Whatever could be the space and time conditions in which to live it, nothing changes. The freedom of conscience must be always defended. It is an original and unavoidable element of the universe. The shapes and the ways to live it can change, but it’s a law of the universe anyway.  Certainly, there will always be someone who’ll try not to respect it, just because trying to impose it would be a contradiction.

Here is the article 18 of the Declaration of rights: ” everyone has the right to the freedom of thought, conscience and religion”. “the freedom of religion doesn’t side with faith or unbelief ” says the politician Ruffini; it just wants to create and keep a society of free citizens, trying to surpass the obstacles that other men, associations and even the State might set.

 

In 1789, during the French revolution, a really revolutionary text was adopted! The declaration of the rights of the man and the citizen established in fact the equality of all the citizens in front of the law: this was unimaginable until then, considering the enormous privileges of the nobles.

The freedom and equality “in dignity and rights”, the right to the life, the freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the freedom of opinion and expression, the freedom of meeting and association, the equality in front of the law, the protection given by the law were sanctioned. The founders

of the United States, escaping from their native land because of religious inquisitors, didn’t want any other form of intolerance in their new world; so they founded a constitutional order that guaranteed the freedom of worship, expressing in this way a strong opposition to the acknowledgment of a dominant religion. The differences in religion can create fear, but the right antidote  is the increased engagement towards the long tradition of freedom and respect, that played a formative role in the American institutions. In the Italian Constitution there are some articles concerning the freedom of religion:

 

Art. 19: among the rights and the duties of citizens there is the freedom of religion, as an individual right, even in the form of association.

Art.   8: collective religious freedom of confessions.

 

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