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The public relevance of the church and Catholicism in Italy

2007; Routledge; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13545710601132722

1469-9583

Franco Garelli,

Religious Tourism and Spaces

Abstract This article highlights the particular situation of the Catholic religion in Italy which distinguishes itself for its systematic organization, active association-forming and cultural vitality, unrivalled in any other European country either Protestant or Catholic. On the one hand the church in Italy still disposes of such a wealth of clergy and religious figures, dioceses and parishes, educational and social institutions, ecclesiastical groups and associations, and so on, that it can maintain a diffuse presence scattered over the national territory; it deploys numerous forces and resources which form an integral part of normal social relationships that animate civil society. On the other hand, the church and Italian Catholicism today are particularly active at a cultural level, with their contribution of ideas and experience on vital questions arising in social coexistence (ranging from the family to bioethics, from religious freedom to the secular State, from national identity to the multiethnic presence, and so on). Keywords: Public relevance of the churchpublic role of the religionreligious figures and structuresCatholic associationsreligious identity Notes 1 See the essay by Pace (Citation2007) that appears in this special issue. 2 This includes (according to the criteria adopted by the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae) not only Central European nations that are not among the twenty-five member states of the European Union (such as Switzerland), but also Eastern European nations, chief among them the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania. 3 The number of dioceses reported here is actually six fewer than those shown in Table 1. These are the dioceses that coincide with abbeys. Because abbeys have no population, they will not be taken into consideration in this essay. In Italy, there is still a high number of dioceses despite the fact that there has already been a process of incorporation of these territorial pastoral units at the beginning of the 1980s, which dropped the total number from more than 290 to the current number (222). 4 At a higher organizational plane, the various dioceses are grouped into a series of pastoral regions, which – although they do not match them entirely – generally correspond to the breakdown of the Italian territory into regions. Here, too, we find many dioceses whose center of gravity is located within a civil region, but whose territory extends beyond the boundaries of that region. 5 In providing these data, we have chosen for purposes of convenience to make reference to the population as a whole (and we shall continue to do so), and not only to the number of baptized Catholics. This decision results in no serious distortion, since Italy's baptized Catholics amount to 97 per cent of the Italian population and are for the most part uniformly distributed throughout the various geographic areas of the country and in the other districts and divisions considered in this essay. 6 Data for 2005 supplied by the Istituto per il sostentamento del clero (Institute for the Support of the Clergy) of the Italian Bishop's Conference (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana). 7 Data for 2005 supplied by the Istituto per il sostentamento del clero (Institute for the Support of the Clergy) of the Italian Bishop's Conference (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana). 8 See the study of the religious and ethical pluralism of the Italians, whose chief findings were set forth in Garelli et al. (Citation2003). 9 See, in this connection, the last chapter of Garelli (Citation1991: 237 – 71); and, more recently, by the same author, the essay on Catholic association-forming in Italy (Garelli Citation2006a).