Spanish bishops approve new framework for relations with State

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
SPAIN'S bishops voted at the weekend to approve a document setting up a framework for relations between the Church and the Spanish State. Church sources said the bishops had voted by 59-20 to approve the 43-page document — thus obtaining the necessary twothirds majority to make it official Church policy.
But the Church authoi;Lies have insisted that the document should remain secret until it has been presented to the Spanish Government and approved by Pope Paul. They said it argued for an increased septuvtion of Church and State.
It called on the State to renounce its power to approve the appointment of bishops, in return for which the Church would be willing to abandon its rights to political representation.
But it suggested no concrete formula for revising the Church's economic dependence on the State, though it suggested the Church should have more control over its own purse-strings.
'HOLY DYNAMITE'
The bishops also called for a revision of the 1953 Concordat between the Spanish Church and the Vatican, which they described as outdated. The document stresses throughout the bishops' desire to follow the guideline of the Vatican Council: "Church and State are independent and autonomous — each with its own territory."
It was largely the Council's guidelines which provoked the plenary assembly of Spanish priests and bishops to vote in 1971 for a wide-ranging programme of political and social reform. Part of the programme included the complete separation of Church and State.
State.
A few days before the bishops' vote the Spanish Foreign Minister, Signor Gregorio Lopez, Bravo, made a flying visit to Pope Paul, apparently to defuse what had been called "the holy dynamite under Franco's throne."
Signor Lopez Bravo described his talk with the Pope as "cordial and positive," and *said it consisted of "a broad examination of the questions interesting the Church and the Spanish State."