Contenuti per la categoria: Secolarizzazione

Summary: 1. Introduction - 2. Constitutional project of ecclesiastical politics and cultural resistance to a correct interpretation of the fundamental provisions of freedom - 3. Secularity of the legal system, religious pluralism and human freedoms.

ABSTRACT: The problems that derive from the growing multicultural and multi-religious characterization of our society raise a number of questions regarding the difficulties encountered in identifying rules of coexistence that could be genuinely respectful of the ideal and spiritual dimension of the human person. In particular, it is in question the ability of the system of bilateral agreements between the State and the religious organizations to really enhance the individual religiosity, which is constitutionally protected in its instrumentality for the promotion and growth of the human being. Several doubts also concern the discretionary and political selection, exercised by public authorities, of religious organizations deserving an access to bilateral regulation of relationships. In a more and more plural and heterogeneous social reality, the exclusion from the special legislation of the newly established spiritual groups in the country does not seem to be respectful of a neutral and correct interpretation of the constitutional dictate.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa: la necessaria precedenza della libertà religiosa sulla laicità - 2. Radici etico-religiose del matrimonio, libertà religiosa e origini del matrimonio civile - 3. Il matrimonio civile: tra neutralità e ideologia - 4. Ritorno del fenomeno religioso nell’età della secolarizzazione: ricadute in materia matrimoniale - 5. La restituzione di matrimonio e famiglia alla società civile e alla religione - 6. La (ri)conquista di spazi di “diritto personale” e ritorno alla disciplina religiosa del matrimonio - 7. Diritto alla tutela dell’identità e “princìpi non negoziabili” dello Stato democratico. Conclusioni.

Marriage and family between secularism and religious freedom

Abstract: Given that between secularism and religious freedom there is a relationship of instrumentality of the first compared to the second, in the essay there’s a recall to the ethical-religious roots of the marriage’s legislation, which, starting from the Protestant Reformation and then from the French Revolution has undergone a process of secularization and secularism with the birth of the civil marriage. It is a process that has been motivated (also) by reasons of religious freedom, but which has led, by the State, to the subtraction of the marriage’s subject from the society. Today there is a substantial return from the state to the society of the discipline about the various forms of life and family communions, and this, in a religiously pluralistic society, involves (also) the return of the marriage to the religion.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa: il vilipendio quale “reato d’opinione” - 2. L’evoluzione dei delitti contro il sentimento religioso - 3. (segue): la riforma del 2006 - 4. La sentenza della Corte costituzionale n. 188 del 1975 - 5. L’esercizio del diritto di libera manifestazione del pensiero quale causa di giustificazione (art. 51 c.p.) - 6. Le più recenti applicazioni della giurisprudenza di legittimità - 7. Chiusa.

Are the crimes against religious sentiment compatible with the exercise of freedom of expression?

ABSTRACT: The crimes against religious sentiment, provided by the Italian Criminal Code, are mainly framed as “crimes of opinion”. Therefore, it should be ascertained whether and how those crimes are compatible with the exercise of freedom of expression, guaranteed as a fundamental right by Art. 21 of the Italian Constitution. The paper provides an overview of the jurisprudence – of ordinary courts and the Constitutional Court – and of the legislative evolution since 1930s about the crimes against religious sentiment.

SOMMARIO: 1. “A tradition under threat”. Antropologia della paura e tendenze esclusiviste delle comunità dominanti - 2. La tradizione filosofica del pensiero costituzionale: Williams, Madison e i princìpi cardine della tradizione di “religious fairnes” - 3. Forme di Benign Establishment: critica alla tesi della “presunta innocuità” e interpretazione autentica del principio di separazione - 4. Neutralità statale e speciale considerazione del fenomeno religioso: un rapporto problematico.

Liberty of conscience and liberty of religion on the challenge of the post-modernity: the Martha C. Nussbaum's philosophical jurisprudence

ABSTRACT: Nussbaum is one of the prominent defenders of the North American liberal tradition, threatened by the post-modern tendency to the exaltation of elements from the mainstream religion and the creation of in-groups between citizens. In his writings, the philosopher reproposes the value of liberal tradition by trying to show the impossibility to justify even the most venial forms of the benign establishment, as in the case of state-sponsored-religious-displays. The article focuses on Nussbaum'arguments, in a critical perspective.

SOMMARIO: 1. Una premessa - 2. Libertà religiosa e secolarizzazione - 3. L’odierna crisi della libertà religiosa - 4. Secolarismo e libertà religiosa - 5. Conclusione.

Religious freedom and secularism

ABSTRACT: The essay questions about the singular phenomenon for which, in front of the numerous and serious violations that are daily perpetrated in the world, towards the right of religious freedom, the West appears so detached and generally reluctant to political and diplomatic intervention. The fact is even more singular, if one compares this phenomenon with the general commitment that the West demonstrates for the planetary affirmation of the human rights, in a spirit almost of proselytism. In the opinion of the Author, the inactivity must be connected to the dominant secularist culture that has removed the sacred from the horizon of human meaning, with the consequence of the insignificance of the religious sentiment, of the irrelevance of the religious practice and, therefore, of the unreasonableness of fighting for their survival.

