Page 86 - Nada temas, dice ella

Teresa of Jesus, National Catholicism and Conciliar Renewal
Giuliana Di Febo
‘National Catholicism – a hybrid
of a traditional conservative inter- pretation of our national history and of our historical mission in the world, along with an ecclesiology of Christianity that prevailed until the Second Vatican Council – has succeeded in seeking from within – and we are not here to judge inten- tions – the kind of religious society best suited to it’.
Augusto Guerra1
1. National Catholicism2
The term National Catholicism is most often used to indicate the complex interaction, based on recognition and mutual legitimacy, between church and state that characterised the Franco regime. Its origins are to be found in the importance acquired by the ques- tion of religion during the Spanish Civil War caused by the military coup of 18 July 1936. In response to the anticlerical violence, marked by the killing of priests and the destruction of churches and sacred objects, seen during the first two months of the conflict, the bishop of Salamanca, Enrique Pla y Deniel, published the pastoral ‘Las dos ciudades’ (30 Sep- tember 1936),3 which revived the word ‘crusade’ in the traditional legal and theological sense, with the aim of jus-
tifying the war as a defence of Chris- tianity and the restoration of order. The alzamiento militar (military rising) became a palingenetic war against the ‘Godless’, or the anti-Spain. More- over, it declared the idea of a Catholic nation in keeping with Spain’s role as a martillo de herejes (hammer of the heretics), as advocated by Menéndez Pelayo. The pastoral shifted the axis of interpretation from the war to the religious factor, and its initial conse- quences included the configuration
of the ‘New State’ in a confessional dimension. At the same time, the in- sertion of the term ‘crusade’ in the context of war gave renewed impetus to long-standing traditional folk devo- tions and cults – Santiago de Compos- tela, the Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Pilar and Teresa of Jesus. These were brought up to date and given a patri- otic and Hispanic flavour, in part as a re-appropriation of a threatened devo- tional heritage, but above all in terms of exalting the war as a sign of provi- dence and the role of General Franco as a saviour: he was appointed Head
of the Government and Chief of State by the National Defence Junta on
1 October 1936. In this context, the fig- ure of Teresa of Jesus assumed funda- mental importance as a national sym- bol. The Carmelite mystic, founder and reformer of the Order of the Barefoot Carmelites would come to embody
a number of different functions and meanings that would transform her
86