This is the source where Christians draw their passion to meet all men in every part of the earth and to share their life.

Is 52: 7-10; Salm 97; Heb 1: 1-6; Jn 1; 1-18

1. “The people who walked in darkness … upon those who dwelt in the land of deep shadow …” (Is 9: 1). These words of the prophet Isaiah concern us. Proceeding – or maybe living – in the darkness is hard and we are tired. Wearied and devastated is the world states with an acute realism Chesterton. More or less aware, this is the reason why we have gathered here on this Holy Night: here we search light because: “of the world the desire this is” Chesterton continues.

The light is this “child born for us” (Is 9: 5). In the stable of Bethlehem, as here now, in our resplendent basilica, the light shines. In the stable of Bethlehem as in every church in the world, thousands of years after creation rises the first dawn of the world. With the birth of Jesus the virtue of hope in its infancy grows anew for every man. Christmas is the inexhaustible source of revival – and God knows how much this word is precious today for each one of us -.

2. “And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David” (Lk 2: 3-4). In the meticulous account of the fact that has changed the sense of history the Evangelist Luke records a decisive datum: Joseph belongs to the house and family of David. He describes the origin. Today this information seems irrelevant, because birth is reduced to the mere biological beginning. Instead, it is mainly a genealogical question as John Paul II brilliantly acclaimed. It is, above all, origin and not only a beginning. Each one of us is rooted in the history of his o her generation. And not only, because the origin owns a further vertical dimension: we are created by God. Obscuring this fact means breaking the generation chain. The educational emergency which troubles us today is the result of this interruption.

3. “Mary … gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2: 7). The Greek word used here is found only in one other quotation in the New Testament to designate the room in which the Last Supper was to take place. In the following verses, the proclamation to the shepherds, some facts are repeated: “And this will be the sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2: 12). The description of St. Luke is not an idyllic account, on the contrary it overshadows a deep reflection upon the sense of this birth. In these words there is already a reference to the mystery of the Passion and of the Eucharist.

The Fathers of the Church arrive at saying: “God has reduced himself” to the point of becoming “visible to the eyes, palpable to the hands, portable on the shoulders”. Actually some Fathers use a Greek verb in which the “reducing himself” is connected to his “being impoverished”: God has impoverished himself, he lowered himself, he emptied himself, in order to talk to us the language we speak. Jesus did not only learn Aramaic, as all the children of his country did; Jesus was willing to learn the language through which human creatures could recognize Him.

4. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son”(Heb 1:1). The Old Testament offers us the letters of the alphabet through which God has revealed himself to men, but only Christ is the Word in whom the old alphabet finds sense and meaning.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us …” (Jn 2: 14). “He gave himself for us”(Titus 2: 14), up to point of “make himself eatable” in the Eucharistic banquet, involving us in the movement of His self giving.

This is the good news of Christmas: God makes himself familiar to us. And if God is familiar to us, we can surely recognize Him in one way or in another. Through grace the convinced believers are apt to recognize that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnated Son of God. But, observing attentively we can deduce that every man can recognize Him through the primary experience possible to everyone, that is: being open towards reality and to love our fellow creatures, because as St. Irenaeus declared: “Man is the glory of God”.

And if we recognize him our life changes. In today’s culture signed by trial, His humility becomes a question of simplicity. We all perceive the urgent need of simplifying our life. A simplification which goes from the overcoming of an ill-omened consumerism (we could use the word obscene because it has the same meaning), to the overcoming of complicated and equivocal affective styles, often false. All this causes suffering to the partner and transforms the beauty of love in exploitation and this does not help to experiment a rescuing love, on the contrary it tends to induce the partner in a tying love.

5. Christmas is God’s endlessness charity towards us and through this gift we become charity subjects: “As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity” ( Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 5). As a matter of fact, the horizon of charity is at 360 degrees which goes from all those who live in poverty (and the number of these is in continual increase and preoccupies) to the engaging-passion in the edification of the common good. We must be tireless in wide spreading the reasons of ‘philia’(civic friendship) over all the conflicts even in the ambit of direct political involvement. Moreover, we should not forget that politics – as Paul VI used to say – is the highest form of charity.

6. “The true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world” (Jn 1:9). It is necessary that the light we receive transforms us in sons of the light. The great need which comes to us from this Holy Christmas is to persevere in every relationship without taking anything fore granted and avoiding every never ending prejudice.