SOMMARIO: 1. La posizione del giudice ordinario. – 2. Le decisioni della Corte costituzionale. – 3. Il "pregresso vissuto" e le sollecitazioni al legislatore del giudice costituzionale e della Corte di Cassazione. – 4. L'intervento del legislatore "messo in mora".

The civil unions between judicial and legislative power

The essay traces the stages of the dialogue between judges and legislator that led to the approval of the law n. 76/2016. In particular, the essay emphasizes the relevance of the role of the ordinary judges who, understanding the importance of the right to a steady union for homosexual couples, have then appointed the Constitutional Court to solve this delicate problem. With two decisive rulings, the Court has laid out the way for the intervention of the legislator.

SOMMAIRE: 1 - Introduction - 2. L’État et l’Église en Grèce. Le cadre constitutionnel - 3 - L’Église de Grèce comme institution de l’État grec - 4. Le discours constitutionnel de l’Église. Des éléments de constitutionnalisme populiste - Pluralisme constitutionnel et droits de la majorité - 6. Les droits en tant qu’identité - 7. Conclusion - Bibliographie.

ABSTRACT: The invocation of the people, the constitution and the rights occupies an important place in the public discourse of the Church of Greece. Its constitutional discourse exhibits two main characteristics. Firstly, it is a populist discourse. The church talks in the name of “its” people, which it identifies with the Greek nation, and as the voice of the people’s will against its rulers. Moreover, it is a rights-laden discourse. The church talks as the protector of the rights of the majority, which it identifies with the rights of its believers. Its constitutional discourse and practice shows that the church manages to exploit the institutions, achievements and discourses of modernity, if only for the promotion of apparently pre-modern ends: the preservation of its privileges against the other religions; the prolongation of its role in the public sphere; its reproduction as an ideological mechanism of the nation-state.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. Considerazioni preliminari - 3. La fine del ‘vecchio mondo’ - 4. Universalità e identità - 5. Un nuovo protagonismo per i diritti religiosi? - 6. Per concludere.

Secularism and post-modernity: some American echos

ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on the works of six North American authors stemming from the conviction that the end of the ‘modern world’ is nigh and we are locked into the irreversible entropy of a secularism understood as a wall of separation between politics and religion. These convictions, together with a strong criticism towards legal positivism, imply the idea of the porousness of the borders between the sacred and profane, and a resulting reciprocal adjustment, an osmosis between the political and the religious spheres. In this paper, I would like to concentrate on the new approaches proposed by these authors and on the historical end epistemological connotations of the posited osmosis between the political and religious spheres.

SOMMARIO: 1. In forma di premessa - 2. L’immensa maggioranza degli spiriti -  3. Una forma particolare della speranza: religione e libertà tra dispotismo e repubblica - 4. Dal dogma teologico al dogma della maggioranza -  5. Quale religione? - 6. Contro la patologia del dubbio - 7. Polvere intellettuale: il metodo filosofico tra America ed Europa - 8. Chiesa e Stato tra America e Francia - 9. Democrazia e Cattolicesimo americano - 10. Una democrazia cristiana: Stato e Chiesa nell’ ‘ultimo’ Tocqueville.

“A salutary yoke on the intellect”: Religious Dogma and Political Freedom in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

ABSTRACT: The essay examines the relationship between religion and politics in Tocqueville's thinking, with particular attention to the synergy between Christianity and the development of democratic institutions, studied by the author in the United States. In the two volumes of Democracy in America, he observes that the doctrine of Christianity, subject to a process of popularization characteristic of American social dynamism, constitutes an essential connective tissue, through which the principle of equality permeates custom, law and institutions. This stabilization function finds a fundamental premise in the separation between spiritual and temporal sphere, which allows the former not to be bent to the conveniences of the second and, above all, not to be subjected to attacks which, as in the French Revolution, have confused and condemned it with its institutional form under the ancien régime. Such a circumstance, according to Tocqueville, has deprived society of the fundamental ethical background that unites it, neglecting above all the powerful egalitarian message that he identifies as a general character of Christianity and in particular of Catholicism, which he thinks even more appropriate to the democracy as the Protestant faith and which, by acting on custom, would enable the establishment and development of an indigenous democratic model also in France.

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione - 2. Europa dei cittadini e identità politica del processo di integrazione continentale - 3. Spazio politico europeo, libertà religiosa e laicità - 4. Conclusioni.

ABSTRACT: The evolution of the European Union law and of the right to religious freedom lies in the global process of internationalization of fundamental rights, the transformation of relations between States, the modification of the idea of ​​sovereignty, the emergence of new conventional instruments. With reference to the European social and legal space, the transformation of the European Economic Community into a real political union has allowed the inalienable human rights of the people to become central in the process of integration. Because of that, the political and legal system of the European Union, characterized by the transition of the State monopoly of sovereignty to its sharing among different subjects, has affected the reality of relations between public powers and religious phenomenon. A particular configuration of the concept of secularism in the European continent has been established, by virtue, which the values of democracy, pluralism, human dignity and non-identification between public functions and religious experience would allow for peaceful coexistence between religion, institutional activity of the European Union and fundamental freedoms.