Acuerdos y Concordatos entre la Santa Sede y los Países Americanos by Juan G. Navarro Floria (review)

This study principally examines agreements and concordats between the Holy See and some American countries. The book is divided in six chapters, and has two appendixes. The book is a group effort in which a different author writes each one of the chapters. Juan G. Navarro Floria writes the first chapter and coordinates the work as a whole.

The first chapter introduces in general terms the main topic of the book, namely, agreements and concordats between the Holy See and some American countries. The chapter explains that the discovery of America is the historical fact that marks the origins of what over the years has become a very rich juridical body of law—both ecclesiastical law and state law—expressed as agreements and concordats between the Holy See and the emerging countries of the New World. This was born, at least in part, out of the need to regulate the bilateral relations between Church and State and the interests of the Church in those countries in which the Church was present. This first chapter also succinctly introduces and studies in separate sub-sections the history and impact of the concordats between the Holy See and some individual countries, in particular the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.

In the remaining chapters of the book different authors present a detailed and in-depth study and analysis of the history and juridical impact and consequences of the concordats between the Holy See and some American countries in which those concordats are still ius vigens. In particular the chapters study the concordats between the Holy See and the countries of Argentina (by Norberto Padilla), Brazil (by Evaldo Xavier Gomez), Colombia (by Vicente Pietro), Ecuador (by Jaime Baquero), and Peru (by Juan Jose Ruda Santolaria). The authors of the different chapters are all experts in relationships between Church and State, between ecclesiastical law and state law.

The book also contains two helpful appendices. The first appendix includes a chronological index of agreements and concordats between the Holy See and some Latin-American states. The second appendix provides the actual text of agreements and concordats still in force in the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

The book is very timely because in recent years there has been a resurgence and renewed interest in agreements and concordats as a very important and potentially effective juridical instrument to regulate particular areas in the bilateral relations between the Holy See and individual states.

Therefore, although the book is certainly a very important work from a historical point of view, it also makes a very important contribution to a very current topic and issue: the bilateral juridical relations between Church and state. Through the study of agreements between the Holy See and some American countries, the book thoughtfully brings forth and renews the always debated question of whether it is better that the already mentioned relations between Church and State be regulated by bilateral juridical instruments—such as agreements and concordats—or by unilaterally enacted state law. In other words, would the demands of justice, rights and obligations, and the interests of the Church be better protected through bilaterally enacted laws, or through state enacted laws exclusively, or, as Rafael Navarro-Valls points out in the prologue of the book, through a mixture of both? The answer to this question is not simple, but rather very complex. As acknowledged by the authors of the different chapters of the book, history shows that both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

Juan Navarro Floria concludes that it is difficult to foresee the future development of agreements and concordats as juridical instruments capable of regulating relations between Church and State. He advances the thesis that given the international layout today it is perhaps unlikely that we will see all-comprehensive...