His nativity purified ours/ His life taught our life/ His death destroyed our death” (St. Bernard, Sententiae). Baby Jesus, beyond our merits, realizes the deepest desire of our heart. Let us ask the simplicity of the shepherds, the first testimonies of Christmas, that we may prepare an adequate space for Him and go, as they did, to proclaim Him to our fellow brothers: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God” (Is 52: 10). Amen!

In the fully crowed stadium, among the young players, the official teams and team’s managers, and the relatives of the player, he said: “you will achieve more goals if you know where you are going in your life, staing closed to Jesus”.

Here you will find the immages of the meeting.

Cardinal Angelo Scola offers summer readings advices for children, youngs and adults. The first suggestion for grown-up readers is Pope Benedict XVI’s book ” Jesus of Nazareth”.

Here you find a concise description of the book.

And He Appeared in Their Midst: “Jesus of Nazareth” at the Bookstore, a review by Sandro Magister.

Mass During the Day: Is 52: 7-10; from Psalm 97; Heb 1: 16; Jn 1: 1-18

1. “For there is a child born to us, a son given to us” (Is 9: 5). “[So Joseph set out] in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born. She wrapped him in swaddling cloths….”(Lk 2: 5-6).

Christmas is the feast of the Incarnation: “The Word was made flesh” (Jn 1,14). In the heart of the most impressive and decisive mystery of history there is the normality of a basic experience that every human being endures: a betrothed couple, a pregnant woman awaiting to give birth to her child because the time has come, a birth, a newborn child wrapped in swaddling cloths by his mother…. So, in the Holy Family of Bethlehem every family is reflected and this enables them to rediscover the freshness of their own original portrait – the stable nuptial tie between a man and a woman, public, faithful and open to life – always, even when faced with hard contradictions and sorrowful trials.

2. The simple words “to us” in the First Reading [ a child is born to us “ (Is 9:5)] echoing in the Second Lecture [“He sacrificed himself for us” (Tit 2:14)] and in the announcement to the shepherds according to the Gospel of Luke [“today a Savour has been born to you” (Lk 2: 11)] is repeated every day in every corner of the world where the sacrifice of the Eucharist is celebrated as the Fathers of the Church proclaimed, “He has become man in order to die” for our sake. The joy of Christmas does not need to censor the sacrifice (tomorrow the Church will introduce the figure of saint Stephen, the first martyr). The fullness and the maturity of love helps the married couples to remain united in an indissoluble bond, as any betrothed man or parent here present can proof. The result of the nexus between joy and sacrifice is love. From the unlimited dynamism of the Eucharist, the gift of this Child is continually offered to us so that true peace may flourish. Peace is the unique power able to break violence, always ready to interfere in the personal and social relationships, as well as among men and among peoples. “For all the footgear of battle, every clock rolled in blood, is burnt, and consumed by the fire” (Lk9:4).

3: While we post-modern men have the presumption of prescribing to God the conditions of his revelation, the shepherds are not scandalized to find the Saviour in a manger. As John the Baptist, as the Virgin Mary and many years before as Abraham and many others, are poor in spirit, persons ready to renounce to their personal ideas and expectations to make space to the Other, to God, He who surpasses all our ideas and expectations.

At the proclamation of the angel: “Peace to men who enjoy his favour” (Lc 2: 14) and the upsetting idea of being loved by God, without bearing any deserved title, the shepherds run to the grotto. This great love discovered and accepted makes them good (“Men of good will” as the old good tradition says), and enables them to answer with gratitude. Jesus’ true love enlightens God’s design upon every man and upon the whole human family. It is the key of the destiny of history; the unique and sure criterion to make use of the extraordinary techno-science results without any harm. This love is the source of ecclesial and civil commitment, an indomitable commitment, certain that God leads the course of history in favour of men: “How beautiful on the mountains, are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness, proclaims salvation” (Is 52: 7).

