A Catholic parish which fired an organist and choirmaster because he had been shown to be a bigamist and an 
adulterer breached his human rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has said.
In a ruling last week, it held that Bernhard Schuth, 53, who lost his job in 1994 in Essen after his superiors learned that he had left his wife that year and was expecting a child with a new partner, had received inadequate treatment by German courts.
Originally, the Essen labour court quashed the dismissal, but a German federal court overruled this finding. An appeal court also found in favour of the parish, ruling that it could not continue to employ him without losing all credibility.
Germany’s Constitutional court also dismissed Mr Schuth’s appeal, finding that labour courts were bound by principles of religious and moral precepts that were in keeping with state law.
ECHR judges condemned Germany’s justice system for failing to take into consideration his right to a private life, and not just his right to work.
It found that the interests of the Church had “not been balanced against Mr Schuth’s right to respect for his private and family life, but only against his interest in keeping his post.
“In signing his work contract, Mr. Schuth accepted a duty of loyalty towards the Catholic Church which limited, to a certain degree, his right to a private life,” ECHR judges said.
“However, this signature could not be considered as an unequivocal personal agreement to live in abstinence in the case of separation or divorce,” they added.
In Schuth’s high court ruling, judges used a 1985 precedent that allowed the Church to govern autonomously, while binding labour courts to the Church’s religious and moral precepts, as long as it did not conflict with the law.
The ECHR however supported a ruling by German courts in the case of Michael Obst, 51, a former Mormon head of public relations, who was dismissed in 1993 after confessing that he had had an affair.
In this case, the ECHR said the dismissal could be seen as “necessary to conserving the credibility of the Mormon church, considering the nature of his position.”
