Suchergebnisse

The paper provides the ideal-typical narrative of European integration manufactured by Romanian intellectuals and the official national Church (Greek-orthodox), that could be summarized as follows: in the realm of the spirit, Europe would have survived mainly in the East, shepherded by such intellectuals as the Romanian ones and by the spiritual legacy of the Orthodox Church; in political and economic terms, European Union is monitored according to secularist and relativist guidelines by the bureaucracy in Brussels. Whatever the latter, together with their Romanian counterparts, may have realized in the course of European enlargement is of little concern for the former. Both the Church and the mainstream intellectuals are engaged now in an operation that should have defined them long before the fall of state socialism: to boost intellectual non-conformity with respect to the political dominant discourse as a way of refusing the debate by taking it seriously. And they do it by means of the same narrative device that kept them silent under communism: they tell the story of the prevalence of culture and the spiritual over everything political.

This article is following the evolution of the understanding of the concept of "property" in the Catholic Church's social doctrine, during a period of 120 years, starting with the pontificate of Leo XIII and ending with the one of Pope Benedict XVI. Being about the various understandings related to the concept of "property" in the Church's social doctrine, only the official discourse of the popes will be followed (magisterium) together with the input brought by the Second Vatican Council in interpreting and defining the concept.

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.

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.

The survey was conducted between March 30 and April 11, 2021 on a national sample of 1420 subjects. He measured the state of religiosity of the citizens with the help of several indicators: faith in God, frequency of prayers, church, fasting, confession, observance of holidays, reading the Bible, etc. The survey also measured attitudes toward teaching religion in schools, same-sex marriages, faith in the horoscope, trust in priests, attitudes toward abortion, the pandemic, politicians, and voting intentions.

A marriage amongst youth belonging to the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox confessions was considered almost normal in certain communities. This can be explained by the fact that few parishioners could grasp the differences between the two confessions. At the same time, we have the ethnical aspect. Ethnie could not be separated in this case from confession, as both Greek-Catholics and Orthodox in the area are mostly of Romanian ethnie. These elements should be considered especially since we considered a mainly rural area, where customs "laws" are superposed over the official ones. On the other hand, in the mixed Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic communities, inter-confessional marriages are easier accepted on the "official" level.
An important constraint, or, on the contrary, a strong determination against a mixed inter-confessional family came from the families. As mentioned before, a strong pressure against achieving a mixed marriage came from the church. Both parishes to which the youngsters belonged had to be consulted. In order to have a religious marriage, they needed an engagement exemption from the archpriest (they came weeks, even months late, there were situations when the marriages were not accepted, so there would be no exemption). They had to pay a large amount for the exemption, so that many youngsters could not afford to pay for it; this was often solved by clandestine "wild" marriage. However, both the State and the Church wished to stop this phenomenon, so they took steps in this area.

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.