4. In the passage of the Letter to Titus which we have just listened, Saint Paul talks about this commitment; he mentions the origin, the features and the ultimate horizon: “God’s grace has been revealed and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race and taught us … we must be self-restrained and live good and religious lives here in this present world, while we are awaiting in hope for the blessing which will come with the Appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour Christ Jesus” (Tit 2: 11-13). The grace already revealed – this Child – educates us to live in a true way our relationship with God (with piety), with others (justly) and with things (with sobriety), while awaiting the glorious return of the Lord at the end of times. From this tension between the already in which He makes himself our companion of life and the not yet of His final return originates our authentic moral action. Therefore, no acquiescent passivity living at the mercy of an absolute lord, nor the presumption of saving oneself by the power of our own works, but the indomitable resumption of he who, thanks to this Child, recognizes himself in an indefectible relationship with the loving Father: “I will be a father to him and he a son to me” (Heb 1,5). This is the perspective in which the whole reality, personal and social extended to its highest level, planetary, must be lived. Everything, even the epochal turn towards which the economic-financial crises is driving us must be faced through a new vision of globalization. This requires that every interested subject, starting with the destitute of the continents still seized by poverty and hunger, must be involved in an incessant dialogue aiming at rightful distribution of material and spiritual goods. The New life-styles can emerge only through a new and joint globalization, starting with those who live near us. Therefore, everyone, starting from those who exercise government responsibilities at every level, ought to be responsible for those who loose their job, often without any social security cushion, the temporarily laid-off workers, the temporary employees and all those who are in need. As every development stage even the present one will cause sacrifices which will surely be felt by the affluent North of the planet. But only the practice of global and articulated justice can realize authentic development and peace in the world.

5. With a grateful and deeply moved heart in front of the Event which we contemplated again in this Holy Night we beseech the Child and His Mother with the words of a Medieval abbot: “Sweet Lord, Sweet Lady, since he is my Lord, my mercy, she is my Lady the door of mercy. May the Mother lead us to the Son, the Son to the Father, the bridge to the bridge-groom, because he is the Blessed God for ever” (Dom Nicholas of Chiaravalle, XII cent.).

(Translation by sr Léonard Azzopardi)

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/12/25/%e2%80%9cpeace-to-men-who-enjoy-his-favour%e2%80%9d-patriarchs-christmas-homily/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/02/04/jews-muslims-and-christians-talk-about-god/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/02/04/jews-muslims-and-christians-talk-about-god/#comments Sun, 04 Feb 2007 09:07:26 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=29 On February 2007 cardinal Scola has met Rabbi Israel Singer and Seyyed Hossein Nasr at a forum sponsored by the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. Here’s the article appeared in the National Catholic Register by Pete Sheehan.

NEW YORK – Despite difficulties, Christianity, Islam and Judaism can work together for peace, but only by each remaining faithful to its own beliefs.
That’s the view of leaders and scholars from the three religions who shared a podium at a Jan. 17 forum at the United Nations. “We live in a desert,” amid the growing secularism, religious divisions, and other conflicts that plague the world, said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, author and professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, one of the panellists. “The words ofJesus Christ, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ were at no time as true as today.”
Religion can help foster that peace, “but only if it continues to be religion,” remaining faithful to its own identity, the Iranian-born Nasr said. “We must not relativize our path to God, but we must accept the validity of other paths.
Nasr spoke along with Cardinal Angelo Scola, patriarch of Venice, and Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress, and the Venice, Italy-based Oasis International Studies and Research Center.
About 200 people filled the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Auditorium for the forum, which was held to introduce the work of the Oasis Center and its publications. Oasis, a bi-annual magazine that deals with issue of Christian, Muslim and other interfaith concerns, is being given a U.S. editions for the first time.
The Jan. 17 forum included the three “Abrahamic” religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Cardinal Scola founded the Oasis Center and its journal to forster dialogue among Christians and Muslims, beginning with Christian communities living in Muslim countries.
In addressing the audience, Cardinal Scola emphasized the need for dialogue beyond scholarly circles to included individuals in their daily lives.”Listen to the experiences of people”, he urged.
Father James Massa. director of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, who met Cardinal Scola when he was in Washington the previous day, called Oasis a “marvellous instrument” that offers was to “bridge the divides” between Catholics and Muslims.
Fahter Massa noted that the name comes from a comment by Pope John Paul II that “the place of prayes is dear to both Christians and Muslims ad an oasis in which one meets with the merciful God along the walk toward eternal life and with one’s brothers and sisters in the bonds of religion.”
Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus and who works closely with the Oasis Cener, moderated the panel.

