Concordats are agreements between sovereign states and the Roman Catholic Church. A new web site, Concordat Watch keeps track of these agreements and includes a detailed explanation of the background to concordats.
These church-state accords generally give the Church massive state subsidies and other privileges. They also permit Church employees to be hounded about their private lives. Yet as “international treaties”, concordats bypass the democratic process, making parliaments powerless to modify, let alone revoke them.