The highest court of the European Union is currently considering a Belgian case where the petitioner is asking the EU to order a Catholic diocese to expunge his record of baptism from the baptismal books under the Union’s “right of erasure” rules. In the name of continent-wide harmonized data protection laws, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stipulates that EU citizens can exercise a “right of erasure,” typically called “the right to be forgotten,” levying heavy fines against noncompliant entities.

I explain the theological objections here. Beyond them, however, I want to raise two concerns about this draconian provision: its concept of history and its anthropology.

Yes, the GDPR ostensibly allows some records to be archived for “historical research” purposes, but the constraints are tight and the general thrust of the regulation appears to place the onus probandi on whomever wants to preserve a record. An example of this anti-record bias is the provision for “pseudonymization” of data (see here).

Facts are facts and some facts are relevant not just to the individual involved. What Jürgen bought from Siemans is his business. But the facts of Jürgen’s birth are an abiding fact of social relevance that ought not to be “erased.” And from a theological perspective – baptism being “rebirth” that confers certain inalienable characteristics on a person whose theological reality is none of Caesar’s business – neither should baptism.

One of the great achievements of Europe has been its tendency to keep good records. Go to a European parish or civil registrar and you can trace history back centuries. Compare that to the average American parish where, except for those things canonically required to be maintained (like baptismal registers), the principle of “get rid of it” is pretty much operative. (That’s why it’s hard to write parish histories, except the most generic or sanitized versions.)

EU data privacy mania threatens that. One has to ask, when facts can be expunged, how long it will be before European “history” starts to imitate its Soviet counterpart, e.g., 1936 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, p. 98, “Stalin and Grushkov” compared to 1937 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, p. 98, “Stalin and – nobody.”

From a Catholic theological perspective, however, I have to ask whether modernity’s preoccupations with “privacy” match the Christian view of history. Our theology speaks of one major coming event in salvific history: the General Judgment. The General Judgment is not some appellate review of what God decided in the particular judgments that occur after we die, as if He might have made a mistake. The purpose of the General Judgment is a vindication of God’s Justice for all to see as well as for all to see how man is integrated into one humanity. That’s why Jesus says, “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim on the housetops” (Mt 10:27). There are no sins whose record will be sealed; there are no virtues to go unspoken. God does not leave sin around but just take it off the docket; either a sin is forgiven, in which case it is gone, or it remains. And it remains because (a) it defines that person and (b) it affects how that person interacts with others, because a person in (or not in) a state of grace fits differently into the fulness of humanity, like a living or dead branch on the vine.

Behind all this is a philosophical anthropology with two majors flaws. The first is the idea of society as being the aggregate of individuals. Individuals alone decide what is relevant. Society’s interests in factual data preservation seem markedly subordinate to individual desiderata. The second is the practical disappearance of society. The primary actors are individuals with claims which the state (the EU bureaucracy and, to the degree it allows it, member states) adjudicates. There is Caesar and the subject (although, in comparison to Rome’s, these subjects have more rights). Where is God? Does God have a say through the institutions that claim to represent Him, e.g., the Church? Or is the Church just another “interest[ed]” organization whose claims should be adjudicated not unlike Siemans? The fact that this case is even in a EUropean court raises that question. I can imagine a Mary McAleese (the former President of Ireland who now does canon law) arguing that, if we give the Church such a carveout, we should then require it to abandon infant baptism because a child cannot consent to the act that is being recorded.

Pope Leo XIV’s just-completed pilgrimage to France was noteworthy in part for his confrontation with the radical secularism that has been deemed a “human rights” requirement of the Republican creed. Few noted the paradox of the Pope celebrating Mass on the Place de la Concorde, the plaza where the revolutionaries hoped to destroy France’s Catholic identity one guillotining at a time. It’s not far removed from the now-forgotten paradox that when Pope St. John Paul II made his first pilgrimage abroad to Mexico, he was technically violating the anticlerical laws by appearing in public dressed as a priest. Are we seeing a slow reclothing of the naked public place?