Queer Spain & It's Nominal Catholics

Catholic Spain okays gay unions
Britain’s Methodist Church also gives its blessing

That's the headlines that announces this sad news in Today newspaper. And "HUH?" is the reaction I got from Adrian, who's at my place checking email as I'm typing this, when he saw the headline. Only when I said, it's Spain that has given it the OK, not the Catholic church, then he was a bit more relieved.

But then again, it really calls to question what the headline really implies. Spain is a country where 90+% of the population is supposedly Catholic. And when the papers put a statement like "Public opinion polls suggest that the majority of Spaniards, who describe themselves as Catholic, are in favour of gay marriages."what does that mean.

Our Holy Father, has spoken out against this current culture that Europe is moving or has adopted even before he became Pope. In his latest book, which was just launched, one of the statements was

"Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner unknown by humanity until now, excludes God from the public conscience,"

There was another article in Zenit, but I can't seem to find it, which the Pope talks about religious freedom, but that Europe has move towards freedom from religion. And in a sense I think Singapore might also be moving in that direction.

Which was why I put "Nominal Catholics" in the title. The website that I found the statistic on the Catholic population of Spain, stated that the population was 90+% nominal Catholic. And the meaning of Nominal is "Existing in name only". Or as Colin Ong says, hereditary religion. No wonder they can pass such laws.

So the question for us in Singpore, is are we nominal Catholics. Are we going to wait for this issue to come up before we do something about it? Or are we even convinced that it's something to take a stand on? It may not affect us, but we can't just care about things that affect our lives. It's so easy to be reactive, but by that time it will be too late. This issue is going to keep knocking on our doors. Spain is the fourth, France looks like it's going to follow suit. We are already starting to be more "open" about it.

To end off, to those who didn't study in australia...the reason why I used the word queer in the title, is because in australian unis, they have queer clubs. Or maybe just melbourne uni... But these queer clubs are for "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex,..." I still don't understand why they would choose a word like queer to identify with. Maybe cos the whole concept is as queer to me as it is to them. I wonder if they are happy being gay?