In 2006, Manuel Blat Gonzalez renounced his Catholic faith and asked to have his name removed from the baptismal book at his Valencia parish. That same year, Jose Helguera Prado of Madrid also asked to be taken off church records.
"I did not want to be listed as part of something I am not," Helguera told Catholic News Service.
However, on September 30, Spain's Supreme Court ruled the Catholic Church is not required to modify baptismal certificates to reflect changed beliefs. Valencia Cardinal Agustin Garcia-Gasco Vicente had appealed a lower-court ruling that Spanish citizens have a right to remove their names from church baptismal records.
In 2006, Blat and Helguera did not get responses from their archdioceses. Blat persisted, first directing his petition to Cardinal Garcia-Gasco. When the cardinal did not remove his name, Blat went to the Spanish Information Protection Agency, which regulates the treatment of personal records. Under Spain's Information Protection Law, Spanish citizens have the right to remove personal information from public records.
The information agency took up Blat's case and ordered Cardinal Garcia-Gasco to note Blat's decision in the margins of his baptismal certificate. But Cardinal Garcia-Gasco refused and took the case to a Spanish court. In 2007, the court sided with Blat, allowing baptized Catholics to reject their faith on the record.
Cardinal Garcia-Gasco -- whose archdiocese received the most requests from former Catholics to change their baptismal certificates in 2007 -- appealed the verdict. Lawyers for the diocese argued that baptismal books do not reflect current membership in the Catholic Church. In addition, they said, the Spanish Information Protection Agency's demand for the removal of names violated a 1979 agreement between Spain and the Vatican guaranteeing the "inviolability and confidentiality" of the church's archives and registries.
In its judgment, the Supreme Court said the objective of the Information Protection Law is to protect personal information and not to create the "constancy of beliefs and convictions of citizens."
The court noted that baptismal books are not record books, but a "pure accumulation" of information, and therefore not subject to rules of the Spanish Information Protection Agency. It also pointed out that finding names in the books would be difficult, since they are not organized alphabetically or by birth date, but by baptismal date.
More than 90 percent of Spaniards have been baptized Catholic, while about 77 percent identified themselves as Catholic in a poll conducted by Spain's Center for Sociological Investigations last year.
Luis Agudo, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Valencia, told CNS Oct. 1 that those who ask to note their separation from the church on the record are an "extreme minority."
Agudo acknowledged that the struggle to keep church records untouched would continue, but told CNS, "We are satisfied with the decision because baptismal books have been recognized as sacramental."
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(Source: CNS)