‘Misunderstandlngs’

Nasr noted that “many profound misunderstandings need to be overcome,” especially the miss-association between Islam and violence.
Both Islam and Christianity have, at different times in their history, practiced violence “in the name of religion,” he said. While Judaism has less of a record of violence, “for most of its history ii hasn’t had the power” to inflict violence.
“You can’t compare your favourable periods with the unfavorable periods of other religions” or confuse the influence of religion with the influence of the civilization in which a people of faith live, Nasr said.
In understanding the differences in history and theology of each religion. “the freedom to be oneself,” and not be subject to coercion, whether military or economic.
While recognizing the differences among the three religions, Nasr said, “Look at how much they have in common. They all believe in the same God”, as well as “the beginning and end of human history, the immortality of the soul and responsibility for one’s actions before God.”
“Let up hope and pray that all those who believe in God, in his mercy and his wisdom” Nasr continued, “will be able to speak together as a single family in a world so alienated from the divine.”
Rabbi Singer also shared that hope for all religions. He found encouragement from the closer relationship between the Church and Judaism since the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 document Nostra Aetate (The Relation of the Church to better relations with Judaism. Yet dialogue between Jews and Catholics went far beyond what was imagined in Nostra Aetate, Singer said.
He cited the leadership of Pope John Paul II for fostering the healing. Jewish-Catholic dialogue can be a model for reconciliation, he said.
“If Jews and Catholics can get along,” Singer said, “almost anything can happen.”
Singer praised Islamic figures who have denounced violence, in particular Shaykh Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti in Egypt and one of the highest-ranking clarics in e Sunni Muslim world.
The rabbi read a statement in which Ali Gomaa repudiated violence committed in the name of Islam as “the actions of e misguided criminal minority” who “contradict the central theme of peace in Islam.”

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/02/04/jews-muslims-and-christians-talk-about-god/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/01/16/intercultural-forum-for-studies-in-faith-and-culture-introductory-paper-by-card-scola/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/01/16/intercultural-forum-for-studies-in-faith-and-culture-introductory-paper-by-card-scola/#comments Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:07:48 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=62

On the occasion of his encounter with representatives of Muslim communities in Germany on 20 August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI re-emphasised that “interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an occasional option. It is in fact a vital necessity, and our future depends to a great extent upon it”.
Here the Pope was re-stating a personal conviction about interreligious dialogue which he had espoused some years before in his celebrated volume entitled Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (The new people of God). In this work the theologian Joseph Ratzinger had maintained: “[] it has become an integral part of our faith today that Christianity should have relations with the religions of the world: this is far from being a matter of a mere curiosity that is solely interested in constructing some theory of its own about the destiny of others this destiny is decided by God alone, who does not need our theories (…) But today there is more at stake: the sense of our being able and obliged to believe. The religions of the world have become a question mark for Christianity; faced with them it must start to think afresh about its claims, [] how it can understand them as playing a necessary role in the history of salvation”1.

Having acknowledged the centrality of interreligious dialogue, we next need to determine the few basic criteria to which Benedict XVI refers. They can then be the object of discussion and study in our dialogue. It is not possible in this brief introduction to offer a systematic presentation of these criteria. I will limit myself therefore to stating two; I cannot even hope to be able to offer an organic analysis of them.

a) Religions and good life
The first of these criteria – not in order of importance but because it is the most pacific was particularly and significantly emphasised by the Holy Father in his addresses to Muslim believers. This asserts that dialogue is proper to every believer as a member of the people of God or of the Muslim communities. It derives above all from the fact that every person is de facto a member of a society, and is thereby called to contribute to the good life of the society in which he or she lives. Here the Pope strongly emphasises the need for adhérents of religions to take the same path: “Certainly, recognition of the positive role of religions at the heart of the social body can and must impel our societies to explore more and more deeply their knowledge of the human person and to respect human dignity by placing the person at the centre of political, economic, cultural, and social activity. Our world must come to realise more and more that all peoples are linked by profound solidarity with one another, and they must be encouraged to assert their historical and cultural differences not for the sake of confrontation but in order to foster mutual respect.” (Pope’s speech to the diplomatic corps in the Apostolic Nunciature at Ankara, 28 november 2006).

