Concordat Strategy

These church-state accords generally give the Church massive state subsidies and other privileges. They also permit Church employees to be hounded about their private lives. Yet as “international treaties”, concordats bypass the democratic process, making parliaments powerless to modify, let alone revoke them.

“The Vatican is inserted into the international community because it is a state; once there, it behaves like a church.”[1]  By setting up three legal identities and then adroitly switching from one to another, the Vatican has obtained unprecedented legal rights and international influence. This article has been translated into Portuguese.

The Vatican tries to quietly elevate Chuch doctrine above human rights. It has not signed some human rights treaties and in some others has made “reservations” which keep it from having to comply. This strategy gives the Church leverage, prevents it from being held accountable for priestly abuse, and protects its courts from charges that they violate the right to a fair trial.

Authoritarianism concentrates power in one man or group.  It tends not to remain at the top, but to pervade society at all levels. Blind obedience comes to be seen as the necessary glue for keeping society together, and it is applauded by the mini-dictators throughout such a society. However, as recent research shows, a lack of power is deeply damaging to the individual.

Concordats have traditionally been made with rightwing governments, whether absolute monarchies or fascist dictatorships. However, only a quiet working arrangement has been made with authoritarian governments on the left, as these compete with the Church ideologically, rather than complementing it.  

Concordats can be a powerful tool for social control. These Vatican “treaties” can prohibit divorce, get a woman fired for remarrying or even deny her access to sex education and family planning. Concordats help keep women married and bearing children for the Church. Yet studies have shown that most Catholics worldwide disagree with many key Vatican doctrines — as do many priests.

Quotes from popes, prelates and critics give a lively look at Vatican concordats from many points of view.

This internal Vatican memo was dictated by Gregory VII near the beginning of his papacy. It sets an agenda for increasing papal power, and underlies the pope's demand that William the Conqueror pay him fealty. The English king's refusal helped shift the power struggle from outright Vatican sovereignty of Christian nations to Vatican control over their bishops, (the “investiture controversy”), and led to the earliest concordats.

Christoph Prantner of Der Standard offers this view from Austria, which has long experience of Church involvement in politics. The debate about Islam, he says, is also reviving political Catholicism. In Madrid, Paris and Rome the boundaries between church and state are becoming blurred, raising the danger of a return to theological politics.

This Canon (or Church) Law is the Christian counterpart to (Jewish) Halakha, Hindu Law and Sharia. Concordats enable thr Roman Catholic version of Canon Law to influence the lives of Church employees and those who must rely on Church-administered social service agencies....

A Swiss priest was forbidden to research or publish anything about Opus Dei until its founder was safely canonised. A Polish priest was banned from investigating or writing anything about clerical complicity with the Communist Secret Service. And countless others who never make it into the newspapers suffer the same fate. For they are bound by Canon Law, the Church regulations whose jurisdiction is guaranteed by many concordats.