Catholic Spain is Catholic

[Mediocrates]

Spain, leading proponent of harming Jews in Israel, key supporter of Nuremberg law style boycotts of Jewish businesses, is - what do you know - a Catholic nation that gives tax money to Catholic churches and affords Catholic organizations special privileges.

The present government of Spain, a socialist government, in name at least, has:

increased by 34% the percentage of their income tax that citizens may give to the Catholic church, abandoned proposals to reform the religious freedom law and hence leave the Catholic church to enjoy privileges denied to other religions, spent millions of Euros of public money on the recent visit of the Pope, continued to finance the teaching of the Catholic religion in public schools, introduced swingeing budget cuts in all areas except the 6,000 million Euro given by the state to the Catholic church every year, continued to honor the pre-constitutional concordat with the Vatican state, an absolute monarchy with institutionalized repression of women and appointed a judge to the supreme court who is on the record as saying that real justice comes from the love of Christ.

In view of the increasingly exclusionary and discriminatory nature of the Spanish state, isn’t it time for a campaign of boycott, disinvestment and sanctions to bring the Spanish people to their senses and make them see that they have to radically reform their country to make it a state for all its citizens?
………………..
Post based on this one by Fernando BerlÃÂn.

http://blog.z-word.com/2010/11/spain...bds/#more-1807

[Bill Sticker]

Its a good job the dont have a modern day equivalent of the Spanish Armada as the UK is now in the unenviable and frankly ridiculous position of soon having a fleet of aircraft carriers but no planes to fly from them.

The government say ah but the French will lend us some.

I seem to remember during the Falklands campaign it was the same French built Super Entondard aircraft which sank our ships.

We will just have to pray for another Protestant wind!!!

[Bluesnout]

Thursday 11 November 2010

Telegraph.co.uk

Franco drew up list of 6,000 Jews in Spain for Hitler


General Francisco Franco had a list of 6,000 Jews living in Spain drawn up and handed to Nazi Germany, new research shows.



Franco was prepared to send Jews resident in Spain to Nazi Germany for extermination. Photo: EPAEdward Owen, in Madrid 6:00AM BST 21 Jun 2010

At the end of the World War in 1945, Franco's regime ordered the destruction of all documents relating to a census of Jews in Spain carried out in 1941 at the request of Hitler's Germany.

However, one of the original letters ordering the census has been unearthed in the archives in the city of Zaragoza by Jacobo Israel Garzón, a Jewish journalist.

It runs contrary to popular opinion that the Spanish dictator protected Jews from the Holocaust, showing that he was prepared to send Jews resident in Spain to Nazi Germany for extermination.

Franco's much feared Security Directorate sent the letter on to all provincial governors on May 13, 1941.

It ordered a list of "national and foreign Israelis living in the province....indicating their political and social affiliations, lifestyle, commercial activities, actual situation, level of dangerousness, political conception."

The order was signed by Franco's aristocratic head of security, José Finat Escriva de RomanÃÂ, Count of Mayalde. The count had earlier entertained Himmler, responsible for Germany's extermination camps, at a bullfight in Madrid. He was later able to personally hand over the details of 6,000 Jews obtained by the census to Himmler when he was appointed Spanish ambassador to Germany.

Himmler stressed that even Jews who had converted to Catholicism should be listed because they had not changed their race.

"It all sounds pretty horrific," said Irish Hispanist and historian Ian Gibson in Madrid,

"The popular conception is that Franco had some Jewish Sephardic blood himself and that he did all he could to help Jews fleeing."

Mr Gibson actually interviewed the count for a book he was writing in 1977 and said: "He was very rich and living in a mansion in a Madrid suburb. He was small and wizened, very talkative and relaxed about his role with Franco's regime."

The Jews in Spain were lucky to survive, not just because Franco did not join Germany against the Allies, but because in 1938 Franco had given all German political police the status of diplomats so they could carry out whatever activities they wanted in Spain.

A memoir written two years ago by Franco's daughter, Carmen Franco Polo, disclosed that Franco actually feared he would be abducted by Hitler to force Spain into the Second World War.

