concordat

Dictionary: con·cor·dat (kən-kôr'dăt') pronunciation

A formal agreement; a compact.
Roman Catholic Church. An agreement between the pope and a government for the regulation of church affairs.

[French, from Medieval Latin concordātum, from neuter past participle of Latin concordāre, to agree. See concordant.]

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concordat (kənkôr'dăt), formal agreement, specifically between the pope, in his spiritual capacity, and the temporal authority of a state. Its juridical status is now generally accepted as being a contract between church and state and as such it is a treaty governed by international laws. The term concordat has also been applied to other agreements; thus, in the Swiss Confederation before 1848 federal decisions were called concordats. The fundamental antithesis between church and state found particularly violent expression in the quarrels over investiture during the Middle Ages and gave rise to the practice of concluding concordats. The earliest agreement to be called a concordat (see Worms, Concordat of, 1122) was a dual proclamation rather than a bilateral act. The Concordat of 1516 between Pope Leo X and King Francis I of France, which abolished the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (see pragmatic sanction), gave the king the right to nominate bishops, abbots, and priors but reserved to the pope the right of confirmation and special rights of appointment. That right was revoked at the States-General of Orléans in 1561, and the struggle between Gallicanism and ultramontanism was resumed, to last until the French Revolution. The Concordat of 1801, most famous of all concordats, regulated the status of the church in France for a century. In the 19th and 20th cent. numerous concordats were concluded. The appointment of bishops still remained an important issue, but the advance of secularism gave increasing importance to the status of religious education, monastic orders, and church property and to the seemingly conflicting loyalties of Roman Catholics to the state and to the church. In the Catholic countries of Latin America the conflicts and adjustments between church and state gave rise to a number of concordats. The concordat of 1855 with Austria gave vast rights to the church, but it was abrogated by Austria upon the proclamation of papal infallibility. The Kulturkampf between Otto von Bismarck and the papacy ended (1887) with a modus vivendi, which was a tentative agreement and not called a concordat. The status of the papacy in Italy was regulated in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty. The threat of National Socialism (Nazism) to the Roman Catholic Church prompted the concordat of 1933 with Adolf Hitler, who violated it from the start. In Spain, where Francisco Franco had abrogated the concordat of 1931, a provisional agreement with the Vatican over the appointment of bishops was reached in 1941. After World War II a number of concordats (notably that with Poland) were abrogated by Communist regimes. A new concordat with Spain was signed in 1953.

WordNet: concordat

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a signed written agreement between two or more parties (nations) to perform some action
Synonyms: covenant, compact

Wikipedia: Concordat

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This article is about agreements involving the Holy See. For other uses, see Concordat (disambiguation).

A concordat is an agreement between the Holy See and the government of a country on religious matters This often included both recognition and privileges for the Catholic Church in a particular country. Privileges might include exemptions from certain legal matters and processes, and issues such as taxation as well as the right of a state to influence the selection of bishops within its territory. Although for a time after the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965, the term 'concordat' was dropped, it reappeared with the Polish Concordat of 1993 and the Portuguese Concordat of 2004. A different model of relations between the Vatican and various states is still evolving (see e.g. Petkoff 2007) in the wake of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae.

1 Criticism
2 List
3 References
4 Bibliography

Criticism

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil did not sign a concordat during the Pope Benedict XVI visit to Brazil in 2007, as the pontiff hoped. The principle of separation of church and state was the claimed reason for disagreement between the parts. Nevertheless, in the following year, Lula did sign it. According to its critics, the Brazilian concordat gives important privileges to the Catholic Church and the media is boycotting the matter. The treaty is now pending ratification in the Congress as the Catholic Church is rushing the Congress into approval.^{[citation needed]}

Condordat Watch^[1] is a website supporting separation of church and state where opponents of condordats exchange information.^[2].

List

References

^ Condordat Watch
^ For example, Concordat Watch is cited as a source in Plichtová and Petrjánošová (2008, p.46, 50), and in DiMarco (2009, p.5).

Bibliography

DiMarco, Erica (2009). "The tides of Vatican influence in Italian reproductive matters: from abortion to assisted reproduction." Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 10 (2) Spring. Available online.
Hughes, John Jay (1974). "The Reich Concordat 1933: Capitulation or Compromise?" Australian Journal of Politics & History, 20 (2), pp. 164-175.
Petkoff, Peter (2007). "Legal perspectives and religious perspectives of religious rights under international law in the Vatican Concordats (1963-2004)." Law and Justice: the Christian law review, 158, p. 30- online (payment may be required).
Plichtová, Jana and Petrjánošová, Magda (2008). "Freedom of religion, institution of conscientious objection and political practice in post-communist Slovakia." Human Affairs, 18 (1), June, pp. 37-51. Available online here.

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		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
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