American Catholics and religious intolerance in Franco's Spain

Résumé

During Vatican II, American bishops and theologians played a decisive role in drafting the historic declaration Dignitatis humanae. American Catholics had become increasingly persuaded of the Church's urgent need to openly endorse religious freedom as a human and civil right. They did so primarily because they had experienced firsthand liberty's advantages with regard to the Church's development in America. However, they were also continuously challenged by their fellow Protestant and secularist countrymen who pointed out the inconsistency of their feelings about freedom and their Church's official teachings. In this context, during the twenty years that preceded the Vatican Council, American discussions on religious freedom and church-state separation were often confronted with the situation of religious minorities in the officially Catholic Francoist Spain. News about Spanish religious intolerance thus became part of the big discussion about the 'Americanness' of the Catholic religion.