MADRID, Spain, February 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera said Wednesday that “the biggest threat now facing humanity is gender ideology.”
Speaking in Valencia to campaign in defense of Catholic education in Spain, Cardinal Cañizares said the freedom of religion is “basic to a society living in authentic peace and coexisting in liberty.” He said the tendency of government in Valencia and nationally threatens freedom in education. The Spanish constitution does not recognize a state religion, but the Catholic faith, under Church authorities, is taught in private schools subsidized by the government. The Spanish constitution also guarantees that parents have the right to choose the education they feel is best for their children.
Cardinal Cañizares emphasized what he sees as the government’s threat to liberty. “We must defend liberty,” he told listeners, “We don’t want to be slaves as in Venezuela. We want to be free, completely free, and this is what the campaign is about.” He said the Church is joining the campaign to “defend basic freedoms” because it is “not the state which grants that freedom as a grace to parents.”
Where he was most vocal was Spain’s policy regarding gender. “The biggest threat now facing mankind is precisely the threat posed by the gender law and gender ideology,” he said. Saying it will lead to “the deterioration of our humanity,” Cardinal Cañizares urged listeners to mobilize.
Laws passed by the provincial legislature, ostensibly to protect the LGBTQ community, are an assault on freedom, the cardinal said, and are “a Stalinist nature.” Gender laws “dictatorially impose gender ideology at all levels of education and clearly penalize the various levels of educational institutions, parents, families and so forth.”
Cardinal Cañizares joined the campaign to resist the government that bears the hashtag “Yoelijo” (I choose) and represents 150,000 families and 700 schools in the province of Valencia. Having determined that the current government’s plan violates the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Spanish constitution, its supporters are campaigning under the motto: “Without education in liberty, there is no democracy.”
In November 2018, Valencia’s provincial legislature passed a bill that prohibits therapy to turn a person’s orientation away from homosexuality or transgender identity. Fines of as much as 120,000 euros can be imposed on violators of the new law.
Gender ideology is found outside of the Socialist party. In 2018, Spain’s erstwhile Minister of Health, Social Services and Equality Dolors Montserrat said she wants every school to have an educator to promote feminism and measures against “machismo” and “gender violence.” The provinces of Andalucia and Valencia already provide these “co-educators” to schools, which Montserrat wants to impose nationally. Montserrat is a member of the right-of-center People’s Party, which was voted out of office in June 2018.
Cardinal Cañizares has been vocal in the past to threats to believers. In August 2018, for instance, he said in a homily that never before in history has the Church been so harassed in Spain.