One direction, two speeds in Europe on gay unions, depending on Catholic Church

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

This week offers two examples of how, despite Europe’s broad drift towards legal protection of homosexual partnerships, nations are moving in that direction at different speeds, depending to some extent on the influence of the Catholic Church.

England, which has offered “civil partnerships” for same-sex couples since 2004, recently adopted a law requiring adoption agencies not to discriminate against gay couples. Despite pleas from the Catholic Church, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced this week there would be no exception for agencies run by religious groups, which may mean that church-run adoption agencies will have to close.

In Italy, meanwhile, the country’s center-left government appears to be on the verge of introducing a draft law on civil unions, though it’s unclear what may come of it in parliament, given that members of the government with close ties to the Catholic church have threatened to defect. Pointedly, the law would not provide adoption rights.

That discrepancy reflects a broad trend in European politics.

It’s generally countries with a strong Catholic majority – including Austria, Ireland, Poland, and Slovakia – where movement towards same-sex unions has been most slow. Like Italy, none of those nations presently offers legal registration to gay couples, though a handful of regions in Italy have voted to open their registries to same-sex unions. Despite growing concerns from church leaders about secularization and the declining significance of religion in Europe, the contrast between Catholic-majority nations and the rest of Europe suggests that at least on this issue, the Catholic church retains some measure of political influence.

Of the three members of the European Union which have legally defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, two have overwhelming Catholic majorities, Poland and Lithuania. (Latvia, where Lutherans are in the majority, is the third).

Spain and Belgium are the exceptions to this broad trend. Despite Catholic majorities of 94 percent and 76 percent, respectively, Spain and Belgium are among only five nations to recognize full gay marriage. (The others are the Netherlands, Canada and South Africa.) It's also worth noting that in the United States, the only state to offer full marriage rights to homosexuals is Massachussetts, despite having the second-highest percentage of Catholics in the country (47.7 percent), behind only Rhode Island (63.5 percent).

In England, the country’s 5.5 million Catholics represent just over eight percent of the population. Though the Church of England still enjoys official status, one recent national survey found that “no affiliation” is actually the country’s leading religious option, beating out Christianity 44 percent to 40.

The Catholic church runs seven adoption agencies in England and Wales, which are responsible for about 200 adoptions a year, and two in Scotland, processing roughly 40. (Overall, roughly 3,000 children are put up adoption annually in England). Observers credit the Catholic agencies with tackling some of the hardest-to-place cases.

In 2006, the United Kingdom adopted an “Equality Act” banning discrimination against gays, including in adoption rights. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster wrote to the Blair government request an exemption for Catholic agencies, but after a weekend of fevered negotiations, Blair announced Monday that the church would not be exempt, but could have 21 months to make the transition.

The regulations still must be adopted by parliament, and church officials are expected to make another appeal. A Jan. 29 statement from the archdiocese was non-committal about what might happen to the church’s agencies if an exemption is not eventually granted.

“During this time we will continue to provide all our existing adoption services and be evaluating the best way forward to ensure that the well being and interests of children remain at the heart of all future development plans for the agencies,” it said.

In Italy, meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi is preparing a draft law of 18-19 points, which will extend legal protections such as health benefits and pensions to same-sex couples, but will stop short of allowing them to adopt children.

That proposal has drawn strong opposition from CEI, the powerful Italian bishops’ conference. Bishop Giuseppe Betori, secretary of the conference, has argued that such legal protections could be handled through existing common law, while creating a new form of registration amounts to a form of social approval for alternatives to heterosexual marriage.

“It’s precisely the word ‘couple’ that does not belong to the concept of a family involving a man and a woman,” Betori said. “Cohabitation should not have public status, and this is true both for same-sex unions as well as those between heterosexuals.”

Betori used strong language in arguing that Catholic lawmakers should not support the draft law: “We believe that a Catholic may not arrive at public recognition of de facto couples,” he said.

At least one leading Catholic member of the center-left coalition, Clemente Mastella, currently the Minister of Justice, has threatened to resign if the government moves forward.

“If they put me in the position of saying, ‘You’re in the government and you have to vote in favor of a law on de facto couples,’ I’ll resign tomorrow,” Mastella said.

Yesterday, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesperson, welcomed an appeal from the Italian president for calm. To date, however, there’s little indication of a possible compromise that might satisfy both the Prodi government and CEI.

One footnote with regard to church politics: Betori has played an unusually central role in articulating the church’s position on civil unions, making the rounds of the highly popular evening TV talk shows and providing quotes that end up on the front pages of the daily papers. Usually, that’s the role of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope’s vicar for the Rome diocese and president of the Italian bishops’ conference since 1991. Ruini will turn 76 on Feb. 19, and while there’s no indication of an imminent departure, eventually his term will end. Betori, 59, is seen by some church-watchers as Ruini’s “dauphin,” so his emergence in the civil unions debate has been read as a possible way of promoting Betori as a successor.