After Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s interview on El Hormiguero—in which the PP leader once again expressed support for the current abortion legislation—Bishop José Ignacio Munilla has once again chosen to attack VOX. He did so by circulating a video of a deputy from that party whose remarks were almost immediately qualified and disavowed by the party’s own leadership. Apparently, it is easier to build criticism around an individual statement that was publicly corrected than around the official position of a political party. The goal, once again, is to place Feijóo—an abortion-supporting leader who disregards the life of the unborn in prime time—on the same level as the only party that, with greater or lesser success, has tried to translate the defense of life into concrete measures.
Bishop Munilla may deeply dislike VOX’s leaders, their style, or certain political stances, but intellectual honesty requires judging each one by what they actually uphold. The reality is that VOX remains the only Spanish political party that maintains an unequivocally pro-life position and that defends, as a political horizon, a progressive reduction of abortion with the declared aim of reaching a situation of zero abortions. One may debate the strategy, consider it insufficient or too gradual, but equating that stance with those who defend or maintain the current abortion legislation simply does not correspond to the facts.
In January 2023, the government of Castilla y León, at Vox’s initiative, approved a set of pro-life measures: strengthened psychological support for pregnant women, a protocol allowing parents to hear the fetal heartbeat, the offer of a 4D ultrasound, and protection for healthcare workers’ conscientious objection. Measures that any Catholic should applaud. And where did they receive one of their loudest attacks? On COPE, the radio station of the Episcopal Conference.
On Herrera en COPE, the flagship program of the bishops’ network (Munilla’s included), its totem Carlos Herrera dismissed the controversy in his eight o’clock monologue as “unjustified” and suggested it “served the government perfectly to dodge responsibility for the disaster caused by the ‘only yes means yes’ law.” Ignacio Camacho described the initiative as “VOX’s overacting” and “political marketing, an ideological bait to gain prominence.” Other panelists finished the job: they called it “a candy,” designed “more for the PSOE than for its own electorate.” The conclusion broadcast from the bishops’ radio was, in short, that proposing and approving pro-life measures was little more than a provocation that played into the left’s hands.
In theory, COPE’s own editorial line states that the network “will not be neutral, but committed, in everything concerning the protection, integral development, and defense of human life, from the maternal womb to the last heartbeat.” From the maternal womb to the last heartbeat. And when someone finally put on the table a protocol so that a mother could hear, precisely, that heartbeat, the network’s highest-rated program aggressively dismissed it.
Nor is this an isolated case. On TRECE, the bishops’ television channel, philosopher Quintana Paz, who collaborated as a panelist, was confronted and ultimately removed for pointing out inconsistencies in the defense of life. In other words, the episcopal media outlet does not sideline those who compromise with abortion, but rather those who dare to denounce lukewarmness in defending the unborn.
The bishops, now so exquisitely equidistant, possess the country’s leading radio station and a television channel, with a social reach that is hard to match. A colossal instrument for sowing the culture of life so often invoked: to reach people, grow, be explained, and spread—the only serious path, the Polish path of awareness-raising, to truly reverse the abortionist mentality. And what is done with that megaphone? Ridicule the fetal heartbeat and sideline those who demand pro-life consistency. Meanwhile, abortion legislation has been normalized and defended. A media structure that, moreover, is not free of nepotism and family connections between employees and members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy who then lecture on pro-life purity.
The Gospel is harsh on those who point out the speck in their brother’s eye without noticing the beam in their own: “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Mt 7:3). And the beam, in this case, is at home: in a radio station and a television channel that the Church itself owns, directs, and finances, and from which an immense good could be done for the unborn. Whoever has such means at their disposal and uses them to ridicule the heartbeat of a child or to sideline those who denounce pro-life lukewarmness is in no position to lecture anyone on purity, least of all those who have spent their entire lives defending life from conception.
Therefore, Bishop Munilla should moderate his reprimands from the digital pulpit. Not because the truth about life admits half-measures—it does not—but because moral authority is not exercised by always pointing outward, toward the only party that has tried to promote effective pro-life measures and that maintains as its declared horizon the progressive reduction of abortion until its disappearance. It is exercised, first and foremost, by ordering one’s own witness. And as long as the Church’s main radio and television stations in Spain do not give a clear pro-life witness—and as long as they confront and sideline those who demand it—the sermons against VOX will continue to sound like the beam in one’s own eye.