Do you know what a Concordat is?

Posted: Mon, 21st Oct 2013 by N/A

Concordats are a little known tool of the Vatican to impose its dogma in to the public square. They are anti-democratic and anti-secular and, as Anne Marie Waters argues, are having a serious impact on the safety and health of millions of women.

Do you know what a Concordat is?

Sometimes you think nothing can surprise you anymore – but I am quite happy to say that I am still shockable, particularly when it comes to sheer effrontery of the Vatican.

I recently came across the website www.concordatwatch.eu – read it, it's quite the eye-opener.

I am, and have long been, heavily involved in secular campaigning but I didn't know any of this, and I suspect many others don't either; so out of interest - do you know what a concordat is?

Just in case you don't. Here is a run-down.

A concordat is a contract between the Vatican (conveniently operating as a nation-state as opposed to a church on these occasions) and a compliant country or state. I say country or state because it is important to understand that isn't a contracting government that is bound, but the country (or state) itself, and therefore all subsequent governments.

It is a contract that can only end by mutual consent, meaning only when the Vatican decides it; and when you consider the privilege concordats provide for the church, that is highly unlikely to happen. By virtue of its double role as both a church and a state, concordats are unique to the Vatican and have the status of international treaties. No other agreement between a religious institution and a government enjoys such prestige. International treaties generally override domestic law, making it difficult for subsequent governments to throw out these agreements. For example, and this arose in Slovakia, a government can give a fixed percentage in funds to the church in a concordat, and may never be able to change that percentage – regardless of the position of the church in society, or the financial situation of the government.

Concordats have also been used to ensure the Catholic Church's tax exemption. For example, the controversial Slovak concordat of 2000 ensures that church offertories are "not subject to taxation or to the requirement of public accountability". Of course not.

Finances are far from the only places where concordats have influence. Schools across the world maintain a Catholic ethos often as a result of concordats requiring them to do so. In Portugal in 2004, the government there signed a concordat allowing the Church "the right to found and run schools of education and training of all levels in accordance with Portuguese law, without being subjected to any form of discrimination". This is accompanied by a clause which "guarantees the conditions necessary to ensure, within the terms of Portuguese law, the teaching of Religion and Catholic Morality in public educational institutions at the secondary level, without any form of discrimination". This concordat bypassed the normal democratic process of parliamentary discussion of individual clauses prior to being signed and ratified. Instead, according to Concordat watch, the Portuguese concordat (and later the Brazilian one, too) were signed secretly in the Vatican, making the terms unalterable. Then the legislators were faced with a yes-or-no choice on the ratification vote. Politically they could hardly dump the whole treaty with the Holy Father, so this manoeuvre ensured that the concordat went through unexamined and unchanged.

In Croatia in 2011, a similar agreement was reached which allowed the Catholic Church to claim its right to establish schools and to specify the obligations of the state, including teachers' salaries. It even fixes norms for enrolment, the type of instruction offered, and the appointment of school directors.

A contentious agreement in Brazil a couple of years earlier gave similar power to the church to evangelise and indoctrinate at tax-payers' expense. This concordat had been opposed by various high profile legal groups – including the Association of Brazilian Magistrates – and indeed by many lawmakers. It was the clause on religious education that caused the greatest alarm because, as in other countries, clause 11 obliged the state to fund – through its own schools – the teaching of the Catholic catechism.

Perhaps it should be obvious that when a church is permitted by an unbreakable treaty to teach "Catholic Morality" to children, serious questions will be asked as to what exactly is meant by "Catholic Morality". Concordat watch doesn't shy away from providing a few opinions.

As someone who went to a Catholic school myself, my guess is that pupils regularly find themselves lectured on the evils of contraception and, more especially, abortion. Concordat watch concurs. As it so brilliantly states:

"The Vatican knows that the best way to control a woman is to burden her with more children than she feels able to cope with. Almost a century ago Pope Pius XI stressed that married women must be "fruitful" and "obedient". Nowadays "fruitfulness" is called "giving life" and "obedience" in Vatican-speak becomes "true freedom". Regardless of what they're called, fruitfulness leads to obedience, as a woman worn out with childbearing will be more docile and her children will serve as hostages. Her inability to leave may even turn into acceptance. Psychologists have found that "the less control people feel over their own lives, the more they come to endorse systems and leaders that offer a sense of order".

This matters, and it has a real impact. In Brazil, whether the government is legally obliged to allow the Vatican to dictate morality in schools, abortion remains illegal in most circumstances. Though it is technically legal in some cases, according to Monida Arango, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights "most women in Brazil will never be able to get a legal abortion. Even in cases of rape and when the mother's life is in danger it is very difficult".

A 2010 study revealed that, despite the law, 22% of Brazilian women had had abortions and 50% of those had been hospitalised due to complications. Various polls also show that the vast majority of Brazilians want the law to stay as it is. The education system without doubt has a massive impact on this prevailing view.

As Concordat watch points out, the war against contraception is not over either; the Vatican has simply changed tack. In going after women's sexual freedom, "it's more strategic to attack abortion than contraception. This is why churchmen claim that morning-after pills and IUDs are "abortificient". Vatican envoy Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski has even told the Worth Health Organisation that emergency contraception is a "direct attack" on the life of "the unborn child". Apparently, the Archbishop knows better than most scientists who say that these methods work by preventing fertilisation".

One of the most astounding Concordat watch also reveals the astonishing facts in fact the Slovak government fell following the refusal of the Slovak Foreign Minister to sign the controversial "conscience concordat" and this prompted the Christian Democrats to pull out of the coalition.

Concordat watch is arranged by country, and clicking on the country concerned gives the — often considerable — detail. Germany is a particular eye-opener.

Concordats have been made with many an unsavoury character over the years, including Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and Jean-Claude Duvalier – to name but a few. They've attacked women's rights through education, avoided the tax-man, and duped Parliaments with shady methods of legislative passage. They are anti-democratic and anti-secular; they profoundly undermine the notion of the separation of church and state by binding governments (and successive governments) to contracts which allow an effective Catholic supremacy to take hold in vital areas of public life.

As Concord watch concludes, "These church-state accords give the church massive state subsidies and other privileges. They can effectively force liberal Catholics to observe orthodoxy, and can disadvantage non-Catholics as well".

That, I would say, is putting it rather mildly.