A Catedral de Córdoba é conhecida como "mesquita-catedral". Originalmente, o local era a Basílica de São Vicente, com o domínio muçulmano da Espanha, o local se tornou uma mesquita, e, finalmente, com a Reconquista católica da Espanha, a mesquita voltou a ser um local católico, com a construção da Catedral.
Os muçulmanos e os socialistas espanhóis do Partido Socialista, além de jornalistas socialistas do El País, querem que a Catedral deixe de ser da Igreja Católica e se torne um local de ninguém, de nenhuma religião, de posse do estado. A Igreja, para afirmar seu domínio sobre a Catedral, teve que registrar a Catedral em seu nome, mas o fez isso apenas em 2006.
No início dos anos 2000, os muçulmanos espanhóis queriam que a Igreja permitisse que eles rezassem dentro da Catedral. A Igreja não permitiu, e eles costumam ir toda sexta-feira ao local, para orar para Alá.
Em 2013, muçulmanos e socialistas, empurrados pelos jornais, fizeram uma petição assinada por 350 mil pedindo que se retirasse a Catedral da posse da Igreja.
É uma luta cultural enorme, que une dois inimigos naturais (esquedistas e muçulmanos) contra um inimigo comum (a Igreja Católica, Jesus Cristo)
Viva a Espanha Católica! Salve-nos Santiago Matamouros!
Espero que a Igreja e os espanhóis lutem até o fim pela Espanha católica
Vejam parte do artigo da
Catholic Citizens.
The Spanish Left Targets the Catholic Church
The cathedral of Córdoba should welcome people of all
faiths, but it belongs in the hands of the Catholic Church.
By Jeff
Cimmino
— July 27, 2017
The Spanish Left, in conjunction with
Muslim activists in southern Spain, is trying to seize control of the Cathedral
of Córdoba from the Catholic Church. Local politicians affiliated with the
Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) contend that the cathedral belongs to
the world, rather than to a private owner. Catholic officials disagree,
however, believing the Church rightfully owns the cathedral.
The cathedral has a long and storied
past. It was built as a mosque soon after Muslim soldiers conquered Spain in
the eighth century and was transformed into a cathedral during the Reconquista,
the period in which Christian rulers retook control of the country. The
Basilica of Saint Vincent, an ancient Christian church, originally stood in the
place where the mosque was constructed.
In the early 2000s, Spanish Muslims
appealed to the Catholic Church to permit them to pray in the cathedral. In
2006, after the Church rejected the prayer petition, the former president of
the Córdoba-based Islamic Council, Mansur Escudero, “began performing his
Friday prayers outside the mosque-cathedral as a protest against the Church’s
decision.”
The Catholic Church officially
registered ownership of the cathedral in 2006, although it has controlled it
since the 13th century. In 2013, “an organization called the ‘Platform for the
Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba’ secured more than 350,000 names for a petition
demanding the seizure of the cathedral, a push heavily promoted by the Spanish
socialist newspaper El Pais.” The Economist reported in 2015 that the mayor, a
member of the PSOE, promised to place the cathedral under public ownership.
Last year, Córdoba’s city council issued a report claiming neither the Church
nor any other body could own the property, because it belongs to “each and every
citizen of the world from whatever epoch and regardless of people, nation,
culture or race.”
The city council cannot outright
expropriate the property, but the Wall Street Journal reports that “Andalusian
law would permit expropriation if a court determined the diocese had failed
properly to maintain and conserve the property.” According the same report, the
pope has told the bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández González, that he would
support the diocese if a legal battle ensues.
A questionable historical narrative
informs a significant component of the Spanish Left’s case against the Church.
The cathedral, or mosque-cathedral as it is sometimes called, represents “a
universal paradigm of concord between cultures” according to the platform’s
petition. When Spain was under Muslim control, interreligious harmony and
tolerance supposedly reigned. Therefore, as a symbol of interreligious concord,
the cathedral shouldn’t belong to any one religious body.
Darío Fernández-Morera, an associate
professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern
University, has argued that medieval Spain was not an interreligious paradise.
In an interview with National Review, he deconstructed this largely
fictionalized historical narrative, saying that “the life of a Christian was
close to the value of the life of a Muslim woman, which in turn was about half
the value of a Muslim man.”
According to Professor Fernández-Morera,
if a Christian killed a Muslim, even in self-defense, the Christian had to be
killed, but if a Muslim killed a Christian, even intentionally, the Muslim
could not be killed. Moreover, Christians couldn’t testify against a Muslim in
court because his testimony wouldn’t be valid. “There is simply no legal
basis,” he said, “for the idea that this was a tolerant community.”
Professor Fernández-Morera also pointed
out that the cathedral building “hasn’t been a mosque for eight centuries.” In
1236, King Ferdinand III oversaw the transformation of the mosque into a
Christian church. One might even say that he returned it to its former status,
for the mosque had been built where the Basilica of Saint Vincent once stood.
The Cathedral of Córdoba has been a Catholic place of worship since the
mid-13th century, and to suggest it should be publicly owned because it
symbolizes an era of interreligious tolerance defies history.
In the midst of this controversy, the
Church has been accused of abusing its power to register ownership of land in
Spain. One person interviewed by The Economist called it “the largest
real-estate scandal that Spain has ever seen.” This, in turn, has resulted in
some people questioning the Church’s tax-exempt status:
Since the economic crisis of 2008,
however, hard-pressed town halls have increasingly questioned the fiscal
exemptions as well as the lack of transparency around what assets the church
actually registered and owns.
There is reason to believe, however,
that opponents of the Church are using the cathedral controversy to paint the
Church as more fiscally and politically powerful than it truly is in Spain.
Javier Ruperez, the former ambassador of Spain to the United States, told
National Review that although “the Church was extremely powerful” in Spain a
couple of centuries ago, “this is no longer true.”
Ruperez also suggested that the alliance
of secular left-wing forces and Muslim activists was a marriage of convenience.
“They coincide in one thing,” he said, “which is to try to go against the
Catholic church.” The National Catholic Register reported similar comments by
Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson
Institute:
What is unique in this case is it is not
an Islamist government doing this, but a left-leaning one — left-leaning
officials who are anti-Catholic, and maybe anti-Muslim too, but they see this
as a convenient way of suppressing religion; suppressing Catholicism in Spain.
