Contributi di Alessandro Ferrari

Mutual Collaboration in the Service of the Human Person between the Catholic Church and States after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and the Villa Madama Agreements

ABSTRACT: The article examines the ways of expressing the sana cooperatio between the Holy See and the political community in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and the Villa Madama Accords. It will focus on the its characteristic traits as emerging from the pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis and then examine the instruments of cooperatio, in particular the role of the Secretariat of State, the papal nuncios and the concordats.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. Chiesa e comunità politica all’epoca dei tre papi “stranieri” - 2.1 Giovanni Paolo II - 2.2 Benedetto XVI - 2.3 Francesco - 3. Gli strumenti della sana cooperatio.

ABSTRACT: Starting from the hermeneutic value played by the veil issue in analyzing the contemporary dynamics of the right to religious freedom in Europe, the paper will focus on the tension between the modern and contemporary paradigm of this right: a tension that makes its effects felt on the broader Mediterranean scale and that hints at new scenarios of a postmodern European right to religious freedom.

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduction - 2. Separation: The Matrix of Freedom of Religion as a Right of Modernity - 3. Islam and Separation: Modernity Stumbles - 4. A Broader Scenario: The Mediterranean Backdrop - 5. Prospects for a Post-modern Right to Freedom of Religion.

The bothersome secularity: constitutional secularity and religious freedom

ABSTRACT: In recent years, there has been a certain disenchantment of religious denominations with secularity. At the very time when secularity as a constitutional principle offered a broad guarantee for religious pluralism, its concrete implementation seemed to contradict this potential. The article examines how the modern, narrative conception of this principle continues to influence-and hinder-the constitutional dimension of secularity by undermining the integrative function performed by this fundamental principle.

SOMMAIRE: 1. Introduction: paradigmes de relations et droit à la liberté religieuse, de l’identité à la tension - 2. Des paradigmes des relations État-Églises au droit à la liberté religieuse - 3. La force attractive des paradigmes dans le scénario européen contemporain - 4. Les paradigmes des relations État-Églises dans la nouvelle arène internationale - 5. Conclusion: une citoyenneté inachevée.

The “European Right” to Religious Freedom and Paradigms of State-Religion Relations in Contemporary Europe: a thorny cacophony

ABSTRACT: The article examines the dialectic between European national models of religious freedom and the paradigm of religious freedom shaped in the international order and in particular by the human rights discourse. The analysis of the relationship between the modern - national-centered - and the contemporary - individual-centered - paradigm of religious freedom reveals, on the one hand, the difficult but inevitable osmosis between legal systems in a multilevel system of rights protection and, on the other hand, the deep transformation of religious freedom in contemporary Europe.

SOMMARIO: 1. Dai cittadini alle persone: la rivoluzione dell’ospitalità del diritto - 2. Le democrazie costituzionali e l’UE: il progetto di una sovranità ospitale - 3. L’ospite nel diritto cosmopolita: i confini del diritto di ospitalità - 4. Dall’ospitalità alla cittadinanza plurale: l’ospite musulmano e il diritto di libertà religiosa come ospitalità.

The hospitality of the right or the arduous journey of human dignity

ABSTRACT: The paper, starting from the idea of law as a producer and, at the same time, an expression of the hospitality of a political community investigates the progressive opening of state legal systems to the "stranger" in the age following the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The paper highlights the difficulty in the implementation of an effective multi-level protection of fundamental rights and the resilience of the ancient paradigms of Westphalian sovereignty. In conclusion, the role of the right to religious freedom is underlined as the right to hospitality for the stable construction of multicultural and multireligious societies.

SOMMARIO : 1. Liminaire - 2. Les transformations du droit de liberté religieuse - 3. Transformations européennes, circulation de modelés et “universalisme modeste” - 4 Pour une “saine osmose” entre sphère séculière étatique et sphère religieuse.

For a shared political agora around the Mediterranean

ABSTRACT: The right to religious freedom is in profound transformation on both sides of the Mediterranean. While the Muslim presence shows European difficulties in the treatment of the collective dimensions of this right, the southern shore is confronted with the demands connected to the individualization of beliefs. On both sides, the challenge of freedom of conscience and religion and of the construction of pluralist constitutional democracies proposes ancient questions in renewed terms, soliciting a new rediscovery of the answers given by the universalistic constitutionalism of the second post-war period.

