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Conservative lawyer lambasts the Curia

December 16th, 2019

A conservative legal expert accuses the high court of violating Constitutional principles by acquitting demonstrators who mocked the Catholic liturgy in a pro-choice performance.

In 2016, a group of protesters against the Polish government’s proposed restrictive abortion legislation performed a mock Catholic communion ritual, and distributed abortion pills as if they were the Body of Christ. The demonstrators were denounced by Catholic lawyers, who claimed that the performance violated the right of Christians to human dignity. In the second instance ruling, the Budapest Court fined the individuals involved in the performance, claiming that their stunt insulted religion and religious people. The Curia struck down the second instance ruling, and acquitted the demonstrators of all charges, on the grounds that they had exercised their right to express their opinion within constitutional boundaries.

In Magyar Demokrata, István Kovács, director of the pro-government Center for Fundamental Rights watchdog organization scorns the Curia for acquitting the demonstrators. Kovács recalls that Hungary’s Fundamental Law defines Christian culture as part of Hungary’s constitutional identity. Therefore, an attack on the Christian liturgy is also an attack on Hungary’s constitutional identity, Kovács contends. He goes on to accuse the Curia of siding with ‘sick human rights fundamentalists’ who ‘consider death more valuable than life’ and find joy in ‘desecrating religious values’. In conclusion, Kovács calls on the Curia to ground its verdicts on Hungary’s constitutional values rather than ideology.

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