Libera scienza in libero Stato (Italian Edition)

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• Margherita Hack, the most known Italian astrophysicist, expresses her views.
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Hollander, Italian Fascism and the Jews: Or Shades of Gray? Moreover, the idea of religious freedom or, at least, religious tolerance, was a quite well-rooted value in Italian history. No group wanted religious freedom to be heavily restricted by the new Republican Constitution.

Even Catholic members of the Constitutional Assembly, as well as the Papacy, believed that religious freedom should be clearly affirmed. The modern Italian state that arose in the nineteenth century was less pro-Catholic than it appeared. The Italian Kingdom was formally Catholic, according to the Albertin Statute and the Lateran Pacts , and these laws undoubtedly privileged Catholics.

Lautsi I , supra note 1, paras. However, the Roman Catholic Church suffered from anti-clericalism during that same period: See Dean Swift, Anticlericalism , Gen. While traditional Catholic privileges waned, however, the political struggle against the Catholic Church did not give birth to true ideological hostility, neither towards the church nor towards religion in general. See Edoardo Tortarolo , Il Laicismo 50 The Constitution still contains the four articles concerning religious liberty that were drafted by the Constitutional Assembly in the form that they had at the time the constitutional text was approved.

Three of them—Articles 8, 19, and 20—were easily drafted and approved with little or no dispute by the Assembly. It is best to begin with Article 19, which contains the open affirmation of religious liberty, then move to Article 8, which deals with treatment of religious communities, and finally focus on the most debated Article 7. The latter deserves a thorough analysis because it is the basis on which the relationship between church and state has been constructed in the decades since the Constitution was enacted.

Both Article 19 and Article 8 can be discussed briefly. This article provides religious freedom for all—for minorities as well as the Catholic majority.

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After affirming that all religions are equally free and can organize themselves according to their own internal rules, it outlines the relationship between non-Catholic religious groups and the state:. Taken together, Articles 19 and 8 establish a broad recognition of religious freedom in terms of belief and exercise, regardless of personal choices in matter of faith. While the previous two articles created little or no debate, For the Vatican diplomatic documents, see Giovanni Sale, Il Vaticano e la Costituzione The final and current form of Article 7 is as follows: Amendments to these pacts which are accepted by both parties do not require the procedure of constitutional amendments.

The second sentence was hotly debated at the Constitutional Assembly. The Catholic Church and the Christian members of the Constitutional Assembly insisted on the need to mention the Lateran pacts. In , the Vatican and the Italian Government signed these pacts, which accorded the Holy See independence from Italy and recognized it as a sovereign state.

Holy See , http: The Vatican and Catholic Assembly members wanted reassurance that the pacts, which reaffirmed the confessional principle of Italy as a Catholic nation, Article 1 of the Treaty between the Holy See and the Italian State provided: The Treaty was enforced by Italian Law No. Legge 27 maggio n.

Libera scienza in libero Stato / Margherita Hack. - Version details - Trove

Due to the broad freedom and the privileges that the pacts accorded to the Catholic Church, the Catholic hierarchy feared the Constitutional Court could find that the Pacts conflicted with Constitutional provisions mandating religious equality in accordance with Article 3; Id. If the Constitution had remained silent about the pacts, the Catholic hierarchy affirmed, the equilibrium between the traditional Catholic majority and the minority could be broken; therefore, the Church pushed for an explicit inclusion of the pacts within the final text. Conversely, leftist parties, including the Communist Party, did not want to mention the pacts because this would allude to the pre-Republic established church regime.

The discussion was deadlocked until Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Communists, decided to vote for the explicit inclusion of the Lateran pacts in Article 7. In fact, the Christian Democratic Party as well as the Papacy wanted an explicit mention of the pacts. Due to the insistence of the Vatican, the otherwise egalitarian Italian Constitution now referenced the Lateran pacts that gave special privileges to Catholicism. This contradiction provoked much controversy, The mention of the Lateran pacts inspired scholarly debate about the religious assessment of the Italian state.

The reference to the two powers as independent and sovereign, each within its own realm, seems to testify to the existence of a distinction between the political and the religious orders. The origins of Article 7 come from Catholic social doctrine. Framers Dossetti and Riccio explicitly quoted the encyclical letter several times during the drafting of the Constitution. Constitutional Assembly Act, No. Members of the Constitutional Assembly repeatedly quoted Immortale Dei , and the Constitution clearly echoes its expression:.

The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right. But, inasmuch as each of these two powers has authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the same thing-related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing-might belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both, therefore God, who foresees all things, and who is the author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each in right correlation to the other.

The encyclical letter endorses the legitimacy of the state law with a reference to St. First, the framers explicitly recognized collaboration between church and state, both in Article 7 for the relationship with the Catholic Church Art. Second, the Catholic tradition, which led to a paraphrasing of the encyclical letter in Article 7, shows the strong link between the secular and religious spheres in the Italian Constitution.

