每周阅读 第十周
文章链接：摘抄自《经济学人》In the past four decades of democracy Spain has become a secular society with astonishing speed, perhaps faster than anywhere else in Europe. But the Roman Catholic Church retains considerable influence in some areas of national life. In fact, that is unsurprising. In no country in Europe was the church as powerful for many centuries as it was in Spain. Its power provoked militant anticlericalism in a cultural conflict that was one of the roots of the Spanish civil war. Not coincidentally, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco embraced “national Catholicism” as its official ideology.But after the Second Vatican Council of 196265, sections of the church began to oppose the dictatorship. Agreements linked to the constitution of 1978 separated church and state, but acknowledged Spaniards’ religious faith.
Since then, public attitudes have changed fast. Religious observance has declined steeply, especially among the young. Surveys find that although 82% of respondents identified as Catholic in 2001, only half do now. Only around a fifth of Spaniards go to mass regularly—though that still amounts to almost 10m people. Not only has the number of marriages each year declined in the past decade, despite a growing population, but in 2019 only a fifth of weddings were in a church.
democracy n.民主，民主主义；民主政治
social democracy 社会主义；社会民主主义
liberal democracy自由民主
retain vt. 保持；雇；记住
Second Vatican Council第二次梵蒂冈会议
religious observance 宗教仪式
be identified as被认为是
respondents n. 回答者，调查对象
中文大意：在过去40年的民主发展进程中，西班牙以其惊人速度成为一个非宗教社会，其速度或许比欧洲其他任何地区都要快。但是罗马天主教堂对于关乎国际民生的某些领域仍发挥至关重要的作用。事实上，这不足为奇。几个世纪以来，欧洲没有哪个国家的教会能像西班牙的教会那样强大。教会力量壮大激起了反教权主义激进分子在文化领域的冲突，该冲突的根源在于西班牙内战。无独有偶，弗朗西斯科·佛朗哥的独裁政府将“国家天主教主义”作为其官方意识形态。但是在第二次梵蒂冈大公会议（1962-1965）后，教会开始反对独裁统治。与1978年宪法的相关协议将政教分离，但承认西班牙人的宗教信仰。
从此以后，公众对于宗教的态度迅速转变。宗教礼仪急剧衰退，尤其是在年轻人中。2021年，据调查显示有82%的受访者为罗马天主教徒，现在只有一半的人。只有大约五分之一的西班牙人定期参加集会— 尽管这一数字仍接近1000万。在过去的十年里，尽管人口总数不断增长，但是每年的结婚人数却不断下降，在2019年仅有五分之一的婚礼是在教堂举办的。
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