b) Faith, reason, and religions
The second and more demanding criterion is the one emphasised particularly in the celebrated lecture at the University of Regensburg. It deals with the nexus of faith, reason, and religion and the capacity of human reason to grasp this nexus. In this connection the Holy Father affirmed at Regensburg: “theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences (…) precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith. Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. (…) A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. (…) For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity (…) is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. (…) The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.” [Official translation from Vatican website]
This long quotation from the Regensburg lecture can help us to determine a few essential elements which can be the object of our dialogue.
The correct relationship between faith, reason, and religions, perfectly comprehensible to human reason when not enslaved to reductionisms, involves a recognition of the two inseparable sides to dialogue, neither of which can be dispensed with.

c) The principle of integration
The first of the above criteria can be identified as the principle of integration. What does it consist in? It can best be described in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Basle theologian acknowledges the necessity of a comparison of the actual contents of religions at all levels. In this way “something like a scale of recognisable truths will be born, which can be co-ordinated according to the principle: “The one who has more truth is more right and has more rights on his side” (…) The one who turns out to be in a position to integrate the maximum of truth into his vision would have the presumption of a maximally true truth”2. From this point of view it is possible to grasp why the Holy Father proposes to understand interreligious and intercultural dialogue in a unitary fashion. A definition of culture which does not take into consideration the religious dimension constitutive of the ultimate requirements of reason is reductive (Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?)

d) Truth and freedom
The second indispensable aspect of dialogue concerns the truth-freedom nexus. While it is true that the principle of integration is essential, because required by the quest for truth proper to religions, at the same time it does not manage to encompass all of the horizon of truth on its own. By its very nature truth requires the act of a freedom which is ready to give active assent.
The principle of integration cannot but bow to the “freedom of God in His Self-revelation”3, proposing a kind of absolute knowledge of hegelian stamp. The same principle must also respect the truth of the finite freedom of man, which is called actively to welcome the statement of truth rather than merely enduring it! That is why Balthasar himself speaks of truth in terms of “love that gives itself in freedom (“only love is credible”)”4. Pope Benedict also fully took on board this crucial aspect of interreligious dialogue when, in his Message on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Interreligious Encounter of Prayer for Peace (the second of September 2006), he opted to speak expressly of the «language of testimony».Christians and Muslims in particular must bear testimony, in reciprocal dialogue, to their faith in the one God and in the ineradicable distance constantly present in the Islamic faith between Creator and creatures. They must not however undervalue the differences – beginning with the trinitarian monotheism central to Christianity. Defending in continuous open dialogue the freedom of religion in every civil society, Christianity and Islam are then called to testify that every form of violence is by its nature alien to the authentic raison d’être of religion as such.

————-

1. J. RATZINGER, Il nuovo popolo di Dio, Queriniana, Brescia 1971, 391-392. [Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie, 1972]

2. H. U. VON BALTHASAR, La mia opera ed epilogo, Jaca Book, Milano 1994, 97-98. [My Work: in Retrospect, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993]

