Concordat - Criticism

Criticism

From a Church-State perspective, the contentions regarding Concordats involves two perspectives. From a Catholic perspective, the Church has the moral and theological right to enter into diplomatic relations with states in order to reach agreements regarding the care of its members residing there. This is the concept of libertas ecclesiastica (freedom of the Church). However, from a non-Catholic perspective (NOT an anti-Catholic perspective), this poses certain concerns regarding religious freedom, such as: 1) Concordats give to the Church a privileged position that other religious groups are denied (European history in numerous books reveals this fact), 2) Concordats are not "the same as treaties" because they are entered into by an entity that is BOTH religious and political in nature, viz., the Catholic Church, whereas any other treaty is between two sovereign entities on a horizontal level, i.e., purely political in nature, and 3) depending on the negotiations agreed upon in the Concordat, some religious groups face the threat of being marginalized (example: in Spain, although the Constitution guarantees religious freedom (theoretically), yet in practice, the Church is mentioned by name and holds a pre-eminent position among other religious groups. In recent years, debate has occurred regarding whether the Spanish government should maintain a concordat with the Vatican.

Some concordats guarantee the Catholic Church the tax-exempt status of a charity, either stating this explicitly, as in Brazil (2008, Article 15) and Italy (1984, Article 7.3), or phrasing it indirectly, as in Portugal (2004, art. 12).

When the political will is present, such concordat privileges can be extended by domestic legislation. In 1992 the tax exemption granted the Church by the Italian concordat was interpreted by a law which permits the Catholic Church to avoid paying 90% of what it owes to the state for its commercial activities. Thus, a small shrine within the walls of a cinema, holiday resort, shop, restaurant or hotel is sufficient to confer religious exemption. In June 2007 Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition announced an investigation of this. Then, in August, the deputy finance minister in Romano Prodi’s fragile center-left coalition said the issue needed to be tackled in the next year's budget. However, after that nothing more about this was heard from the Barroso Commission and a few months later the Prodi government fell.

Another way to keep Church income untaxed is to keep it secret. The Slovak concordat (2000, art. 20.2) ensures that church offertories are “not subject to taxation or to the requirement of public accountability”. This is also the case in Côte d'Ivoire, where far larger sums are involved. The Basilica at Yamoussoukro, is estimated to have cost $300 million, and the additional running expenses for what is the largest church in the world are also shielded from scrutiny by the 1992 concordat concluded with the Ivorian dictator. Houphouët-Boigny claimed that these funds came from his private fortune. A Vatican official is reported to have called it the agreement over the foundation set up to administer these funds “a delicate matter”. This spending was heavily criticised, since in Côte d'Ivoire most people die before they reach the age of 50. Nevertheless, this concordat ensures that the foundation’s income and assets remain untaxed (art. 9.1), it holds these funds beyond the reach of both criminal and civil law (art. 7.1), it permits this money to be sent out of the country (art. 13.2) and it keeps all the foundation’s documents “inviolable”, in other words, secret (art. 8).

In Colombia there was a crisis between state and church in 1994 when Attroeny-General Gustavo de Greiff accused several Bishops of having illegal contacts with the Farc guerrillas. It turned out that under Columbia's concordat with the Holy See, members of the clergy could only be investigated by ecclesiastical courts which are ruled by canon law, and that the Bishops were therefore immune from investigation by the civil authorities on what many in Columbia considered to be a serious felony.