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An upcoming ruling by the European Union’s top court on whether a Belgian diocese must erase baptismal register data on request could have significant implications for the Church’s autonomy and institutional freedom of religion.
That is the contention of a position paper issued Sept. 4 by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, or COMECE.
The 15-page paper addressed a case currently before the Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU, concerning a dispute between the Diocese of Ghent and Belgium’s Data Protection Authority over whether the diocese must comply with an unnamed individual’s request to delete their baptismal register entry.
“The baptismal register is the fundamental basis for establishing the juridical status of the person in the internal legal order of the Church,” said the position paper, prepared at the request of COMECE’s member bishops’ conferences and dated Sept. 2.
“Requiring the Catholic Church to erase the data contained in it, thereby intervening directly in its organization, would constitute a serious infringement upon Church autonomy and institutional freedom of religion.”
The paper was
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