3. Ibid., 98.

4. Ibidem.

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/01/16/intercultural-forum-for-studies-in-faith-and-culture-introductory-paper-by-card-scola/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2006/09/01/todays-and-tomorrows-scenarios-for-competitive-strategies-religions-and-politics/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2006/09/01/todays-and-tomorrows-scenarios-for-competitive-strategies-religions-and-politics/#comments Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:15:50 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=190 1. The “Gods Are Back”
With the end of the age of utopias, the end to what Lyotard refers to as the age of the “Grand Narratives” , the growing influence of religions and sects around the world, especially of Islam, is at odds with the view that prevailed after 1945, namely that religion’s social and political relevance in the modern world would wither away. Then there were expectations that the process of secularisation would usher in the so-called mundane world. Instead, we are witnessing the Sacred making an almost furious comeback . All the tragic conflicts that have inflamed every corner of the globe after the fall of the Berlin Wall are proof enough of the naiveté behind the idea that in the 21st century the Western Way of Life would spread globally under the sign of “an awkwardly-labelled Humanity with a capital H” .
In order that this overly brief remark about the socio-political importance of religion not be seen as uncritically biased, it is necessary to take into account the objectively dialectical nature of the relationship between religion and modernity. If we want to respect the history of Europe, whose mind has tended to think globally, we must explicitly look at the dialectical between Christianity and Modernity?
What is it?
Let us begin at one extreme of this dialectical relationship. Today we can dispassionately say that modernity led Christianity to rigorously explain the consequences caused by the necessary and sound process of differentiation of religion from politics, a distinction that was already announced in the Gospels when Jesus said: “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt: 22, 21). Modernity, especially with the advent of the Enlightenment, held in check a certain ideological drift in the Christian experience itself, a drift due to a doctrinaire point of view that reduced revealed truth to just a “system of conceptual propositions from which one could deduce individual aspects of reality”. This reductionism denied reality’s historical, unpredictable and perplexing nature and underestimated the importance of the relationship of truth to freedom. Quite a few occurrences connected to the inculturation of Christianity in Europe-and there are no reasons to disagree with this-are proof of this ideological failure.
From early modernity, the one-way vision that governed the relationship between truth and freedom found itself progressively in crisis. This vision correctly claimed that freedom had to provide space for all the truth, but it did not clearly show how to integrate the truth of freedom into the meaning of freedom for the truth, which implies the objective recognition of freedom of conscience, when the latter is correctly understood.
Nonetheless, and this is the other extreme of the dialectical relationship between Christianity and modernity, we must stress that if European modernity was, in a certain sense, able to force Christians to accept this greater authenticity, it was able to do so thanks to the essential and permanently vital core of the Christian faith itself. This core was passed on, from Jerusalem to Rome, by way of the unbroken Christian traditio, and continues to this day to be a key resource for contemporary Europe but also other parts of the world.
I am referring here to the principle of difference in unity which lives in the mystery of the Trinity and passed into History because of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and became, by analogy, the principle of understanding and positively valuing all differences. At both individual and collective levels, this difference is not only tolerated but it is actually extolled because it is held in unity by that Truth-which is an event before it is ever a doctrine and ethics (cf. Deus caritas est n. 1)-that reaches into the farthest point (sort of a Ultima Thule) of the human experience, so that even the most radical difference is not allowed to degenerate into something that would more or less violently dissolve society.
In this context, the practice and theories of democracy evolved in the West in such a fashion that democracy came to be understood as an ensemble of citizens, intermediary organisations and peoples living together, freely and in an orderly fashion. In so doing, the latter gave rise to a civil society adequately served by the state.

2. Religion removed from the public sphere
And yet we cannot forget one important fact that, historically, came out of this dialectical relationship between modernity and Christianity in Europe. The precious outcome of this relationship, i.e. the truth of freedom of conscience and thus a satisfactory distinction between religious faith and political action, came with a hefty price, namely the removal of religion from the public sphere of civil society. A perceptive historian wrote that with modernity “religion starts to be viewed from the outside. It is categorised as a custom or something that is historically contingent. As such it is seen as opposed to reason or nature. ” Starting in the 16th century, various alternatives to the former relationship between religion and politics appear. There are attempts to reduce all confessions to one (integralism/fundamentalism); to find a supposedly universal natural religion that predates historically-contingent religions (naturalism of the Enlightenment); to attribute to “politics” the same function as a catalyst for citizens, intermediary organisations, civil society and nations once performed by religion (totalitarianism); and finally to subscribe to the notion of “provisional morality”, i.e. to scepticism (agnostic liberalism).
This fundamental process had a two-edged historical outcome. On the hand, religion came to be politically used in either an authoritarian way (as state religion) or liberal way (as a socially valuable tool) . On the other, religion was restricted to the private sphere, irrelevant and inappropriate for the public sphere. What modernity failed to do was to consider religion’s public relevance in and of itself.

