Free Spiritual Worldview Community (Belgium)

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The free-spirited Weltanschauung community in Belgium is the totality of " free-thinking ", " humanistic " and the like. Ä. Associations and their supporters. It is recognized on the basis of Article 181 of the Belgian Constitution by the law of June 21, 2002 on the Central Council of the Non-Denominational Communities of Belgium, the agents and the bodies for the management of the material and financial interests of the recognized non-denominational communities .

All those citizens who have signed the principle of “free verifiability” (“vrij onderzoek”, “libre examen”) are referred to as “free-spirited” (“vrijzinnig”, “laïque”).

The special social status of this community is based on the phenomenon of " pillarisation " ( "pillarization", "pilarisation"), the Catholic Church numerous organizations founded as school boards, trade unions, youth organizations or health insurance, prompting non-Catholic citizens, corresponding parallel structures to be set up, either separately according to political affiliation with socialists or liberals or purely ideologically as non-Christian institutions.

Since, according to Article 181 of the Belgian Constitution, the "salaries and pensions of the servants of the cults ... are at the expense of the state", free-spirited citizens demanded equality with the recognized religious communities, which is why Article 181 (then Article 117) finally passed a second in 1993 Paragraph was added. Since then the provision has been:

§ 1 - The salaries and pensions of the servants of the cults are borne by the state; the amounts required for this are entered annually in the budget. § 2 - The salaries and pensions of the representatives of the legally recognized organizations that offer moral support on the basis of a non-denominational worldview shall be borne by the state; the amounts required for this are entered in the budget annually. "

The concrete recognition then took place through the above law of June 21, 2002, in the official German translation of which the “Central Council of the Non-Denominational Philosophical Communities of Belgium” is briefly referred to as the “Central Free Spiritual Council”, which is the common designation “vrijzinnig” or “ laïque ”is represented by“ free-spirited ”.

The criterion of the commitment to “free verifiability” is derived indirectly from Article 7 No. 4 (right to stand for one of the administrative boards in each province) of the law. (In the official German translation, “vrij onderzoek” / “libre examen” is rendered as “free research”, but the Dutch and French expressions are not about something “academic”, but about a very general attitude towards life.)

The core of the principle of free verifiability is the rejection of any revealed truths of faith and trust in the power of human reason.

Organizationally, the law establishes, in addition to the Central Free Spiritual Council for the whole of Belgium, in each province a “public-law body called the body for moral support of the Central Free Spiritual Council”. The non-provincial administrative district of Brussels-Capital has two such institutions, one French-speaking and one Dutch-speaking. The partly French-speaking, partly German-speaking province of Liège, however, has only one such facility.

Under this public umbrella, however, there are a large number of clubs and associations, most of which are very much older, and which develop the majority of the activities of the free-spirited ideological community.

These activities include "moral support" (individual "pastoral care") and more general cultural and leisure events, including the organization of celebrations in the form of secular rites of passage such as

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Law on the Central Council of the Non-Denominational Communities of Belgium, the agents and the institutions for the management of the material and financial interests of the recognized non-denominational communities (PDF) In: MONITEUR BELGE N ° 395 . Direction du Moniteur belge ,. November 12, 2003. Retrieved April 12, 2019.