Abstract
The authors refer to the activity of the expert committee established by the Ministry of Culture between 1999 and 2001 during the preparations for the currently effective Act on Religious Communities no. 3/2002 Sb. They suggest that this act should be abrogated and replaced with a new one.
The new regulation should derive the status of religious communities from the religious freedom of the individual. A preamble expressing the particular position of religious communities in society could help to achieve this outcome.
The authors also suggest that the two-stage registration and the institution of so-called special rights should be abolished, as well as advise the inclusion of the respective rights in an exemplary list of the rights of believers in all recognized (registered) religious communities. Furthermore, in the authors' view, the list should be extended and include the right of spiritual care in medical institutions, while recommending allocating all juridical persons derived from religious communities to a single category, thereby abolishing the institution of so-called special facilities, which was introduced in 2005.