Folia Canonica 8. (2005)
STUDIES - Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi: The Changes of Modern Era Relation of Church and State in Europe
THE CHANGES OF MODERN ERA RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE IN EUROPE 77 individual realization of these rights and obligations in the agreement signing country with regard to the Catholic Church. The Church’s exemption from the institutional solution of functions and tasks, which belong to state activities, makes it possible to perform the Church’s specific goal, independently and without state intervention. Still, it cannot be ignored that the legal subjects of the area, regulated in a normative manner by the Church’s own inner law, at the same time, belong to the legal subjects of the secular legal system, too. Therefore, for that very reason, overlapping can be found in the application of any separation model. The state cannot ignore the fact that the religious beliefs are part of most of its citizens’ natural characteristic, from the practice of which obligations fall to the share of the state. The activity of the citizens, who live with the opportunity of freedom of religion and conscience, which are guaranteed in the given countries’ constitution and other legal decrees, who enrich the society, cannot be indifferent to the state. The decrees, which touch upon religious beliefs, have to keep sight of the autonomy of the inner norms of religions and individual denominations.
