, public confrontation. They reject the pact for the investiture, and some of them ring the alarm bells. His message is important, and it reaches the Catholic crowd that also votes for the PSOE. In some rallies in front of socialist headquarters, called by hyperventilating and ultramontane citizens, some pray the rosary, the Hail Mary and the Lord's Prayer, invoking a divine event that frustrates real politics. Will your prayers be answered?
Not long ago, in Valencia and other dioceses, there were already voices from the Church that regularly called to play the war drums. Spain was breaking, said Rouco Varela, Antonio Cañizares or Jesús Sanz and the obligation was to mobilize to combat the danger, with a call to the Catholic deputies in Congress. And the pardons had not yet been approved and, even less so, an amnesty law had not been negotiated. It was a way of understanding the Church that is still valid these days, with the aim of influencing the Spanish political ecosystem.
For almost a year now, another voice has been installed in the Archbishopric of Valencia, more prudent, inclined to avoid ruptures and favor coexistence, with Catholic morality, of course, as an absolute reference. To each one his role, Enrique Benavent says, who does not give up asking to work more for what unites us than for what separates us, when there are many who want to live installed in the trenches.
We are according to our circumstances throughout life. Enrique Benavent lived, in first person, the social context of the “procés”. The diocese of Tortosa covers a part of Catalonia and another of the Valencian Community. The Catalans entrenched themselves, some against Spain, others against other Catalans, others against themselves; but everyone respected the Church. Patience is a wise virtue, as well as the determination to maintain the values of an institution that, let us not forget, was decisive in the success of the political transition: “Tarancón to the wall!” That happened, and quite a few lessons were written (although some were already warned by Chaves Nogales in his work “What's happening in Catalonia?”). The most important? That the social fracture pushes us to the abyss.
In noisy times there are voices that must be heard, despite the difficulty of the storm of hyperbole. They are voices that invite us to recover dialogue from respect for the other, they are voices that support harmony, no matter how complex the difference may be to accept. History confirms that it is precisely these voices to which time gives reason and recognition, although now it seems that they speak to an empty auditorium. They are the voices of prudence, which is also responsibility. Patience.