3. Etsi Deus non daretur?
Quickly moving to the present, we can see that the rapid development of today’s civilisation of networks has transformed the nature of political participation and humbled intermediary organisations. In Europe, for more and more people a proper relationship between an individual’s fundamental rights and the state can only exist if other points of reference and mediation are excluded-only this way is a society deemed democratic and pluralistic. In this context, religion is seen as an “unwelcome third party” to be tolerated in so far is it is confined to a person’s private life. This view corresponds to the current phase of globalisation which focuses on cultural neutrality whereby in modern Western democracies all religions are “equal” (in-difference). The public sphere is said to be neutral as far as religions are concerned (…). All religions are asked to see their own universalism as a private affair, [at best] limited to their own sphere of influence. ”
This outlook is best exemplified by Kelsen’s well-known assertion that the “appreciation of rational science and the tendency to keep it free from any metaphysical or religious intrusion are traits of modern democracy “.
In very different ways countries like France, Italy and Spain have been the scene of heated discussions with regard to secularism. In each the prevailing view has been that the modern state ought to be secular and neutral. But we must really understand what this formula means. In the more passionate interpretations, the term “secular” does not only mean “a-religious” but sometimes even rhymes with “antireligious”.
Scholars do point out that in the United States, expressing one’s religiosity in public life is an accepted practice, albeit not a predominant one. The Founding Fathers somewhat tried to build “a secular state without a secular civil religion” . In this country, the political sphere is clearly separate from that of religion, but it is open to the latter because it is aware that government alone cannot fashion ethical citizens. On the contrary, ethical citizens are often inspired by religion to favour democracy. American Evangelicals, whether Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, whose appeal is currently reaching into places like Latin America (Brazil), Asia, Africa, and even in predominantly Muslim regions, are able to go quite far in integrating their faith and the American culture. Whatever we may think of these faith-based movements, and we should not underestimate their appeal, they do seem to confirm that “an important lesson in the American experience of religious diversity within a democratic political and social structure is that its religious foundation of culture is broad enough to accommodate those attempting to live according to one of the three great Abrahamic faith traditions while preserving individual freedom of belief and practice [as well as the freedom not to believe or practice].”
Kelsen’s thesis is thus coming under closer critical scrutiny today not only by people like David Novak, an American Jew who argues that “religious people are capable of building a secular order based on their own revelation-based traditions” , but also by those in Europe who are calling for a fresh approach to pluralistic democracy. Thinkers like Böckenförde and Habermas for instance, who, each in his own way, argue that whilst the modern state can only be based on a consensus over procedures, this does do not exclude that “the liberal secular state can also be sustained by normative premises that it alone cannot generate” .
Isn’t forcing believers to act etsi Deus non daretur, by not mentioning the relationship between rationality and the ultimate divine origin of a given rule (norm), ultimately a price to high to pay in order to live in society ? Are we actually sure that this omission isn’t depriving society of something good?
Ultimately, it is not possible to exclude, at least in principle, the notion that religion, too, can play a role in the public sphere.

4. Religions, social capital and “cultural métissage”
In particular we must ask ourselves: Can the principle of difference in unity, whose roots are Christian, ensure that democracy is real, now and in the future, in Europe as well as elsewhere? A democracy that not only can face rapid intercultural and inter-religious transformations, but can even turn the world’s new traits into cultural resources ? I think so. And I am certain that there is nothing nostalgic about it; it does not in any way, shape or form imply returning to bygone models of Christianity.
With regard to this I would like to say a few things.
First, I believe that recognising the religious dimension in civil society can fill the gaps left, among other things, by the liberal view of religion as a private matter.
Above all democracy needs trust and shared ideals without which it turns into a set of purely procedural conflict-resolution mechanisms between opposing interests. Von Kutschera realised this when he said that even ethics, whose main task is to “mediate between interests and moral needs, cannot motivate men’s desires and interests. Ethics need to be more grounded in anthropology, the more so since markets and economies are increasingly globalised. The fact that today there is no other form of democracy than the procedural model not only does not rule out Böckenförde’ thesis but rather proves it. In other words, democracy needs a certain societal background.
Secondly, it is by now obvious that marginalising religion from the social sphere is unacceptable to those non European cultures for which religion is essentially a public matter . In this sense, modern solutions to the relationship between religion and politics become obsolete as a result of the sometimes violent historical evolution of the process-I stress process-of civilisational and cultural métissage. This expression, which tentatively appeared some 20 years ago in anthropology departments and is by many still perceived apprehensively and with suspicion, has a broader application, in my opinion, than terms like identity and integration .

