Page 91 - Nada temas, dice ella

However, in other contexts, signs
of a different perception of the figure of the Carmelite saint and her work emerge. Examples of this can be found in the issue of the Revista de Espiritu- alidad dedicated to the centenary. The impact of conciliar innovation is cap- tured by certain controversial claims that use Teresian topics against the ‘dangers of modernity’. One such exam- ple is the article ‘Teresa de la hispani- dad’16 by Blas Piñar, in which he argues against the secular positions adopted by Jacques Maritain, Marie-Domi- nique Chenu – important figures in the Second Vatican Council – and other Catholics. Piñar resists the separation between church and state, Chenu’s ‘anti-crusade thesis’, by updating the ‘meaning that our Crusade entailed in this work of re-Hispanisation’, point- ing to ‘Teresa, Patron Saint of the His- panic World, and therefore of the spir- itualist interpretation of History’ as an alternative model. The image and work of Teresa return, as if through an anti- modern vision, to their role as guide and ‘beacon’ for the rediscovered unity of people ‘historically Hispanic’.
In contrast, the theory put forward in the article entitled ‘Aspectos vul- gares del estilo teresiano y sus posi- bles razones’17 by Felicidad Bernabéu Barrachina underlines the awareness of Teresa’s Jewish convert descent. The author analyses the writings of the Carmelite mystic, revealing the nu- merous ‘oversights’ in the syntactical
and grammatical construction and the introduction of expressions typical
of popular language. She also identi- fies the motivation behind the need
to conceal Teresa’s origins as a convert: when Teresa was alive, being letrado could have been taken by the Inquisi- tion as a possible sign of Jewish ori- gins. It would then be a question of
a ‘conscious and deliberate rusticity’, in contrast, as far as Bernabéu Ba- rrachina is concerned, with the more in-depth understanding of the Car- melite mystic found in the writings of theologians, and therefore a linguistic strategy.
To mark the centenary, Paul VI wrote the brief Lumen Hispaniae
(18 September 1965) in which Teresa of Jesus was declared ‘Patron saint of Spanish Catholic writers’. In keeping with the process of renewal instigated by a church focused on modernity, the Pope, in a language devoid of cli- ché, exalted the holiness, spirituality and reforming work carried out by Teresa, underlining her authority as
a writer with these words: ‘sed etiam plures libros, admirabili sapientia refer- tos, conscripserit’.18 Some years later, in September 1970, breaking with a tradition that saw only male figures proclaimed as Doctors of the Church, this title was bestowed upon Teresa
of Jesus and Saint Catherine of Siena.
In the 1960s, the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the Span- ish Church would contribute to the
91