_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Concordat still controversial
Religious minorities wary of Catholic influence
A new concordat governing relations between the government of Slovakia and the Holy See, signed late in November, reflects the results of four years of careful negotiation and preparation. Nevertheless the agreement, which still must gain parliamentary approval before going into effect, has been criticized for granting preferential treatment to the Catholic Church.
Catholic representatives told the Keston News Service that the concordat would help other churches secure their own legal rights. But some religious minority groups evidently disagreed. The critics said that a new amendment to the country’s religion law, guaranteeing equal treatment for all faiths, also does not answer their concerns.
The spokesman for the Slovak Bishops’ Conference, Marian Gavenda, said that fears of discrimination are “unjustified.” In his view, the concordat only anchors relations that already exist, and the “prestige of an international agreement” provides a “certain guarantee” that policies will not change dramatically in the future. He argues that the more rights and privileges the Catholic Church manages to get at the international level, the better for all churches, since the state must adopt corresponding domestic laws.
But Daniela Horinkova, secretary of the Augsburg Lutheran Church, alleges that parts of the concordat discriminate against other churches—for example in the area of education, where she sees a de facto “catholicization” of the school system. The chairman of the Seventh-Day Adventists, Emmanuel Duda, sees the Catholic justification of the new pact as “opportunistic,” and says the concordat has “given rise to tensions.” Duda cites one article of the new pact, which guarantees full funding for the Catholic Church from the state budget—a guarantee that comes “at the expense of other churches,” he worries.
The chairman of the Slovak Methodist Church, Pavel Prochazka, said that he does not see the concordat as inherently discriminatory but observes that the Catholic Church does occupy a privileged position. “But the problem lies elsewhere,” he reasoned. “If you sign an international agreement with one church and then with others, you discriminate; if you sign them at the same time, you give them the same worth.”
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