[farmboy]

I have no love for the Catholics or for the Spaniards. What they did in South and Central America is exactly what the moslems want to do to us. However, the fact they are giving tax breaks to catholics is good news and not bad as you suppose. It means that they are not supporting Islam which is the real danger. If someone can make them realise that their threat to existence is not from that speck of land in the middle east called Israel then they may start helping out the right side instead of hindering it.
I realise that antisemetism runs deeply but self preservation is a stronger urge. The Madrid train bombing must have woken them up somewhat.
The moslems are threatening Catholics all over the globe and the Vatican needs to get its members focused on those areas. An Xian vs Moslem war HAS to be good for Israel in the long term.

[Bluesnout]

More than €6 billion of public money reported to go to the Catholic Church or its organisations in Spain

This report from Spanish organisation Europa Laica (Secular Europe) estimates and itemises the subsidies for both “faith-based welfare�, as well as direct grants to the Church.

Background: In the 1979 Finance Concordat the Spanish Catholic Church promised to become self-supporting within three years of the introduction of a “church tax�, which was finally imposed in 1987. Yet despite more than 10 years' warning, the Church didn't meet the deadline. Even after the Government increased the “church tax� in 2007 from 0.52% to 0.70%, still no luck.

The Finance Concordat (Article 2.2) obliges the Spanish Catholic Church to pay its own way by relying on what citizens chose to provide, either through donations or by designating a portion of their income tax for the Church. Since 1987 each income tax payer must declare whether he wants this "church tax", (at first 0.52% and later 0.70%), to go to the Catholic Church, another denomination or be used for other social purposes. Since 2008, this tax can also be split between a religious denomination and “social purposes�. However, due to the large number of Catholic charities, the Church benefits even when someone ticks the "social purposes" box. And that's not all: the state tops up the money from this tax to ensure that the Church receives the same income as it had before the system was introduced at the end of 1987.* This is in accordance with the Finance Concordat which guarantees (in Article 2.3.) that, come what may, “the Catholic Church shall receive funds of a similar amount�.

Europa Laica (Secular Europe), a nationwide organisation in Spain, has drawn up a report which conservatively estimates annual funding from State Bodies benefitting the Catholic Church at €6 billion a year. The following is a translation of the financial claims from the Europa Laica report of 13 May 2009.


Private schools that follow the State curriculum and impart Catholic religion are bankrolled to the tune of approximately €3.8 billion, which is transferred as part of funding agreements in each autonomous region.

Also under the heading of education, public institutions make increasingly large donations to private universities or other educational institutions run by the Church, such as Catholic organisations that own universities. e.g. Deusto University (run by the Jesuits), the University of Navarre (owned by Opus Dei), CEU (Centro de Estudios Universitarios, property of the Association of Propagandists), the pontifical universities of Comillas and Salamanca, the diocesan universities of Murcia and �vila, 15 ecclesiastical faculties, 41 theological centres, 11 university colleges, 55 colleges, and 72 sixth form (junior) colleges.

The wage bill for the nearly 30,000 people who teach Catholic religion in the State sector or private schools that follow the State curriculum was more than €550 million for the 2007 – 2008 academic year.

Tax exemptions for local taxes such as council tax (IBI), tax on building or repair work etc, amounted to lost earnings for the State of about €900 million. Europa Laica believes that Spain is a tax haven for the Catholic Church.

The amount that private individuals can assign to the Church out of their annual income tax increased from 0.52 % to 0.70% in 2007, so that this year the Church obtained €241 million to fund worship, the clergy and other Church activities. 21.71 % of tax payers ticked the option to assign part of their taxes to the Catholic Church box in their income tax return last year, and 11.68 % also ticked the “social and charitable purposes� box: choosing both has been allowed since last year.

Thanks to the “social and charitable purposes� box in income tax returns, many Catholic organisations receive a further €100 million. 32.58% of tax payers only ticked the “social and charitable funding� box last year.

Donations to the Catholic Church receive tax relief: 25% for income tax, 35% for company tax. Studies by the Bishops’ Conference suggest that these tax breaks could have amounted to €80 million in 2008. According to the Bishops’ Conference, donations from the Catholic faithful amount to over 70% more money than the Church receives from the specific Catholic Church tick box option in annual tax returns.

The Church receives around €300 million a year for the maintenance, renovation and upkeep of its vast art collection and real estate holdings (280 museums, 103 cathedrals or collegiate churches with chapters, and almost a thousand monasteries). This is paid out by the autonomous regions or Central Government.

