My commentary on The Sunday Times of Malta (21/12/14) will discuss the present controversy between the Church and the Malta Union of Teachers (and to a lesser extent the General Workers' Union) about the employment criteria that should be used when engaging the services of heads of schools, assistant heads and teachers “who assist students to address and make substantial life-choices that involve fundamental Catholic values”. 

Let me simplify a complex situation hopefully without oversimplifying it. The MUT is stating that professional criteria should be enough. On the other hand the Church has prepared a draft consultative document which states that those in top positions should also adopt the Christian ethos of the schools and the concomitant lifestyles that follow from the same ethos.

The MUT has its guns blazing accusing the Church of being oppressive and of dragging Malta into the middle ages. I will not repeat here the arguments that I will present on Sunday. But I will give two examples which strengthen the position of the Church that professional criteria should be accompanied by a Christian ethos and lifestyle. These examples are not taken from the middle ages but from decisions taken this year by the European Court of Human Rights and the German Constitutional Court.

My first example is taken from a June 2014 decision of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Europe’s final arbiter of human rights disputes. In what is known as the Fernández Martínez v. Spain, the Court of Human Rights decided that the autonomy rights of the Catholic Church as well as other religious institutions take precedence of the rights of religion teachers to publicly dissent from church teachings.

The dispute originated when the contract of a state (I purposely emphasise ‘state’) high school religion teacher was terminated. In Spain, those who teach religion – whichever religion – have to have the permission of the spiritual leader of the community whose religion one would be teaching. This is done so as to put parents’ and students’ minds at rest that the content of the instruction received is orthodox.

Fernández Martínez, a former Catholic priest, was a teacher of religion and he had the approval of the bishop for nearly six years even when he was no longer a priest. This approval was stopped in 1997.  The bishop declined to renew the contract because Mr Martínez publicly opposed the Church’s position on priestly celibacy. Spain’s Constitutional Court, the ECHR’s third section, and now the Grand Chamber all said that the bishop was within his rights to decide not to renew the contract of a teacher of Catholic religion who had joined a public campaign to oppose the Catholic Church’s practice of celibacy for priests.

The other example is taken from a decision taken this November by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. It ruled that a Catholic hospital in Düsseldorf had the right to dismiss a senior doctor who was divorced and remarried.

The judges overturned a prior judgment of the Federal Labour Court which had declared the dismissal of the doctor invalid. The Constitutional Court ruled that the labour court had not “sufficiently taken into account” the meaning and scope of the Church’s autonomy and the Church’s right for self-determination.

The Court said that:

“Service in the Christian community is the mission and task of the church and ideally includes people in all their relations of family, free time, work and society. This understanding is the foundation of the mission of the church that it shape both service and personal lifestyle, which find its expression in the obligation of loyalty.”

Independently of what the Church can do legally one augurs that the present consultation with head of schools will be extended to other important stake holders such as parents, teachers and unions. It is very important that the Church goes out of its way to get on board as many stake holders as possible. A decision based on consensus is always much better than a decision based on imposition even if it is fully sanctioned by the law.