Germany

Just one of the “Fascist concordats” is still substantially in place. Italy has got rid of the Mussolini concordat, Spain has replaced the Franco concordat, Austria has eroded through amendments the Dollfuss concordat and Portugal has scrapped the concordat made with Salazar. Only Germany still retains its concordat with Hitler.

After World War II some German states considered the Concordat to be no longer in force. However, in 1956 the papal nuncio had the matter brought before the Constitutional Court. It decided that, although the concordat had been brought in after Hitler had suspended democracy, it was still binding.

The German postwar constitution was carefully designed by the Allies to decentralise the country and hence it handed over many formerly federal powers to the individual states. Thus the federal government has lost the constitutional power to revise the concordat. Instead, it is left up to the states to renegotiate directly with the Vatican in areas like education which under their control. This allows the Vatican to push for the maximal concessions obtainable in each region of the country. The Vatican now has a web of concordats throughout Germany concerning individual states and even individual institutions. These are further cemented by numerous statutes, regulations, ordinances and other agreements.

However, the enormous power of both Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany today is not due solely to the concordats or church-state agreements. The privileges that these pacts give to the churches are amplified by another fateful German innovation. It was the 1919 Constitution of the democratic Weimar Republic which gave the churches wide latitude in substituting their own regulations for the law of the land.

These articles were incorporated into the present German constitution, including Article 140 (which in the Appendix takes over Article 137 § 5 of the Weimar Constitution) confirming the status of the Catholic and Lutheran Churches as corporations under public law. At the same time Article 19 § 5 extends to these artificial persons, the rights of real ones, thus setting the stage for a conflict between individual and group rights. On the second page of the menu below several articles show how this church autonomy lets faith-based social services remove millions of Germans from the protection of many civil laws.

	.
	Concordats
	Hitler's concordat (1933) : Text and background
	• Reichskonkordat (with Hitler, 1933): Text with Secret Supplement • Hitler’s concordat poster • Pius XII, concordat negotiator and Holocaust pope • Von Papen, papal chamberlain and Nazi concordat negotiator • Just another neutral state: The Vatican in the Holocaust • Sainthood doublecross?
	The Nazis and the German churches
	• The German churches before and after 1945 • German churches used slave labour • The “Jew’s sow” (Judensau) on mediaeval German churches • Vatican anti-Judaism and Nazi anti-Semitism • Nazi “Mother's cross” and Maria cult • Links to pictures of the Nazis and the churches
	List of current German Concordats
	In addition to the concordat at the federal level, every German state has some kind of agreement with the Catholic Church. Fourteen have concordats with the Vatican and two have agreements with the local bishops. (This doesn't count the large number of concordats about the establishment of individual dioceses, schools, theological faculties, etc.) The list is linked to the German concordat texts.
	Overview of Concordats in Germany
	In this excerpt Prof. Francis Messner looks at Germany, where relations between church and state are regulated by treaties. This means international “concordats” for the Catholic Church, and national “accords” for the other religious groups. In the last hundred years there have been three waves of these.
	Controlling professors through the Bavarian Concordat (1924)
	Under the Bavarian concordat the Bishop can veto all professors of Catholic theology (Art. 5 on the Catholic University) and 21 professors of philosophy, pedagogy, sociology and politics (Art. 3 on concordat chairs). These chairs are 85-90% funded by the state, yet non-Catholics need not apply, nor even a top Catholic scholar who has criticised the Pope.
	.
	Faith-based welfare Two websites in German contain detailed information collected by secularists about state subsidies for religious bodies http://www.staatsleistungen.de/ and religious discrimination in the workplace http://www.gerdia.de/ The summary of a 2012 study commissioned by the church-critical IBKA on religious discrimination in the workplace can be downloaded from http://www.ibka.org/Studie_kirchl_Arbeitsrecht
	An inside look at faith-based social services in Germany
	From birth to death many Germans depend on social services that are paid for by the taxpayer, but run by the church. These church institutions, both Catholic and Protestant, operate in accordance with their own religious laws and they affect both employees and clients. These stories about ordinary Germans show what it means to live in the shadow of religious laws. To keep their jobs many must endure interference in their private lives.
	Under God’s roof
	In Germany employees of church institutions are forbidden to strike. They "enjoy" exemption from the country's labour laws. How do the churches justify denying employment rights? Through a theology of employment called the "third way". They claim that in church-run institutions there is so much brotherly love that any conflict of interest between employer and employee is impossible. Strikes are unnecessary and would only disturb the harmony....
	The German principle of “church autonomy”
	German law opts for “church autonomy”, rather than “separation of church and stat“”. This has been interpreted by the Constitutional Court to mean that the churches are free to run huge enterprises (at public expense) where the state's employment laws do not apply, and the churches are free to make their own. This can mean that these employees can legally be fired if their personal lives don't conform to the church ethos.
	German taxpayers subsidise over 90% of faith-based social services
	Dr. Carsten Frerk, an authority on church finances, reveals for the first time in English that social service employees of German religious organisations number 2.5 million and that the German churches pay for less than 10% of their “good works”, with the taxpayer left to foot the rest of the bill. • Church-run home for the aged goes to court for an inheritance • How Caritas and the Diakonisches Werk began
	The church charity myth
	The churches only subsidise a third of what the public believes is their own charity. This is undemocratic and dishonest, says Dr. Carsten Frerk. In addition, his research reveals the questionable legality of the huge “state benefits” which are paid by all the taxpayers, not for any good works, but simply for clerics’ salaries, foreign missions and the like. A political storm is now brewing.
Total found: 16 Pages: 1 2 [Next>>]