By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Feb 11 2005 (IPS)

In the 1965 film "Signore e signori" (released in the U.S. as the Birds, the Bees and the Italians) by Italian director Pietro Germi, a Catholic priest gives assurances in his sermon that "The Church doesn’t get involved in politics, but it urges you to vote for a party that is both Democratic and Christian."

This scene is not a fictional one in Portugal, but comes straight out of the current debate over the early parliamentary elections scheduled for Feb. 20.

Ahead of the elections, the Catholic Church decided to send out a moral message to the country’s 8.9 million voters, suggesting they vote for parties "that defend the right to life".

Critics complain that this message was an attempt at inducing the electorate to vote for the conservative governing Social Democratic Party (PSD) or the ultra-nationalist Social Democratic Centre (CDS).

Both the PSD and the CDS defend the country’s law on abortion, the least flexible in the 25-member European Union (EU).

The Church’s message was expressed Monday by a spokesman for the Lisbon bishops, priest Agostinho Jardim Gonçalves, when he said in a broadcast by the Catholic radio station Renascença that the bishops were calling on the Portuguese to vote in keeping with their religious principles.

These principles, of "defence of life" and against abortion, are frequently mentioned by Lisbon Cardinal José Policarpo.

But this time they have taken on a special dimension, since opinion polls indicate that the right-wing parties will only win around 38 percent of the vote, and that the secretary-general of the Socialist Party (PS), José Sócrates, will become the new prime minister – most likely with an absolute majority in the single-chamber parliament.

In December, President Jorge Sampaio called early legislative elections after declaring that he had lost confidence in then-prime minister Pedro Santana Lopes, the PSD leader who replaced José Manuel Durao Barroso (current president of the European Commission) in July.

The first to react to the Church’s recommendation to voters was the leader of the Left Bloc (BI), Francisco Louça. "A country where there is a religious norm that aims to impose a vote is a country without religious freedom," he said.

Nevertheless, the leader of the party that is farthest to the left on the Portuguese political spectrum added that he was confident that "every Christian will vote according to his or her conscience and no one is the owner of that conscience, because this is the only way that it is possible to live in democracy."

It is "an act of authoritarianism to believe that someone can impose their will on or determine the vote of free citizens," said Louça, who added that to do so amounts to "looking down on Catholics themselves."

Political analysts agree that the incident could generate some friction between the Church and Catholics who believe in freedom of choice and in a lay state, as guaranteed by the Portuguese constitution.

The CDS came out Wednesday in defence of the Church, saying the left "does not have any legitimacy to criticise a priest who warned that in politics, voters need to reach a decision that is coherent with their religious beliefs."

The Communist Party openly shares the BI’s position on abortion, and the PS is divided between its traditional support base and a more conservative wing, to which Sócrates himself belongs.

But the entire Portuguese left, although it is not presenting a united front in the elections, criticised what the Church had done.

With nearly 60 percent ratings in the polls, the Portuguese left is proportionately the strongest in the EU.

On Jun. 28, 1998, conservative sectors carried the day in a national referendum on abortion, in large part due to a public statement in favour of the ban on abortion made by then prime minister Antonio Guterres of the PS.

Politicians and intellectuals on the left and more liberal sectors of the PSD had pushed for the referendum with the aim of pulling Portugal out of the ranks of EU countries with the strictest laws against abortion, which include Ireland and Poland.

But while those two countries also have tough anti-abortion laws, Portugal is the only EU country where women who undergo abortions (including rape victims) can be sentenced to up to three years in prison, after the public humiliation of being tried.

The left, including Catholic currents within the PS, want to make the law more flexible and adopt legislation in line with that of the rest of the EU. But that aim has clashed with the conservative position of the CDS, which attempted in 2002 to introduce in the constitution the concept that the fetus is a separate legal entity.

Portugal’s bishops conference (CEP) has merely stated that its position is reflected in an official statement it released last December.

At that time, the CEP had urged citizens to judge the solutions proposed by the government on the basis of their fairness, viability, coherence with human dignity and respect for life.

And for Christians, the statement added, the criteria to be used in such evaluations are to be found in "the Gospel and the Church’s social doctrine."

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