The Church-State relationships in EU Member States are in a process of a radical transformation. This is the result of a rapid political integration and also of the major transformations of the modernity. Religion is still part of the European public space even if, according to modernity premises, it should be only a private matter. According to Max Weber and other authors, secularization diminishes the role of the religion in society. However, these theories are being contested in recent years, due to the interpretation of statistical data and to the emergence of fundamentalist religious movements spreading around the world. Consequently, secularization is a tendency and not an "iron law". As regards the current role of the religion, Silvio Ferrari developed the theory according to which there is a common European model. This model does not exist yet, but certainly we live in an era defined by the continuous searching of such a model. There is no European identity without common values. Some of these values, like toleration, do have a profound religious foundation. European integration is based on the action of different actors, including interest groups located in Brussels. The Churches and the religious organizations are also part of this category of actors and they try to be part of a process by which a common space for consultation will emerge.
Any reflection on the relationship between religion and politics in the Catholic thought cannot do without reminding the Augustinian distinction between the civitas Dei and civitas terrena. The goal and foundation of any just political community should be the orientation to wards the common good. In the contemporary catholic thought, Johann Baptist Metz proposes a political theology revolving around the concepts of the value of the human person, the necessary refusal, on the part of the Church, of any mundane ideology and the necessary use of the socially critical potential of theological thought. Hans Küng criticizes any politicization of theology. He insists on the development of an internal pluralism within the Church and advocates a self-limitation of the magisterial intervention in the world in the name of a necessary "eschato logical reserve". Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict the XVIth , invested with the magisterial authority, relies heavily on official documents of the Catholic social doctrine. He emphasizes the necessity of founding the state on the central value of justice and its acting according to the principle of subsidiarity. In this context, the Christian faith and the Church in particular may have a pedagogical role, as it may guide reason to follow the right priorities. All three thinkers agree on the public significance of the Christian vision of society and on the fact that it may help society both by its critical and by its constructive dimension.
Pierre Manent is viewed as a French thinker that develops in modern times the liberal tradition of political thinking. One of the most important issues of Manent's thinking that was not enough underlined it is the relationship between religion an politics and how this evolved from the beginning of Christianity until the main consequences of modernity. Manent view on religion and politics is the core of this paper analysis. The main contributions of Manent, such as Naissances de la politique moderne. Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (1977), Histoire intellectuelle du lib.ralisme (1987) La cit. de l'homme (1994), Cours familier de philosophie politique (2001), La raison des nations. R.flections sur la d.mocratie en Europe (2006) are analyzed from this perspective. Our conclusion is that in the way Manent deals with the relationship between politics and religion there are some constants that may be found in all his work. These are: the relationship between the Church and the different forms of political organization in Europe (Civitas, Imperium, monarchy); the fact that Christianity is one of the few current relevant concepts for political, due to the failure of totalitarian ideologies; the idea that secularization in Europe is not irreversible; we live in "an age of separations", and Church-State is one of these separations; we witness the religion transformation process and the .tat la.que cannot survive to .tat-nation; the role of Islam in modern societies and his perpetual finding of a political form; the relationship between Judaism, state and nation; the issue of the Christian identity of Europe.
This article intends to analyze the role of religion in the public sphere in Habermas's theory. Despite the fact that the concept has been launched in a book published in 1961, only in 2005 the well-known German thinker has dealt explicitly with this issue. Even the critics of his public sphere model do not mention the lack of religion from the whole paradigm. Some of Habermas writings related to religion prior to 2005 are discussed. The role of religion in the public sphere is, according to Habermas, related with the issue of religious freedom and the State- Church separation, a model opposed to French laicïté. For Habermas, the state must not only be neutral to the religious discourse, but it must also encourage the participation of political organizations to public life. Another issue that is discussed by Habermas is the relationship between religious majorities and minorities. Habermas does assume a middle position between laicïté and the refuse of the modernity-imposed borders between religion and politics. The article takes an insight into the way Charles Taylor deals with the role of religion in the public sphere, a helpful argument for showing that the debate on this issue is only at the beginning.
"בשיחה מזמין אותנו אמיר אור למגוון רחב של תחומי עיון וחקירה: היסטוריה, חברה, מקרא, דתות, ספרות, שפה ופילוסופיה. כתיבתו התייחדה לאורך השנים כקול רענן, ומקורי בשיח התרבות בארץ, ומציעה מבחר נושאים לא קונוונציונלי לצד התבוננות חדשה ולעתים נון־קונפורמיסטית בסוגיות ויצירות קלסיות. הארודיציה והמנעד המחקרי של אור ניכרים בכתיבתו, ועם זאת הוא אינו כותב בז'רגון אקדמי, ומסותיו קולחות, מדברות, ופונות אל שוחרי התרבות והדעת באשר הם. רבים ממאמריו הם בבחינת חידוש בכיכר העיר של התרבות הישראלית. המסות והמאמרים התפרסמו מאז 1988 בבמות תרבות וספרות מרכזיות, ביניהן "הארץ", "ידיעות אחרונות", "דבר", "מעריב", "זמנים", "פוליטיקה", "הליקון", "חדרים" ו"עכשיו", וכן בתרגום, בכתבי עת באירופה, ארה"ב ויפן"--
The phenomenon we have tried to approximate in our work is that of Romanian inter-war spirituality. The "protagonists" of this research belonged to the so-called "young generation" or "generation 27", that is "The Criterion group": Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Mircea Vulcanescu, as well as other two representatives of a different generation: Nae Ionescu and Nichifor Crainic. The first chapter, entitled "Steps and traps in the perception of Romanian inter-war spirituality" stipulates the topic of our research. The novelty of the approach lies in our desire of deciphering the way in which these persons had perceived themselves and their role in what we are going to refer to as the great inter-war experiment. We intend to regard reality as the sum of various images, arising from different layers of perception, coming from the respective personalities, their critics and exegetes. These images overlap to an extent that does not justify the metaphor of a "mirror broken into pieces" and reconstructed; they merely form a sort of kaleidoscope whose images are recomposed in ever changing pictures every time the object one looks through revolves. In the same time, we make a starting point in an idea suggested by social psychology, which leads to our belief that the way in which the protagonists under discussion perceived themselves was defined by their representations on the events of the time, a sort of intellectual projection of collective consciousness. We made clear some terms such as "post-event perception": the type of cognitive reflection upon a cultural background that occurs under the circumstances imposed to the subject, situated at considerable distance in time, capable of placing him in a favorable position – as the absence of subjectivism cannot contaminate direct, synchronic perception of events; possible reiteration of the moment achieved by means of reading, an experiment possessing the supplementary cognitive charge of an anticipatory knowledge of the denouement, as well as a series of disadvantages – such as the informational deficiencies caused by the passing of time, the reality of events being an indirect, secondary one; the contamination of hypothetical decisions and post-event judgments by the bulk and value of information on the events, as well as their subsequent evaluation, jeopardizing the accuracy of perception. Evaluating the working hypotheses we notice that there is a considerable difference between the way in which we, who were not directly involved in the events, perceive the "epoch", and the way it was perceived by the persons whose intentions we are striving to decipher, together with the ideas and attitudes they shared, the people they came into contact with, the events they took part in or carried them along a sometimes disagreeable, often ungrateful History. Our protagonists observed that whatever culture consecrates or recovers is in possession of another type of reality. It is a relatively continuous reality; even if it becomes the subject of ever renewed evaluation, it constantly perpetuates a series of values, while history is anthropophagous, swallowing in an equally inconsiderate manner both geniuses and jesters, bringing together in its terrifying ignorance both illustrious characters and the most ordinary of all people.