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.

La proposta di legge che oggi viene presentata non vuole soltanto colmare un ritardo da troppo tempo accumulato e concretizzare, finalmente, uno dei diritti maggiormente esplicitati dalla Costituzione repubblicana. Questa proposta risponde anche - e forse soprattutto - alla necessità di non dimenticare la fondamentale politicità del diritto di libertà religiosa in un tempo di pluralismo. Essa ambisce a riaffermare la capacità della politica di “vedere” il fenomeno religioso e di riconoscere la centralità del diritto di libertà di coscienza e di religione per la costruzione di una cittadinanza inclusiva e attiva. Dettando “Norme in materia di libertà di coscienza e di religione” la proposta oggi in discussione si pone come attuazione degli articoli 2-3, 19-20 e 7-8 della Costituzione, rappresentando, di conseguenza, lo svolgimento di un principio supremo di laicità costituzionale condiviso e armonico sia rispetto alla normativa già contrattata dallo Stato con le confessioni religiose sia rispetto alla normativa pattizia concordata con gli altri Stati nei vari spazi giuridici sovranazionali. (Continua)

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduction - 2. Une nouvelle modernité: le chameau musulman et le trou Westphalien - 3. Tensions contemporaines: ce que la "question musulmane" révèle - 4. Vers un ordre westphalien-méditerranéen - 5. Le rouleau compresseur de la contemporanéité: vers un nouveau paradigme.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa – 2. Cibo e trasformazioni del religioso – 3. “Cibo religioso” e mercato – 4. “Cibo religioso” e diritti statuali – 5. Alcune osservazioni conclusive.

Food, Law, Religion. Religious Freedom Issues in a Global Society

ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on the contemporary relevance acquired by “religious food” and, in particular, on the relationship of this latter with freedom to religion. An overview of the topic of “religious food” highlights transformations of both religious communities and state legal orders and reveals the different role played and methods followed by different rights – the right to a free market and to religious freedom – in the protection of “religious practices”. The tension between a “neutral” commercial approach and a more institutional and religiously-oriented one seems to be a historical constant and still the main characteristic of this question.

Sommario : 1. Premessa. Un paradigma per la “libertà religiosa mediterranea” – 2. La libertà religiosa come “prima libertà” – 2.1. La sponda nord – 2.2. La sponda sud – 3. La libertà religiosa nell’età contemporanea: apogeo e declino? – 4. Libertà religiosa e pluralismo musulmano in Europa – 5. Libertà religiosa e pluralismo musulmano in terra d’islam – 6. Alcune osservazioni conclusive.

Where religious freedom is heading: common paths on both sides of the Mediterranean

ABSTRACT : The paper aims to investigate the path of religious freedom on the two sides of the Mediterranean. Assuming the possibility of a synoptic history, the paper observes this synopsis from three different perspectives: historical, political and pluralistic. Taking the Declaration of Universal Human Rights as a common parameter for the two sides, the paper analyzes the contemporary process of politicization of the right of religious freedom both in Europe and in the MENA countries. Stressing the fact that the core of this right has to be individuated into the autonomy from the state of both (religious) individuals and communities, the paper advocates a defense of religious freedom as an autonomous and specific right, not completely merged with the generic protection of freedom of conscience and with the goals of the states. This kind of conflation, in fact, could subvert the fundamental distinction between religious and civil spheres, with harmful consequences for both the state and religious communities.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. La separazione … immaginata – 3. La separazione … possibile – 4. Un limite della politica liberale: lo scoglio del pluralismo giuridico – 5. Il lascito della politica ecclesiastica liberale: una mediocritas di ampio respiro

SOMMARIO: 1. Preambolo: una (inevitabile) questione di termini – 2. Le minoranze religiose in Italia nell’età federalista – 3. L’associazionismo religioso: il forzato della sussidiarietà orizzontale? – 4. Mimetismo a cascata e processi di istituzionalizzazione - 5 Alcune osservazioni conclusive: riacquistare la vista.