The State also pays the salaries of more than 500 full-time hospital chaplains and nearly 300 part-time chaplains, of more than 100 prison chaplains, and of the military chaplains under an archbishop who has the rank of Division General. The total wage bill, including social security contributions etc, exceeds €3 billion a year.

The central, regional and municipal governments provide financial support to the "charitable" activities organised by the Catholic Church through hundreds of associations, organisations, foundations and congregations. The number is difficult to estimate, but Europa Laica reckons the state subsidy to be several hundreds of millions of Euros a year.

The bishops and some of the population argue that the state would spend more if these educational and social welfare obligations were paid for by the State itself. Europa Laica believes that this is a specious opinion because the Church engages in proselytism and politics through its "Church charitable and social work�. Hundreds of cases prove that the State could perform these tasks, either directly or through other non-religious organisations, in away that would generate more wealth and jobs.

Many towns and municipalities pay grants for parades and processions and the brotherhoods that stage them, for pilgrimages to local shrines, for religious services and various other events which combine the religious, the pagan, the festive and the cultural. They also pay the police overtime for the events, as well as for the publicity for them, as well as many other related costs. The amount is difficult to quantify, as it is borne by almost 8,000 Spanish municipalities. To this should be added the costs of the pomp and ceremony laid on for visiting Catholic Church leaders, such as the forthcoming visit of the Pope to Madrid in 2011.

Church organisations and the Spanish Bishops' Conference receive assorted grants and donations from the state to support their media and publishing activity.

Public land is donated in many towns and municipalities to build churches, religious centres and schools. These buildings are also “generously� funded by almost all the municipalities. The cost of these direct and indirect gifts cannot be calculated.
The Catholic Church has launched its campaign to persuade taxpayers to tick its box on their income tax return, a campaign that will cost about €4 million of tax-payers’ money. The Catholic Church is funded by complex mechanisms of private income and public funding, including financial holdings, stocks, mutual funds and involvement in or ownership of companies and financial institutions.

This report has been prepared by Europa Laica based on information sources such as the Spanish Internal Revenue Service, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Education, Education Departments of the Autonomous Regions, education trade unions, education employers’ associations, and the Bishops’ Conference and some of its 60 dioceses. Europa Laica has had to make estimates and approximations which cannot be precise, due to the opaque nature of Church accounts, and the lack of Government transparency on these issues. [...]

[Bluesnout]

Generalissimo Franco and the Vatican

A wartime ruler gets a modus vivendi � and only when his survival seems assured is he dignified with a concordat. And if he allows the Church enough influence, he can even get away with calling his dictatorship a "monarchy" and secure royal concordat privileges.


These are the arms of General Franco's Spain. The Fascist-looking eagle has a halo which sanctifies him as St. John. The royal trappings on this coat of arms are due to Franco's Succession Law. This declared that Spain was a monarchy (albeit without a king) and that Franco was a "regent", (rather than a "dictator"). This let Franco retain regal symbols like the crown � and also claim a crucial concordat privilege.

In 1941 Franco tried to reinstate the abrogated Concordat of 1851. He was hoping to assume the royal right to select bishops which was confirmed in this agreement. These patronage rights (patronato) would have allowed Franco to nominate a list of three candidates for a vacant see, leaving the pope to make the final decision.

At first Pius XII (“Hitler’s pope�) demurred. He replied that the 1851 Concordat was void due to its cancellation by the Second Republic. Further, he said, Franco was not a monarch, and the rights of a royal patron rested with the "Most Catholic Kings" of Spain.

However, a more plausible reason for the papal reticence was that the Vatican avoids wartime concordats. The Pope didn’t want to offer Franco the diplomatic success of a restoration, preferring to wait and make a permanent pact with him afterwards, when and if his regime survived the war.

In the meantime, to increase Church influence, the Pope let Franco have a modus vivendi, which would remain in force until a future concordat could be concluded. This provisional Convention of June 1941 gave Franco a more limited version of the royal prerogative. He chose six candidates for a vacant see, the pope, if he approved, whittled it down to three, and then the Generalissimo made the final, face-saving choice.

And the payoff for the Vatican? The 1941 Convention took over the first four articles of the 1851 Concordat, the ones that gave the Church a religious monopoly, as well as control of education and the press.

