on 19 JUNE 2004

We recommend reading it thoroughly, because it is a real eye-opener.

1. Concordats are agreements between a church and a state. The Roman Catholic Church tries to make concordats with any state wherever and whenever this becomes politically possible. However, other powerful churches also enter into concordats, such as the Lutheran Church in Germany and the Orthodox Church in Georgia and if a future concordat is signed between the Vatican and the Czech Republic, even the Seventh Day Adventists have said that they want one, too. [1]

2. Concordats differ in detail from state to state, as they codify the already existing church privileges - and try to add a few more, as well. The churches like to claim that these agreements are innocuous, because they mostly just restate what is on the law books already.

3. However, this argument is a red herring. For in a democratic country there is always the possibility of any privilege being revoked if circumstances change. But the main point of a concordat is to remove church privileges from democratic control. It does this by means of a contract which cannot be altered except by mutual consent. All other laws are under parliamentary control and can be amended by it. Because one of the parties to a concordat is a church, it is hardly going to be willing to give up any of its privileges.

4. Concordats are signed by the two parties before they are ratified by parliament. Whether or not international treaties are normally made in this way, it raises two problems:
a) Firstly, it “trivialises” the content of the concordat: members of parliament are asked to ratify a fait accompli and this tends to reinforce what the church is proclaiming anyway, that the whole thing is merely a matter of form, a simple matter of tidying up and modernising earlier legal arrangements; and
b) secondly, this retroactive vote can be used to place time constraints on the parliamentarians: in the case of the Brandenburg Concordat the vote was scheduled for two days after the signing, which allowed busy members of parliament insufficient time to read it over thoroughly and seek expert legal counsel. [2]

5. In Georgia, too the contents of the concordat with the Vatican was also kept secret. However, at the last minute, when the Vatican Foreign Minister had already arrived to sign it, the event was called off .This cancellation appears to have been due less to democratic scruples, than to opposition from the Orthodox Church, which already had a concordat with the state and didn’t want similar privileges granted to a rival. [3]

Concordat refused

6. The only example of true democratic resistance to a concordat of which we are aware was in the Czech Republic. Two reasons have been cited for this:
a) The first reason is historical. The martyr death of Jan Hus on 6 July 1415 at the Roman Catholic council convened in Constance started the Czech Reformation, which reached its climax in the 17th century when about 90% of the population professed reformed and evangelical creeds. The violent Counter-Reformation that followed was, to borrow the words of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a horrible event not just in the history of the Czech nation but the in the history of mankind as well. Thus the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 meant liberation from the oppression by the Habsburg coalition with the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church.
b) The second reason for this situation was that the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church took advantage of the renewal of democracy in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and used it for the satisfaction of their material needs. As a result all the realties [real estate] formerly owned by the society were transformed into private church property. The expertise prepared by the Faculty of Law of Charles University reached the conclusion that the so-called restitution of church property was in fact a donation of [real estate] by the state to churches and religious communities.” [4]
Due to this background, even after the concordat had been signed, the Czech parliamentarians staunchly refused to ratify it. [5]

Latest putsch – and the reasons for it

7. In Germany there has recently been a rush by both Catholic and Lutheran churches to push through concordats with all of the country’s sixteen states. One reason for this is clear. Church membership is declining and the churches can no longer claim to represent the majority of the German population. This is an embarrassment for churches, which have traditionally justified their power and privileges on the grounds that they were “the [German] people’s church” (Volkskirche) and as such wielded the moral authority that Germans accord to “the group”.

8. A concordat offers the churches a way out of the problem of declining membership. It enables them to get around the inconvenient principle of majority rule, for it is an agreement which can be entered into by parliament, but not be unilaterally altered, let alone cancelled by it. A concordat is thus the churches’ way of extending its privileges, including massive state subsidies, even as its membership is decreasing – and also of locking these payments in. For with a concordat there is no realistic possibility of reducing the state contribution - ever.

9. However, a second and more ominous reason has been suggested for the Vatican’s rush to make concordats with all the countries of the European Union at both the state and national levels. The church wants to codify these privileges quickly, so that they can be cast in stone by Article 51 of the new European Constitution.

10. “When Article 51 says the European Union will respect ‘the various forms of relationships between the Churches and the States’, that means that it will protect them by integrating them in the Community Law which is superior to the various national regulations. When the ratification of this constitution is achieved, all forms of relationship between religions and the States, i.e. the concordats, established Churches and State religions, the clerical statute of Alsace - Moselle, the Church taxes, the offence of blasphemy, all that will be integrated in the Community Law.

11. “From now on, when a nation wants to repeal a concordat - be it Bonapartist, Hitlerian, pro-Franco, Mussolinian or Salazarist - in order to do so in legal conformity with the European Law, the agreement of the 25 countries will be made compulsory, in the same way as when they want to modify the European constitution. That is to say, it is an impossible task.”

12. “That is why the Vatican is urging in all Europe to endorse Concordats before the final ratification of the European constitution. This is the result : over the 25 Member States or future member States of the European Union, 14 member States have a Concordat with the Vatican. And most of the other Member States have established religions!” [6]

Conclusion

13. A concordat does three things:
a) Firstly, it installs a ratchet, which legally cements present privileges and tries to slip in a few additional ones;
b) Secondly, and even more ominously, it means that these privileges, including massive state subsidies, can never again be brought under democratic control; and
c) Thirdly, a concordat sets up a theological fiefdom where certain Human Rights do not apply – and where they can never again be reintroduced without the consent of the church. In short, concordats represent a fundamental threat to both democracy and Human Rights. No wonder the churches try to keep them far from public scrutiny.

14. Article 51 of the proposed European Constitution effectively ratifies all these concordats at the state and national levels once again and gives them the further protection of the European Constitution.

15. Article 51 is, in a way, a concordat itself as it recognizes the right for churches to intervene in the European law-making process ( in the democratic life of the EU institutions). Having failed to scuttle Article 51, we now need to focus on raising awareness about concordats and preventing more of them.

References

[1] CZECH REPUBLIC: ADVENTISTS CONTINUE TO SEEK OWN AGREEMENT WITH STATE: by ANN staff, 4 November, 2003 Prague, Czech Republic http://news.adventist.org/data/2003/10/1067958815/index.html.en

[2] MAUSEFALLEN-STRATEGIE: Zu den Haken des Konkordats zwischen dem Land Brandenburg und dem Hl. Stuhl: by Prof. (em.) Johannes Neumann http://www.jungewelt.de/public...php/drucken_popup.php

[3] GEORGIA BACKS AWAY FROM SIGNING TREATY WITH THE VATICAN: by Giorgi Kandelaki, 26 September, 2003 http://www.eurasianet.org/departme...nsight/articles/eav092603_pr.shtml

[4] STATE OF THE COMMUNITY OF NON-DENOMINATIONAL CITIZENS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC [undated] http://slovakia.humanists.net/czechia_rprt.htm

[5] NOW THE CZECHS SIGN A CONCORDAT: The Tablet, 3 August 2002

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00086

VATICAN-CZECH CONCORDAT STALLED: by CWNews, Vatican, 17 February, 2003

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=27712

[6] EUROPEAN RALLY FOR SECULARISM http://www.iheu.org/european_rally_for_secularism.htm

This working draft was prepared by NSS volunteer Muriel Fraser, to whom we are indebted, specifically for the GA. Any suggested updates, additions or corrections should be sent to research@secularism.org.uk