5. A public sphere religiously qualified
What new role can religions play at this point in history, at least in the West? First of all, I think we ought to recognise the need for a religiously qualified public sphere that is well separate from that of the state and quite distinctive within civil society itself .
This means that in its attitude towards religion, the state must shift from one of passive tolerance to one of “active openness”, in which religion’s public relevance is not reduced to whatever public space religions have negotiated with the state. For their part, religions must abandon their self-centred or fundamentalist attitude and engage in direct exchange with other religions and cultures so as to create an arena of dialogue in which religions can express their views and be heard in public debates over cultural values.
In other words, “a religiously qualified public sphere exists within a civil society defined as the meeting place where people engage in social exchanges (market-oriented or socially integrative), not deprived of their religious self but defined by it, and who, through their mutual interaction, give value to their respective selves as part of a democratic political system that regulates the presence of different religions in the aforementioned spheres of exchange. [A religiously qualified public sphere] is the place in which religions themselves elaborate social relations by acting outside of their own immediate realm through the influence they exert on social actors.”
Such a proposal recognises the fact that, “increasingly, freedom is viewed as a relational phenomenon” in tune with a one-to-one relationship between truth and freedom that is still being explored, since early modernity, in various modern cultures.

6. Religions and the Good Life
We must therefore imagine in more rigorous terms the type of state that can create an adequate space for a civil society that is truly plural, a state that is not afraid of the inevitable conflicts that will occur in such a society, but one that is able to positively regulate them. The type of state that I have in mind is not “detached” (i.e., falsely neutral); it is a state that is openly in the service of its citizens and their needs (like freedom, happiness, fulfillment) but without a specific worldview (Weltanschauung). And whilst fully respecting democratic procedures, it assimilates the values that underlie democratic life itself (civil and political liberties) to which intermediary groups give rise. I am neither ignoring nor am I worried by the fact that history teaches us that values are rooted in specific traditions which institutions certainly shape but which are in turn shaped by them. What I mean is the notion of “dominant traditions” similar to what Habermas had in mind when he spoke of “better opinion” . In the same way that someone arguing for an authentically formal and procedural democracy is not necessarily taking a “relativist” position, so anyone who thinks that the same procedural focus endowed with its own validity must be understood in axiological terms is not automatically a “fundamentalist”. I speak on purpose about the “axiology” and not the “foundations” of a procedural democracy, because this way we can refer to a “pre-political” level, one that is also religious in nature, and something that is quite useful for implementing human rights legislation and make democracies work. On another occasion I dealt with the same issues, when I spoke of “new secularism” in relation to the Italian situation .
Fundamental rights-if viewed in terms of the needs that constitute everyone’s basic experience and in terms of the values of living together in a democracy which are rooted in the particular history of a given people-represent the positive features of a truly secular society. In such a society, the state organises (and supports) the ways different identities and religions live side by side. The state I have in mind is not a state conceived as an empty and unremarkable container that one fills as one pleases (this is a weak and for all intents and purposes an unworkable proposition), certainly not one that is confessional, but rather one where everyone can make his or her own contribution to the common good. And this can only occur as part of an inevitable and respectful mutual process of give and take and recognition that preserves the real nature of power, which is and ought to be service to the people, even when the state must resort, as Kant put it, “to the use of force to uphold the law”.
It is no accident if it is the only proposition that, by avoiding the opposite dangers of unrestrained individualism and oppressive collectivism, can adequately take into account the “relational” nature of power . None of us can conceive ourselves outside of a relationship. The “individual” does not exist as a separate atom, self-sufficient and thus unrelated to others. We always exist in relation to a “different other” . Each one of us is both “oneself” (identity) and the “other” for “someone else” (difference). In actual terms, as Ricoeur pointed out, this relationship expresses itself in a process of dialogic confrontation and recognition (whose flip side is non recognition) which are the bases for sensible co-existence and legitimate rule .
As mutual confrontation and recognition evolve, the tie between identity and difference, in addition to being important for democracy, appears as something indissoluble. From this perspective the relationship between religion and politics only requires respect for religions’ nature as concrete universals. This nature is no less important than the universality of fundamental rights, which are often too abstract when they are reduced to a simple list of poorly understood and historically contextualised rules.
A civil religion alone is not enough for a sound democracy, nor can democracy rely on religions that are simply privatised. What democracy needs to do is to fully recognise that personal faith is inseparable from group ties (religions), which operate as independent actors in the public sphere and offer everyone without distinctions their own proposals for the good life to individuals and society in a process of exchange of ideas that is open, democratic, secular, public and plural.