Brazil

New concordat gets around secularism by sharing the spoils

The papal nuncio to Brazil, Archbishop Baldisseri, noted: “With this agreement, we open the door not only to Catholics but to other religious confessions” that want to provide religious instruction in Brazilian state schools. They took the bait. Eager at the prospect of themselves being able to proselytise there, the others pressed for the “General Law on Religion” which lets them do so, and dropped their opposition to the concordat.

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.

Public Announcement, 14 August 2009

The National Commission for Human Rights of the Association of Brazilian Magistrates (AMB), composed of representatives of all affiliated entities, publically expresses support for opposition to the incorporation into the Brazilian legal system of the Agreement between Brazil and the Vatican.

The AMB points out that the current constitutional model has established the secularism of the Brazilian state, guaranteeing religious freedom to all citizens. Its acceptance by the National Congress [...] will cause a serious setback to the exercise of freedoms and the [legal] validity of diversity as a fundamental principle of the state. We ask that the Legislature treat this matter in a strictly constitutional manner.

Mozart Valadares Pires
President of the AMB

	Media are silent about the Government agreement with the Holy See
	In the face of the curious silence of the media, the Brazilian journalist Alberto Dines hosted this TV debate on 25 November 2008 about the concordat which had been so quietly signed the month before. This is a summary prepared by another journalist for the TV station's website.
	Concordat introduces sectarian teaching in schools.
	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.
	Questions about the concordat
	Many of the innocent-sounding phrases in the latest Brazilian concordat have, when implemented, caused problems in other countries, including Italy, Germany, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, the Dominican Republic and Malta.
	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. An appendix contains four hard-to-find official and semi-official Church accounts of the signing of this concordat.
	Concordat: text (2008)
	Though called opaquely a “legal agreement” (“acordo jurídico”), this is actually a wide-ranging concordat.
	Military concordat (1989) : text — unratified, but still observed
	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. The military concordat is mentioned enigmatically in the new one. This appears to be a move to get the unsuspecting Congressmen to ratify retroactively, a concordat which is legally void, but long since put into practice.