Nuevos movimientos religiosos y su inscripción registral: el ejemplo de la Iglesia de la Cienciología (a propósito de la sentencia de la Audiencia Nacional de 11 de octubre de 2007)

Abstract

El concepto de confesión religiosa trasciende el aspecto meramente sociológico para recoger su verdadera importancia como concepto que despliega efectos jurídicos. Es la Ley Orgánica de Libertad Religiosa la que establece cuáles son los requisitos necesarios para que un grupo religioso obtenga el estatus de confesión mediante su inscripción en el Registro de Entidades Religiosas. En este artículo se analiza la reciente jurisprudencia del Tribunal Constitucional y de la Audiencia Nacional en relación con la inscripción registral de los grupos religiosos y que ha traído consigo el reconocimiento, en nuestro país, como confesión de la Iglesia de la Cienciología.

Religion is not defined in the Spanish law. The principles of religious freedom, neutrality and non-discrimination impose the legislator to do so. There is, however, a negative definition of religion in article 3.2 of the Organic Law on Religious Freedom. However, the law recognizes some religious groups the possibility to acquire a special status. Therefore, there is not a definition but a delimitation of those religious groups that are suitable for enjoying certain benefits: those contained in the Organic Law on Religious Freedom and applicable to those churches inscribed in the Register of Religious Entities. In spite of this, for a long time, the administrative practice of the General Directorate of Religious Affairs (dependent on the Ministry of Justice) and the judgements of the Audiencia Nacional and the Supreme Court denied the inscription of religious denominations in the Register of Religious Entities, due to the lack of a religious aim in the denomination. This work, a speech pronounced at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, shows how the Church of Scientology has tried several times the inscription in the Register of Religious Entities and how cannot be inscribed in the Religious Register and enjoy the benefits established in the Organic Law on Religious Freedom for a long time. However, the situation has changed since the judgement about the Unification Church, the Spanish version of Moonism, of the Constitutional Court 46/2001, of February 15 and specially the judgement of the Audiencia Nacional of 11 october 2007 in which the Church of Scientology was considered as a religious denomination.