Church eases grip on Spain teachers

Catholic church unlawfully sacked Resurrección Galera from school for marrying divorcee, Spain’s constitutional court rules Spain’s Roman Catholic church has lost control over the personal lives of religion teachers in state schools after the country’s highest court ruled that they cannot be sacked for disobeying Vatican rules on marriage. In an historic decision, the constitutional court ruled that Resurrección Galera could not be fired for marrying a divorcee. The decision prevents the church, which controls the hiring and firing of religion teachers in Spain, from dismissing teachers who do not follow Catholic precepts in their relationships. The ruling that Galera’s marriage bore “no relation to the plaintiff’s work as a teacher” overturned the decisions of lower courts who backed the church. “The truly important thing is that these men cannot get away with this and treat people as if they were in the age of the inquisition,” Galera, a practising Catholic who was referring to the country’s bishops, told El País. Several hundred teachers of religion have reportedly been fired for similar reasons over the past decade. Some have won court cases against the church, with either the Spanish state or the church itself forced to pay compensation. The constitutional court’s decision establishes a precedent for the lower courts in similar cases. “We have been informed that you are living with a married man. That is an unsustainable situation,” officials from the diocese of Almería told Galera when she was sacked in 2001 after seven years teaching at a state school in Los Llanos de la Cañada, south-east Spain. In fact, she had married a divorced Catholic who was waiting for an annulment of his previous marriage. For the past decade she has had to find other work, and set up a country guest house with her German husband. A lower court must now rule on whether she should be reinstated and receive compensation. Spain’s bishops enjoy control over the hiring of religion teachers, whose classes are optional, after an agreement signed with the Vatican in 1979. About 70% of Spanish families opt for their children to study what the church defines as “religion and catholic morals”, though numbers are declining. “The least one can ask of a teacher of the Roman Catholic religion is that she should believe in what she teaches,” the partly church-owned COPE radio station said in an editorial. Spain Catholicism Divorce Christianity Religion Europe Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.