La Repubblica 18.3.10
Zagrebelsky dialogue of truth: power, status, and church
Carlo Galli
In modern democracies the two entities can not be overlapped and serves a plurality
The last book the lawyer deals with the relationship between politics and faith in the government of man
The historical reconstruction shows when you break the alliance between throne and altar
The paper reveals the need for a rediscovery of the characteristics of the secular
merit of the book by Gustavo Zagrebelsky (exchange the dress. Church and State, the government of man, edited by Yale University Press, pp. 160, € 16) is to grasp the thread of the complicated skein that is the return of political religion - interwoven into the crisis of the democratic state, the emergence of a widespread indifference to religion, but at the same time also the research a supplement of soul for a policy increasingly fragmented, irrational, unstable - and in a synthesis of rebuilding agile, informed, incisive, the harrowing tale of the duality between western power and religion, so by measuring the structural reasons of the problem.
That dualism between church and state was born with the statement - which dates back to Pope Gelasius at the end of the fifth century - the Church, which was originally capable of policy (Christ has saved the whole of humanity in the world, not individual men in their closed minds), are quite different and more political power than the mundane: the dualism in the design of the church was used to create a hierarchy in its favor, Christianity was the political precondition of existence - being a Christian and a citizen had the same thing - and thus also the legitimacy of the civil power. Secularism, therefore, is born in the Christian world, but indirectly it is not a concession for a Church or a religion of immediate results, but the result of a long-term fight against the claim of supremacy that has always characterized. A claim that
Zagrebelsky traces in its various forms - hierocracy the medieval and the modern theory of the Bellarmine potestas indirecta, namely the provision of support to the king and the parallel assertion that Catholics can be called by the pope to disobey their rulers -. The political modernity breaks precisely this alliance between throne and altar, and the Church front conflicts with the modern world and its politics: the nineteenth century is thus marked by the rejection of liberalism and freedom that this gave to religion (Free Church Free State). But despite this political and defensive doctrine, the Church opened to society, to mobilize the masses tend to be Catholic anti-state, and not leave them to socialism, faith no longer coincident with the people replaced, with the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII, her social doctrine as a central strategy of reappropriation of politics. The Church begins to act as essential not only for salvation but also to keep society together, which undermines the folly and injustice lay at the roots.
Conciliation, very short, with Modern Zagrebelsky is seen by the Second Vatican Council, in which the Church calls upon all people of good will, and asks to be able to serve mankind, to defend the dignity and rights of light ' Gospel teaching, the pluralism of opinions and social policies is accepted, and there is also open to the idea religious freedom. But note Zagrebelsky, the problem is never loose the Church's relationship with the Truth: a relationship that makes it very cumbersome in a guest democracy, which can easily appear to the Church as nihilism and instability, and destined to dissolution, if there is not the Church itself, as a civil theology or politics, to support it. In the now mature
crisis of the modern state, so here, by John Paul II on, the exchange of capacity between church and state - both in the race to govern rationally men - to whom the book's title alludes. No more hostile in principle to politics of reason, the Church under Benedict XVI (the Regensburg speech) claim to embody human reason in itself to its highest level, to be the heir of Greek philosophy (intellectually preferred to Jewish roots) and of philosophical reflection is not corrupt (ie, not Protestant, not individualistic, not rationalistic): in short, to be truly rational (not rationalistic), truly secular (non-secular), very political, as well as really saving. Truth and reason are united in the Catholic political theology, against the "dictatorship of relativism," to reaffirm a protectorate Catholic society, which the Church claims to be the source and synthesis, always active and vigilant: Once again, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, outside the Church there is no salvation. This pedagogical framework is acting on behalf of the Truth (as well as the latest encyclical shows in the title), and therefore potentially in error relegates those who disagreed (forcing him to live, barely tolerated in a world ruled by the principles of which is or where it is treated), the Pope asks that all behave as if God existed, and was the foundation of society. After reconciling the season of "believing without belonging", the men and even today many lay people (the "devout atheists") wish that politics are conducted on a belonging without believing, that turns democratic citizenship in a kind of community with a religious background.
Zagrebelsky strongly non-sectarian highlights the difficulty of dialogue between secularists and Catholics, on this basis, the religion that accepts democracy needs it, relativism, pluralism, seeking only truth that democracy recognizes the humanities affirmation of freedom, equality, responsibility and autonomy. In short, democracy demands that people behave politically as if God did not exist, and they find themselves - and not authoritarian foundations - the strength to be free and fair. Democracy is not afraid to be without metaphysical foundations, this gap is in fact the very condition of its mission, which is to flourish contingencies special projects of the lives of men and women in equal dignity and freedom.
We must be grateful to Zagrebelsky for clarity and serenity which shows the distance - not possumus secular, specular to the dictates of the Church on many aspects of social life and politics - between the current position of the Church and democracy. A distance - the true face of Western dualism - which, while indicating the need for a radical rediscovery of the essential characteristics of the secular, emphasizing the non-overlap between politics and faith, between the sacred and mundane sphere, and offers live freedom and obedience, rejecting the old and new fundamentalism.