Therefore, the constitutional framers did not regard the two realms as completely separate, and the Catholic Church at the time did not encourage such a separation in theological or practical terms. However, the framers clearly refused to include the Catholic religious heritage of Italy within the constitutional text. A state-established church regime was not a realistic option, although some members of the Assembly proposed mentioning Catholicism in the text as the main Italian religious denomination, and others went further, suggesting inserting a preamble containing an Invocatio Dei before the constitutional articles.

On the contrary, the Constitution gave room for the pre-existing Lateran pacts as well as for negotiating new agreements with other denominations. At the same time, sufficient ambiguity existed to give rise to a long-term debate on the special position of the Catholic Church, the role of the Lateran pacts that contained the confessional principle, and the principle of equality, which the Italian Constitution affirms in several articles.

It remained to be determined if the traditional idea of a Catholic confessional regime was eclipsed by the principle of equality, or, conversely, if the confessional principle still ruled, because it was embedded in a treaty expressly mentioned in the Constitution.

The constitutional jurisprudence concerning religious freedom developed through what can be roughly divided into three different periods. The first period saw a slow and gradual enforcement of the constitutional protection for religious freedom and equality, allowing for mild discrimination against religious minorities.

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The first developmental phase of constitutional jurisprudence began in , when the Italian Constitution came into force; See Ercolessi, supra note 13, at 12— Given the previous confessional but tolerant Italian legal environment, the Constitutional Court, once it began operations in , See id. But milder forms of discrimination remained and appeared consistent with both the enduring presence of the confessional principle identifying Italy as a Catholic state as contemplated in the Lateran pacts, which the Constitution seemed to endorse; One can see the evolution of the Constitutional jurisprudence through several Constitutional Court decisions.

The rationales of such decisions have given less importance to the existence of a broad Catholic community in Italy and its historical role with the passing of time.

An important change occurred in when the Lateran pacts were modified. The modifications, which completely replaced the provisions, See Ercolessi, supra note 13, at This phrasing avoided clarifying whether the Catholic confessional principle was now abrogated by the modifications of , or whether it was now deemed unconstitutional under the Constitution. In other words, the modifications failed to dictate if the Italian Constitution trumped the Catholic state model of the Lateran pacts. After the modifications, an impressive shift occurred in the political and jurisdictional activities concerning religious freedom.

On the basis of Article 8, the Italian government negotiated agreements with several of the religious minorities the first agreement dates to and embarked on a serious discussion over the need for a new religious freedom law. Legge 11 agosto , n.

Due to the agreements, the state and many denominations have agreed on a number of issues, such as holidays, clergy, and the celebration of religious marriages. Yet for all these piecemeal changes and agreements with specific religious groups, twenty-five years of discussion have not resulted in a general law on religious freedom providing general protection for religious activities. For now, the only applicable legislation is the Law on Permitted Cults, which governs generally over religious minorities.

Culto Ammessi, Legge 24 giugno , n. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, — A Study in Conflict 65 The legislation remains in force except where abrogated. Its provisions include a requirement that clergy of non-Catholic denominations be approbated by the state Article 3 and permission for such clergy to perform religious marriages, which will be recognized as legally binding Article 7.

Nevertheless, they endowed religious minorities with certain important rights pertaining to the worship of God and the religious education of children. See Regio Decreto 28 febbraio , n. Italian protection of the right of religious freedom has gone through an impressive evolution. A new pact with the Catholic Church was signed, many religious minorities obtained special regulation for their own specific needs, and the Constitutional Court trimmed some provisions that were affected by the established state church model.

Nevertheless, Italian laws governing religious activities still need to be formally updated to reflect the more recent Constitution. The Catholic roots of Italian constitutional culture are reflected in constitutional jurisprudence after the modification of the Lateran pacts. Shortly after modifying the Lateran pacts in , the Constitutional Court started applying the principles of equality before the law according to Article 3 and of religious freedom according to Article 8 more liberally, eliminating the forms of discrimination associated with the Lateran pacts. The Court used and endorsed the very word that the constitutional framers had deliberately avoided, explicitly incorporating it into Italian jurisprudence.

Interestingly, this first case examined the presence of religion in one of the environments that has provided the most material for debate among scholars: The case before the Court regarded the constitutional compatibility of teaching the Catholic religion in these institutions. Such a curriculum was contemplated by the Lateran pacts and their subsequent modifications; it is still imparted by teachers, who are subject to an ecclesiastical approbation, only to students who ask to participate, while the contents of the subject are the object of a joint agreement between the church and the state.

In its decisions, the Constitutional Court focused on two issues: Others have maintained that the Court used the word in an inappropriate way, just to describe the fundamental role of religious freedom and of the principle of equality. A third faction strongly supported the importation of the French interpretation of the term—its aim was not to adopt a hostile approach towards religion, but rather to foster a stronger separation between spiritual and state power.

