Richard Dawkins supports Croatian secularists

Interview by Nezir Likaj for Center for Civil Courage - Croatia

"More than ten years ago Croatia signed four international agreements (i.e. the Vatican contracts, a.k.a. Concordats) with the Holy See which effectively annulled constitutional secularity of the Republic of Croatia, and obliges the government to pay the Catholic Church more that 170 million dollars from the small Croatian State budget EVERY YEAR! These contracts also inserted catholic religious education into public schools in such a way that it effectively became a mandatory module for all the pupils.

These contracts are very convenient for the Vatican and the Catholic Church but extremely costly and harmful for the Croatian state and society. Also, a lot of property and real estate was given to the Catholic Church (once nationalised by the state) making the Catholic Church the biggest landowner in Croatia, which is driving the country straight back to the Middle Ages.

Huge financial resources and “brainwashing” of schoolchildren renders Croatia almost a catholic equivalent of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Hardliner clerical organizations backed by the rich Catholic Church recently forced backward changes of the Croatian Constitution. The Catholic Church is imposing their medieval value system and rule on the Croatian educational system, pressing the Government – it resulted in the removal of the Health and Citizen Education modules out of the educational curriculum since these modules promote gender equality and LGBT rights. Catholic Church in Croatia is extremely homophobic.

The only way to reverse this clerical agenda is to block state funding of the Catholic Church. In order to do this the state has to terminate the four contacts with the Holy See, but political reasons (sucking up to the Church by every government so far in exchange for political support, to be exact) are preventing this scenario.

Therefore we, the citizens, have to press the government to terminate these harmful contracts. We have to increase awareness of the Croatian society that these contracts are harmful and it is in the public interest to terminate them."

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