Where Did All The Catholics Go?

Where Did the Catholics Go?
Roman Catholicism is the largest denomination of Christianity present in Spain today.1 Most Spaniards do not participate in regular religious worship. Only 15% go tomass every Sunday, according to the Spanish Center of Sociological Research.2 Agnosticism and Atheism are becoming more and more popular in Spain. 17% of Spaniards do not believe that there is anytype of spirit, God, or life force.
The country of Spain has always been highly influenced by religion. It was born out of the religious struggle between Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, andProtestantism. By the 1830s, religious freedom was denied in practice, if not in theory. Catholicism became the state religion in 1851. Francisco Franco played a major role in the religion in Spain. In 1926,he became the youngest general of Spain and he believed that he was sent by God. Shortly after, a republic was set up in Spain and the monarchy was done away with.
Changes in the social meaning ofreligious vocations were perhaps part of the problem; having a priest in the family no longer seemed to spark the kind of pride that family members would have felt in the past. The principal reason inmost cases though, was the church's continued ban on marriage for priests.
Another sign of the church's declining role in Spanish life was the diminishing importance of the controversial secularreligious institute, Opus Dei. Opus Dei was a worldwide lay religious body that did not adhere to any particular political philosophy and was allegedly nonpolitical. The organization was founded in 1928by a Spanish priest, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer y Albas, as a reaction to the increasing secularization of Spain's universities, and higher education continued to be one of the institute's foremostpriorities. Despite its public commitment to a nonpolitical stance; Opus Dei members rose to occupy key positions in the Franco regime, especially in the field of economic policy-making in the late...