Ombretta Fumagalli Carulli

The Church has, at various times in its history, been described as a communitas perfecta, a perfect and supreme society that has as its goal the promotion of salvation of humanity. Like any organization, the Church is governed by rules that enable it to achieve its end, and this is the most basic function of canon law...

L’invito di Papa Francesco di considerare l’anno tra i due Sinodi sulla famiglia tempo di maturazione delle idee ha portato autorevoli storici del diritto, canonisti, ecclesiasticisti, costituzionalisti, a trattare, in questo volume, importanti profili di particolare attualità.

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ABSTRACT The essay starts mentioning Giorgio La Pira, member of the Italian Constituent Assembly, who recommended inter-religious dialogue as a way towards the World’s pacification. Then it deals with the evolution of post-Counciliar Catholic Church and its struggle in favor of religious freedom, both individual and institutional, as a fundamental right of the human being. Comparing religious freedom as guaranteed in the documents of the International community and the protection accorded by Islamic declarations, the Author points out the difficulties of a dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The political community should create the conditions in order to develop such dialogue without controversies and should verify that in every society reciprocity is granted. The article concludes with the Pope Benedict’s invitation to Abrahamic religions to enhance the dialogue of everyday life and of intellectuals. KEY WORDS: religious freedom, inter-religious dialogue, reciprocity.

This paper deals with two aspects of the religious freedom, with specific focus on the experience of the Catholic Church. The first aspect concerns the individual, comunitarian and institutional freedom of religion. This freedom is demanded by the Catholic Church in front of the political community according to an old dualistic principle dating back to the catholic predication and which is opposite to the monistic principle. The Italian experience is paradigmatic of the State’s attempts to revive a variation of the pagan monism. A special attention is also paid to the European détente process, in which the Christian Churches became «sage midwifes» of democracy while the international charters are reluctant to recognize the institutional freedom of religion. This paper also refers to the horizontal application of human rights as to one of the new challanges. The second aspect concerns dealt with by this paper is the freedom of the single believer within the Catholic Church. This freedom is strengthened by the Codex Iuris Canonici currently in force and only partially corresponds to the Human Rights ratified by International Charters. If the right and duty of communion is the lintel, the believers’ freedom of opinion and the other specific freedoms which are granted to laymen and laywomen are the walls of the new constitutional architecture of the Catholic Church. A comparison with Islam is then mentioned as one of the most relevant questions. Islam does not regard human rights as natural rights, but looks at them as divine gifts founded on the Shari’a. Such view is based on the theologic-juridical primacy of the law on the person. This idea is the opposite of the primacy of the person over the law, a foundational value which was brought in the Western Culture by the Christianism.