Brazil

Brazil's “separation clause”
Article 19 of the Constitution

The Union, the States, the Federal District and the municipalities are forbidden to:

I — establish religious sects or churches, subsidize them, hinder their activities, or maintain relationships of dependence or alliance with them or their representatives, without prejudice to collaboration in the public interest in the manner set forth by law;
II — refuse to honour public documents;
III — create distinctions between Brazilians or preferences favouring some.

Hearings set for Brazilian “stealth concordat”

In a surprise announcement last week it was revealed that on July 1 there will be Congressional hearings in Brasilia on the concordat signed last November. This has thwarted the attempts of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference ten days ago to have the agreement rushed to a vote under an emergency procedure for urgent matters of national defence.

It’s the latest twist in a story that began with the announcement in November that Brazil’s President Luiz (“Lula”) da Silva would be stopping by the Vatican “on the way to Washington”. However, this turned out to be more than a courtesy call. Once there the President was ushered into the Vatican’s “Treaty Room” where he signed a concordat. The Brazilian Government at first dismissed it as an “administrative agreement”. In the words of a Brazilian editor, “There were hugs, there were blessings, there were pictures — but no statement on what was dealt with between the President and the Pontiff”.

Critics note that this agreement appears to be a wedge which finds pretexts to introduce a number of basic legal principles that undermine the secular state.

● The concordat imports foreign law into Brazil by stipulating that Canon (or Church) Law be used in Catholic institutions. Because this includes Church-run social services, concordats act to impose Canon Law on both their lay employees and their clients. In Germany this is a widespread problem, particularly acute for anyone, like gays or the divorced, whose private life does not accord with Canon Law.

● The concordat also acts as a foot in the door to proselytise children in state schools. In Poland it only took twenty years for the establishment of voluntary unpaid catechism in state schools to be transformed bit by bit into lessons in Catholic doctrine which, in much of the country, has become effectively compulsory, is now paid for by the state and even counts in the grade average.

● The agreement commits Brazil to huge payments to the Vatican. It obligates the Brazilian taxpayer to subsidise Church schools, to underwrite Catholic charities and to maintain Church buildings. At the same time it grants the Catholic Church unspecified tax immunity and even certain exemptions from Brazilian labour laws which could be expanded. In Germany the Church maintains quite explicitly that under God’s roof there is no fundamental contradiction between the interests of the employer and employees. Therefore there are virtually no wage agreements with unions, and, of course, no right to strike.

● The Brazilian concordat ends with the infamous clause that any differences regarding it "are to be settled by direct diplomatic negotiations". This sounds innocent, but it is not. It means that there's no appeal to the Constitution and no redress through Brazilian courts. Brazil would have to negotiate with the Vatican and seek its agreement. One country actually tried this. In 2006 a Hungarian cabinet minister went to the Vatican to try to renegotiate the Finance Concordat. There he found that no one had time to talk to him. This is precisely why concordats customarily snap shut with the "mousetrap clause".

It’s not known how the Vatican managed to get the Brazilian President to sign this stealth concordat. Lula was a union organiser who bravely stood up to the former military dictatorship. This man of action may be simply unable to recognise a creeping dictatorship which is brought about by documents, not guns.

	Nothing new?
	The Church claims the concordat is harmless because it represents nothing new. A bishop tries to dispel concern about letting Catholic catechism into state schools by arguing that "The treaty only groups, in a single text, what is already in the Constitution, in jurisprudence and the ordinary law". However, the Brazilian education law belies this: it was clearly intended to foster tolerance of the country's religious diversity — not classes in Catholic catechism.
	Beware of this concordat
	This is a wedge concordat which uses the least controversial examples it can find in order to introduce legal principles which undermine the secularism of Brazil.
	How to sign a concordat under the table
	It requires intrigue to get a concordat accepted by a secular state like Brazil: a secret signing at the Vatican, an implicit agreement with the Evangelical press to keep quiet, and the bishops' lobbying to avoid a congressional debate.
	Unratified concordat (signed 13 November 2008)
	A Congressional hearing about this concordat is to be held on 1 July 2009.
	Military concordat (1989)
	This concordat embeds Catholic chaplains (and Canon Law) in the military, gives them a central location at the military headquarters and obliges the state to support them. This military concordat is now cited as a precedent in the last article of the more wide-ranging one.