I gladly accepted the proposal made to me by Professor Gragnoli, whom I thank, to speak at this important conference organized by the renowned University of Parma on an extremely pressing and vital issue: “Labour law and forms of manifestation of religious convictions”.

No one can deny the obvious fact that our Western society has, over time, been detached from a “religious” view of life, of the world and of history, a detachment that in the end lead to tensions fuelled by an (alleged) impossibility to reconcile religious convictions and freedom of the individual coexist whenever the latter is freely expressed, including also the labour market.

An impossibility to reconcile that, as we will see, is also strongly influenced by a heavy ideological baggage that hampers also discussions on the aforementioned problems. I am participating in this debate first and foremost as a Priest, but also as a jurist, aware that a common ground on which to work together to build the civitas hominum is possible.

My contribution will not encroach in the various legal cases, which, as authoritatively demonstrated by the other distinguished speakers, have highlighted tensions concerning the mingling of various interests.

I will try to tread on a path of reflection that could restore and foster a proper, fruitful relationship between the need for the state to be secular and the respect for individual and collective religious freedom.

Sommario:

1. Today's social context: an overview that takes into account philosophy - 2. Religion and society - 3. Secularity: a chimera? - NOTE

In this part of my reasoning I will make use of the reflections of a great Italian thinker of the 20th century, Augusto Del Noce, who, in my humble opinion, offered an admirable synthesis of the philosophical horizon that created the foundations of the social situation that we find ourselves to live in this “post-everything” 21st century, a social situation that is causing so many problems to the idea of Man we are promoting in the Western, First World countries [1], but also on the concept of life that we are handing over to the new generations. What characterizes our society today is “the diffusion of something entirely different from atheism, that is, the “natural irreligion” (the loss, the fading out of everything sacred, or whatever name we may give to it) [2]. Since the concept of Truth and, consequently, that of so-called “non-negotiable” principles have disappeared from the collective heart and soul of society and even the concept of natural law [3] has also been strongly questioned, a new (very attractive) way of thinking has become popular. This way of thinking is basically empiricism, which assumes that only what can be verified (mostly by science) can be true. By viewing the world through this (deforming) lens, followers of this way of thinking can structure knowledge, morals and politics without ever referring to transcendence. Starting therefore from a Gnostic point [continua ..]

» Per l'intero contenuto effettuare il login inizio

The social framework seems clear and obvious: the marginalisation of faith, or the persistent ideological attempt to eradicate it from the collective consciousness both inexorably advance in this overwhelming era of globalisation, and not only of the world of labour and economy. However, much of politics does not take into due consideration what History has established as an indisputable principle: religion and society are and will always be intrinsically linked [19]. Every attempt to separate them, carried out by the great totalitarian regimes has failed even if, the natural irreligion, if we want to use Del Noce’s words, has permeated wide layers of the social fabric, shaping the consciences, especially those of the new generations, with the result of making “plausible” the illusion of the irrelevance and futility of any question about God. Man always carries within himself questions about the meaning of life and therefore, no matter how bewildered, deluded and misguided man may be, he will never be able to suffocate that “religious” yearning which, like nostalgia, will always resound in the depths of his soul. “Martin Buber in Tales of the Hasidim [20] discusses Rabbi Mendel of Kozk, who “astonished some learned men who were his guests with this question: “Where does God live?” Those men laughed at him: “What are you saying? The whole world is full of His glory!” But then the Rabbi [continua ..]

» Per l'intero contenuto effettuare il login inizio

I believe my reasoning highlighted how the ideological burden that weighs on the spiritual and transcendent dimension of man, and on everything that refers to them, is the main obstacle to overcome. Let me sum it up: we live in a social cultural context which either openly refuses or at the very least trivialises and marginalises religious beliefs, in the name of an anthropocentric empiricism in a fideistic horizon centred on the predominance of technology, which has become a true divinity. The origins of all this lie in the far past but, especially in these last centuries (XIX and XX), “a process is in progress, though most failed to notice it, involving loss of inner concentration and elevated feelings, generalised dispersion and perhaps irremediable eclipse of the spiritual values. [30]”. “However, the radical, organic reason for this decline in culture is the fact that it has lost its strength by evaporating in secularisation. For many centuries the enlightened minds of humanity have been increasingly attracted by the conception of the “anthropocentrism, more dignifiedly called humanitarianism, that humanitarianism which in the twentieth century has led to abstract, sometimes totalitarian ideologies. In any case, the fact remains that a self-sufficient anthropocentrism is not able to provide answers to many essential questions that life presents us with, and its incapacity increase as one tries to go deeper n answering [continua ..]

» Per l'intero contenuto effettuare il login inizio

» Per l'intero contenuto effettuare il login inizio