Madrid, Spain, Sep 27, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Members of Spain’s Popular Party have rejected efforts to strip their statutes of a reference to “Christian humanism” as a philosophical source of the party.
The more than three thousand delegates that will participate in the 15th Popular Party Convention the first weekend of October refused to erase the reference to “Christian humanism” and substitute it with “Traditional Western humanism” in the party statutes, proposed through numerous amendments by Gabriel Elorriaga and Ana Pastor.
According to the proponents of the revised text, traditional western humanism is a more comprehensive term that incorporates, in addition to Christianity, the values of the Enlightenment, which have provided the foundation for the development of pluralistic democracies. Likewise, they argued, in other statutes of the Popular Party, led by former president Jose Maria Aznar, the phrase “traditional western humanism” was adopted almost two years ago.
Nevertheless, delegates rejected those arguments and voted to keep the reference to Christianity.