This faction wanted to weaken the public role of religions, especially of the Catholic Church, rather than impeding or narrowing religious freedom. They would have supported the introduction of the word, but they would have expected it to have different implications on the relationship between religion and state. First, it was inconsistent with the traditional meaning of that very word, which had been borrowed from the French concept of strict separation between church and state. However, this accomplishment could have been achieved through the exact application of the constitutional provisions about religion and state, rather than incorporating such a contentious word into the constitutional jurisprudence.

The original wording of the Constitutional Court is as follows: The Constitutional Court used the word to define synthetically the religious freedom and the relationship between religion and state that are embedded in the Constitution. Those constitutional provisions have little to do with the French strict separation of church and state, which was conceived in opposition to Catholicism. The theory of an open, friendly attitude of public institutions toward religion was replaced by a new doctrine demanding that public institutions and religions remain more distant from each other.

This decision was the landmark in this shift in constitutional jurisprudence. This shift is apparent in part because of the outcome of the decisions, but mainly because of the arguments the Court has employed to define the principle. Even though the Court did not derive the hostile approach from the French tradition, it has increasingly advocated a stronger separation between church and state. It must be clarified that the Court adopted the new wording without being fully aware of this change.

The penal code was created during the s, when the state was officially religious—so the justices interpreted the reference to the state religion as meaning Catholicism. In the name of equality, the Court annulled the provision only partially. Due to the intervention of the Court, Catholicism lost its special protection against offenses to its main historical figures and liturgy, but was protected from any offense to God. Moreover, because there was no explicit mention of the Catholic deity, the phrasing of the article was changed to extend the protection from offenses of the divine to believers of other faiths.

Nevertheless, it might have expressed an admonition to Parliament in order to restore the broader protection of religiosity. In other words, a court could decide to identify Jesus with God, as Christians do, and therefore apply the law to offenses against Jesus—but this could be seen as an endorsement of a Christian vantage point. The latter choice might be seen as egalitarian precisely because it does not endorse any specific religious vantage point.

Interestingly, the Constitutional Court introduced this principle in its decision even though it was not necessary. The Decision Number concerned the different fiscal treatment of some Jewish institutions in light of the treatment that was accorded to some Catholic institutions by some Italian tax laws. Namely, the tax exemptions that were accorded to Catholic institutions were Law Number and Law Number Legge 16 dicembre , n.

The Court dismissed the case, concluding that the Catholic and the Jewish institutions that were brought to its attention had different purposes and therefore could legitimately be treated differently under Italian law. In addressing the case, the Court mentioned the principle of neutrality, which had never been cited before in its jurisprudence. Even though it was provided with these concepts, the Court preferred to introduce the neutrality principle to express the proper attitude of the state toward religions. The neutrality principle is linked to the French constitutional model that conceives religion and state as separate entities and has clearly been used by the Court in this sense.

In its recent decisions, the Constitutional Court has changed its view about how the state should govern religious pluralism—from an attitude that fosters the collaboration between church and state, the Court has shifted to a new paradigm which requires religion and state to remain distinctly separate from each other. Neutrality was successfully used as the crucial criteria to distinguish between what is and is not allowed in public schools.

The Italian political and legal environments have been continuously involved in the topic of religion at school. There are various reasons for this: Stato, 27 aprile , n. It said that the crucifix was consistent with the constitutional principle of freedom of religion and of conscience since it did not impede on the freedom of speech and did not inhibit discussion in the classrooms. It simply reflected the cultural roots of the Italian state, and therefore it had to be considered as a cultural sign rather than a religious one. The first Italian case concerning the crucifix was only indirectly linked with the presence of the crucifix at a public school.

It originated when a man who had been called to work at the ballots refused to obey and was therefore prosecuted according to a penal rule sanctioning people who do not comply with this mandatory duty. He did not want to be associated with such a symbol, even though the classroom where he was actually placed did not have a crucifix inside. The case finally arrived at the Court of Cassation.

The Court does not have the power to annul legal or administrative rules; its general task is to grant a uniform interpretation of the laws. In this case, the Court had to examine if the previous judges were correct in interpreting the rule and delivering the sanction. The Court reversed the judgments and excused the defendant accused of violating the law. The Court of Cassation could have contradicted the Council of State and endorsed the opinion that the symbol could influence the freedom of conscience of the people working at the ballots.

However, this would not have dealt with the accusation involved in that specific case since there was no crucifix in that room. Therefore, this would have meant an implicit affirmation of the display of the crucifix, but the defendant would have been found guilty. Proceedings of the third Colloquium on astrophysics held in Trieste, September by Colloquium on Astrophysics Book 18 editions published between and in English and French and held by 91 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. Libera scienza in libero stato by Margherita Hack Book 8 editions published between and in Italian and held by 56 WorldCat member libraries worldwide.

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