Denying communion to a homosexual is “clearly and openly unconstitutional.” The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, defends it with this firmness. Socialist politics revived this Friday through Spanish Television the double controversy that arose around the Church and the LGTBI community. On the one hand, the file opened by its Ministry to investigate the complaint against seven Spanish dioceses for hosting talks in their parishes of the “Transformed” project, an initiative that would be linked to conversion therapies. On the other hand, the veto of the Bishopric of Segovia to communion a gay couple in the town of Basardilla and the mayor of Torrecaballeros, also homosexual.
In a live connection with the program “59 seconds”, the head of Equality intervened to answer a question from the presenter of the space, Gemma Nierga: “Is what happened in Segovia legal?” Redondo defended that “no sector, no Administration and, I believe, not even the Church, although there is no specific law, can escape the constitutional rules, the principle of equality and non-discrimination of article 14.” In this way, it clung to the statement of the Magna Carta that states that “Spanish people are equal before the law, without any discrimination due to birth, race, sex, religion, opinion or any other personal or social condition or circumstance.” ».
“You cannot discriminate against an LGTBI citizen,” stated the head of Equality, convinced that it is not possible to “require that they choose either their faith or their sexual condition.” “This is clearly discriminatory,” he stressed. What’s more, in his speech he went one step further: “I hope that there is a complaint that reaches the Constitutional Court and that it is the one that clarifies this matter that is clear to me.”
“The relationship between faith and ideological freedom and conscience is not being treated in the same way,” he lamented, and even commented that Article 16 could be violated: “A citizen cannot be required to decide whether he or she has religious freedom.” and of conscience or if he has freedom in his sexual condition. “It is a weighing of rights that the Constitutional Court will have to assess,” he insisted. For Redondo, “there is no law as such that prohibits ecclesiastical rules today, but these ecclesiastical rules have to be interpreted in the light of the Constitution and in the light of the principle of equality.”
Asked about the measures that the Government can adopt, in addition to her desire for the matter to be judicialized, she revealed that “what we are doing and are going to do next week is to meet with the Episcopal Conference” in order to “generate a dialogue and also express our criteria.
From the Spanish Episcopate, in response to questions from LA RAZÓN, they confirm that the minister has already requested this meeting. In relation to the unconstitutional nature of the veto on communion, legal sources close to the Spanish bishops explain that “we are facing an exclusively internal issue of the Catholic Church”, while “the Constitution proclaims the non-denominational nature of the Spanish State.” «This implies the duty of neutrality of public powers in religious matters. Furthermore, the Spanish State guarantees the free exercise of the activity of all religious confessions, including the Catholic Church, and their right to self-organize, establish their own norms and principles, or propose their doctrine, all with immunity from coercion and without interference. by public powers,” they point out.
“Bringing this matter to the Constitutional Court has absolutely no possible path,” says a specialist in civil and canon law, who refers to the Religious Freedom Law, which “expressly” includes “the organizational autonomy of the religious confessions” that they protect. all European democracies. This expert recognizes that the decision adopted in Segovia “may hurt us, and may be pastorally questionable, but in the Church there are rules that apply to all the faithful, regardless of their sexual identity.” “The opposite would be an inadmissible interference by the State, which has an obligation of absolute neutrality in religious matters, in the life of the confessions,” says the scholar on the matter, who delves even deeper into the debate: “Would it be conceivable that tomorrow “Does the Constitutional Court have to rule and force a seminary or a religious institute to admit a woman to priestly ordination in application of article 14 of the Spanish Constitution?”
In this sense, he develops that the approval to take communion “is a moral question, of living in an irregular situation, which applies to everyone, whether a gay or heterosexual couple.” This was also stated in the statement issued by the Bishopric of Segovia after the case of the Basardilla couple came to the fore: “Following the regulations of the universal Church on the reception of Holy Communion, the priest has been forced to deny communion to people of the same sex who live according to the marital mode, which can also occur between heterosexual people without a marriage bond.
In fact, the vision of the Castilian Diocese is diametrically opposed to that of the Minister of Equality, as it defends that its prohibition “is neither homophobia nor discrimination, given that communion is not denied due to the homosexual condition, but rather to defend the sacred character of the Eucharist.