Religious Freedom in Italy : : An Impossible Paradigm? / / Alessandro Ferrari.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2024 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Ferrari, Alessandro,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2023]; Carocci editore, , [2024]; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2023; 2024
• Language: English
• Series: Religion and Society , 88
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VII, 201 p.)

Italy, seat of the Pope and Vatican City, has a long and difficult relationship with religious freedom. Often identified as a Catholic nation par excellence, Italy owes its unification to a political class that advocated the separation of Church and State. Home of the Concordat, contemporary Italy recognises a peculiar notion of legal secularism (laicità) as the supreme principle of its constitutional order. Through the glasses of law, tracing the history of the right to religious freedom from the Unification to the present day, the nine chapters of the book allow an insight on paradoxes and contradictions of a complex system made of unresolved stratifications where a strong constitutional recognition of religious freedom is accompanied by a weak legislative protection of religious pluralism and, at the same time, a vigorous religious agency in the public space. Religious freedom in Italy offers an interpretation of a model of religious freedom that is not only a paradigm for many European experiences but also a possible interpretative parameter to better understand the dynamics of religious freedom between the two shores of the Mediterranean.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introductory note -- 1 The right to religious freedom in the liberal era: from tolerance to freedom -- 2 The Conciliazione: fascism and its ecclesiastical policy -- 3 The right to religious freedom in the republican Constitution -- 4 The right to religious freedom: from text to action -- 5 The Villa Madama Accords of 1984: a new right to religious freedom for the Catholic Church -- 6 Beyond the Catholic Church: the era of pluralism and agreements -- 7 The Italian model faces change: policy shortcomings -- 8 Constitutional judges and the pyramid of religions: the difficulty of procedure without politics -- 9 The right to religious freedom of a nation-state: the ‘Catholic invariant’ in a changing society -- Epilogue The Italian right to religious freedom, specificity, and secularisation in the Euro-Mediterranean area -- Bibliography -- Index