Finally, in 1953, when it was clear that this Fascist dictator was going to survive, Franco got a permanent agreement with the Vatican. Franco's concordat gave state funding to the Church and legally enforced Church teaching. In return, the Vatican granted him the "royal patronage" (patronato real). This was the ancient privilege of Spanish kings to name bishops and veto appointments down to the level of the parish priest. This concession by the Vatican increased the control of a dictator who admitted cheerfully: "Our regime is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections". [1]

When Franco reached his eighties, however, the Vatican employed its usual tactic: the Church began to distance itself from the aging dictator and reposition itself for the advent of democracy. In the name of church-state separation the Vatican tried without success to get Franco to give up the right of patronage over bishops, the traditional prerogative of Spanish kings.

At the Episcopal Conference convened in 1973, the bishops demanded the separation of church and state, and they called for a revision of the 1953 Concordat. Subsequent negotiations for such a revision broke down because Franco refused to relinquish the power to veto Vatican appointments. Until his death, Franco never understood the opposition of the church. No other Spanish ruler had enacted measures so favourable to the church as Franco, and he complained bitterly about what he considered to be its ingratitude. [2]

[savvy]

Catholic nation that gives tax money to Catholic churches and affords Catholic organizations special privileges.

Only limited to museums and art galleries.

Spain is Catholic in name only country. The Socialists fund Catholic schools, churches only to spread their propaganda on abortion, destruction of the family etc.

How many of these schools actually teach Catholicism? Very few.

The Queen of Spain who signed the abortion bill also went to a Papal Mass. She is Catholic in name only.

General Franco, initially supported the church against church burning, nun raping communists. He turned on them the moment he rose to power.

"In the majority of churches, you find old people, and only a few young people. You will find classical concerts. You will find people visiting for the art. But not anymore a place for prayer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Apr10.html

continued to honor the pre-constitutional concordat with the Vatican state, an absolute monarchy with institutionalized repression of women and appointed a judge to the supreme court who is on the record as saying that real justice comes from the love of Christ.

Nonsense. Socialists can talk all about the love of Christ when they find it useful to claim Christ was a socialist. The Vatican is an oligarchy. There is no institutionalized repression of women. The sacraments are not based on civil rights. They have a different context. This just proves how ignorant people making these claims actually are.

[savvy]

Its a good job the dont have a modern day equivalent of the Spanish Armada as the UK is now in the unenviable and frankly ridiculous position of soon having a fleet of aircraft carriers but no planes to fly from them.

The government say ah but the French will lend us some.

I seem to remember during the Falklands campaign it was the same French built Super Entondard aircraft which sank our ships.

We will just have to pray for another Protestant wind!!!

Another Protestant wind? Protestant churches for the most part are also unable to stand the wave of encroaching secularism on their churches. The main-line churches are more concerned about fighting over women and gay priests, than with teaching the faith.

I met a Lutheran minister who told me, he doesn't see the church in Canada, surviving for more than 12 years.

[Bluesnout]

At last – Vatican’s money-grubbing accords under scrutiny in EU

Last month, Romano Prodi, leader of Italy’s centre-left government, asked the Vatican to help it stamp out rampant tax evasion in the country. Prodi asked priests to preach from their pulpits about the immorality of dodging taxes.

The Church duly obliged, and even the Pope himself spoke out on the matter.

Now, it turns out, the Catholic Church may face an investigation into how little tax it is paying itself. Little-known concessions quietly made by some EU member countries have resulted in it paying materially less tax than citizens or companies.

Officials have confirmed that the European Commission (the EU’s equivalent of the Civil Service) has asked the Italian and Spanish governments for information for an investigation into the legality of tax breaks benefiting the Catholic Church. It is thought that they may breach rules ensuring level playing fields for commercial competitors.

Both requests for information followed complaints from unnamed interests in the states in question — the Christian Democrat UDC party suggesting it was the product of “radical Freemason” circles — and both are set to analyse the claim that the tax breaks give the church an unfair advantage over secular commercial entities. Last year, Premier Romano Prodi's government amended the law, saying that only “the activities that are not exclusively commercial” are exempt. The use of the word “exclusively” left a loophole open allowing properties where even minor religious activity goes on to benefit from the break.

On July 19, the Commission asked the Spanish government for information on a scheme which allows the Catholic Church in the country exemptions from the national tax on wealth, an official in the Commission's competition told a German news agency.

