Revising

February 11 is a national holiday inItaly. The date marks the anniversary of three historic pacts: the Lateran Treaty, which formally constituted Vatican City as an independent territorial state; a financial accord, which indemnified the Pope for the 19th century confiscation of the Papal States; and a concordat* to settle religious matters be tween the Roman Catholic Church and the government of Italy. Signed by Fas cist Dictator Benito Mussolini and a representative of Pope Pius XI, the pacts successfully survived World War II, Mussolini's fall and even a new post war constitution. But as Italy marked the 40th anniversary of the signing last week, there were audible signs of dis content. Students in Milan tried to at tend classes -- closed for the day -- to dramatize the need for revising the concordat. Other university militants scattered pamphlets in St. Peter's Square.

In Parliament, a slow-moving commission appointed last year to recommend changes was assailed by Liberal and Socialist Deputies for lack of progress.

What disturbs the critics is a growing conviction that too many provisions in the agreement between Italy and the Vatican are no longer relevant to the nation's needs. As Salvatore Valitutti, a Liberal Party official, put it: "The concordat of 1929 was established between a state that was not free and a church not yet reconciled to the values of freedom." Many of the concordat's provisions run counter to the intent of Italy's postwar constitution, which states that "all religious confessions are equally free before the law." But the constitution also clearly ratifies the three Lateran pacts, which provide that "the Catholic, apostolic Roman religion is the sole religion of the state."

The concordat has thus created a number of practical difficulties. Only ecclesiastical courts have any authority to annul a marriage; religious education is mandatory in public schools, even for non-Catholic children; defrocked priests may be kept from holding positions in which they meet the public; and despite free-speech guarantees, an iconoclastic play like Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy may be barred from performance in Rome because it allegedly defames Pope Pius XII.

Angry Editorials. Even some members of Italy's dominant Christian Democratic Party, despite its close ties to the Vatican, have long conceded the need for changes in the concordat. Unquestionably the most troublesome issue to be faced will be divorce, which is now impossible in Italy because the concordat's marriage clauses leave the state only with the power of granting civil separations. Angry editorials in the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano have already objected to recently introduced divorce legislation, and Vatican officials have privately made it clear that the papacy is not likely to move an inch on .this issue. The only concession might be to permit civil divorce for purely civil marriages. Rome may also continue to insist on mandatory religious instruction in public schools despite the objections of Italian Protestants and Jews.

Nonetheless, the Vatican has appointed its own commission to study revision, and is clearly open to a few lesser concessions. It is no longer concerned about barring apostate priests from public jobs, nor does it necessarily want to keep all ten mandatory religious holidays on the national calendar. For its own part, the Vatican wants to drop the concordat provision permitting government objections to episcopal appointees and another requiring loyalty oaths from new bishops. But one important voice last week seemed quite satisfied with things as they are. Speaking to a Sunday crowd at St. Peter's, Pope Paul VI suggested that the concordat had measured up to its aim "of instituting in this blessed Italian nation religious peace and spiritual and moral concord of all its citizens."

* A concordat is a formal agreement between the Vatican and a government detailing the church's rights and duties in relation to the state. There are 16 such pacts now in existence, most of them agreements with predominantly Catholic nations, although there are also five dead-letter concordats with Communist countries in Eastern Europe.

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