The office is currently analysing a response from the Italian government to questions concerning exemptions from the tax on property which the Catholic Church enjoys there. The church reportedly gets a handout of almost €1bn (£678m) from income tax receipts and exemption from the payment of local authority taxes on most of its property. In addition, the church's business activities, including schools, hospitals, clinics and hotels, are understood to pay only half the normal corporation tax. Most estimates have put the cost to the Italian treasury at about €1.3bn a year. In Rome alone, according to La Stampa newspaper, the church owns 18 hospitals, 55 clinics and 250 schools.

Under Italian law, for example, the church is exempt from local taxes on the possession of property and from company taxes levied on the revenues deriving from that property. It also benefits from a 50% reduction on company tax generally, Commission officials said.

But these tax breaks do not apply to commercial property management companies, and could therefore potentially be interpreted as state aid which distorts competition in the property market. “If an organisation has economic activities, it has to follow (EU) competition rules,” a Commission spokesman told journalists.

All this money flowing in to the Vatican’s pockets comes from the taxpayers of Italy and Spain. The exemptions are the result of Concordats – church-state agreements that privilege the Catholic Church – the latest version of which in Italy dates from 1984.

UDC member and former European affairs Minister Rocco Buttiglione called on the Commission not to feed the “suspicions of an anti-Christian European Union”, whose bid to become President of the European Union was blocked when it was suspected he was a Vatican placeman.

The request for information is the first stage in the EC’s procedure on potential breaches of competition law. If the Commission's competition experts decide that there are grounds for concern, a full investigation could then be launched.

A senior Vatican official, Monsignor Karel Kasteel, has agreed, according to a report in The Guardian, that the Church would sit down with the Government and “re-negotiate” the terms of the concordat between the member state and the “Holy See” (which has the status as a sovereign state in its own right) which is actually the political wing of the Vatican. His remarks were later downplayed by a Vatican spokesman as “a personal opinion”.

Giuseppe Betori, head of Italian Conference of Roman Catholic bishops, said: “To those who put into discussion the agreement between the Holy See and Italy, it's worth taking into consideration that this has produced social peace and collaborative benefits to all the Italian people.”

Catholic politicians, too, were quick to jump to the Church’s defence. "This offensive is incredible," said Maurizio Gasparri, of the centre-right National Alliance political party, accusing the EU of siding itself with an "anti-Catholic left" in Europe. "The EU must avoid serious interference, which would be intolerable."

Because the concordat has the status of international treaty it can technically only be changed with the mutual agreement of both Church and State. Concordats accord huge benefits to the Catholic Church, but as international treaties have often escaped the normal democratic process in the country giving the benefits. Under Mr Zapatero, Spain has however simply torn up at least one concordat unilaterally, and there doesn’t seem to be much the Vatican can do if it is clear that a revoker is acting with the democratic will of their country.

If the EC investigation were to rule that the tax breaks were illegal, the government in question would be obliged to end the system, and could be ordered to recover the aid from the church itself, officials said.

Brussels has clashed with the Roman Catholic Church in the past. In 2005 the Commission said Spain was breaking EU law by exempting the Church from value added tax on goods such as candles, pews and land for building churches.

In Britain, Gordon Brown introduced a reduced VAT rate for repairs to “listed places of worship” (but not other listed buildings) and was subsequently told by the EU that it was illegal, following a complaint by the NSS to the European Commission in 2001. The Government circumvented the VAT rules by introducing an administratively very expensive scheme making grants to cover the difference in VAT. Millions of pounds are also refunded to religious bodies each year in gift aid on their collections.

[savvy]

Bluesnout,

Tax exemptions on church run organizations are present in every country. The Protestants churches in Canada have them too. The Catholic church just happens to run more schools, hospitals etc than others. These services are not limited to Catholics alone. As for tax evasion, I think it should be worked out with the state.

Nobody is stopping any religion from opening up a school or a hospital..

Your previous lies have been debunked. You never stop at attempts at Catholic-baiting. The Catholics on this forum do not attack Protestants.

[dayag]

The focus of this forum is Israel, not Catholicism. Religion bashing is not allowed. Anyone wishing to do so, should take their comments somewhere else. Thanks.

I am locking this thread.

Religious bashing is not allowed.

http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=11