Religious Pluralism in Rome

Religious Pluralism in Rome

Introduction.

Religious pluralism is the attitude about the diversity of religious belief systems that exist in society. Every religion is maintaining their own truths and claims that they believe in, and the beliefs show significant differences from one religion to another. When people from these religions meet in public squares, they agree and accept that religion is not a discriminative tool and that everyone should live in peace with their neighbors regardless of their religious differences. Therefore, different religions exist in the same community in harmony without quarrelling, as they value one another’s presence, and act within the laws of their beliefs. This report will focus on religious pluralism in Rome, that has several religious traditions existing in harmony. It has been an important centre for the Roman Catholic Church until 1870, which is a period of nearly two millennials. Rome was considered as the home to the Roman Catholic Church for the most part at that time. However, the current Rome has many other religions, including Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism (Porterfield 25).

Overview of Structure of Religious Ethnic Populations

The Islamic community is growing significantly in Rome as a result of immigration from North African countries, and the Middle East. Islam has been in Rome from the ninth century, but nearly got wiped out in the following centuries due to emigration of Muslims to north Africa. A minute community of Muslims survived until 1300 before the destruction of the Muslim settlement of Lucera and was not present in Rome up to the twentieth century.  First were Somali immigrants who arrived, then others followed from Bangladesh, Balkans, India, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, making the religion to be recognized by the state. Research done by the Pew Research Center projections and Brookings, in 2011 puts Muslims population at nearly one million and four hundred, which is 2.3% of the total population of Italy, and a quarter of a million have permanent Italian citizenship. There are eight mosques in Italy, and The Mosque of Rome is located in Parioli, Rome City. It is one of the largest mosques in consideration of land area. There is much resistance and opposition from the government and local citizens who do not still recognize Islam as a religion. However, Italy is boasting of the fourth largest Muslim population in entire Europe (Shapiro and Arnold 93).

Judaism has existed in Rome for nearly two thousand years, dating back to the pre-Christian Roman period. Estimations done in 2007 placed the Jews population at around forty-five thousand, but their populations have been declining through the years due to persecutions, and some converting into Christianity. Many Jews came to Rome as merchants or were brought as slaves in the first and second centuries BCE. Romans recognized Jews’ religion from the famous temple in Jerusalem (Herod’s Temple). Currently, nearly thirty-six thousand Jews hold Italian citizenship, and twenty-eight thousand connected to Union of Italian Jewish communities resulting in low birth-rates and economic constraints forcing them to migrate. Rome holds more Jews, nearly twenty-thousand (Beckford 17).

Christianity was spread in Rome by Constantine the Great. However, St. Paul, who had been persecuting Jews, converted to Christianity and helped spread the religion in Rome, making the religion to become prominent in the Roman Empire. The religion has existed in Rome for many years, though many were meeting in secret as the roman empire persecuted and tortured them. The Catholic Church is the leading Christian religion in Vatican City, dominating it with Christians estimated to be at nearly fifty-five to seventy percent of the total population. That is around sixty-million people are Christians in Italy, a majority in the Roman Catholic, while a smaller group of protestants being estimated at sixty-five thousand, while Jehovah’s Witnesses population is nearly four hundred and twenty-two thousand.

Buddhism is the third largest religion in Italy behind Christianity and Islam, with estimations of Buddhists to be at 0.3% of the total population. The religion originated from India as a Sramana tradition between the sixth, and fourth centuries BCE, and spread throughout Asia and Europe. The whole of Italy has nearly one hundred and sixty thousand Buddhists, whose presence was known around the 1960s. Rome has the largest Chinese Buddhist Temple in Europe, in the Eastern side via dell’Olmo. It was constructed in 2013 as a place for prayer and teachings about Buddhism. The community of Chinese practising Buddhism in Rome city is estimated to be between five and seven thousand people, where many of them come from a specific area of the Zhejiang province in South-China.

Religious and Government Relationship State in Rome

The state religion is a religious body that is endorsed by the state officially. The secular overtones are dominating Rome, and Italy as a whole. Secularizing can be defined as giving religious freedom, disestablishing state religions, public funds being stopped from ethical use, freeing the legal systems from being controlled by faith, freeing the education systems, tolerating people who change or abandon their religion, and allowing political leaders to be elected and gain power without looking at their religion, and beliefs. Many people rarely follow church-teachings, despite a majority saying they are Catholic, and only thirty percent go to church’s weekly service.  The church is regarded as an institution of a valuable cultural phenomenon in Rome, with many supporting the Pope’s opposition to the war in different parts of the globe against humanity, and his role in the campaign to eradicate poverty. It was the State Church up to a time when it became de facto disestablished by the 1948 constitution. Then revision was done in 1984 in the Lateran Treaty, making Italy a secular nation. Everyone in Rome respects the other person’s religion, trying hard to avoid preferential treatment for a person based on religious beliefs (Wiznia and Nada 37).

Italy has a Constitution which provides special relationships between the state and the Catholic Church. Official holidays for the public administration are Christian feast days due to majority of catholic schools in the state. The Vatican City within Rome is different from the secularism as it is an elective, theocratic, or a sacerdotal Absolute Monarchy which is governed and led by the pope. The Pope is also performing as the church leader, and states’ functionaries are all Catholic clergy of different national origins. The Vatican is the official place of residence to the Pope and is referred to as the Apostolic Palace. The jurisdictions that grant various degrees of recognition in the constitution to Roman Catholicism without establishing it as the state religion. The Catholic Church has some influence over the political parties and their members, but it raises controversy among the people who want the freedom of political parties and their ideologies (Kimberly 188). Other minority groups are contesting the use of catholic symbolism like crosses or crucifixes, in schools, hospitals, and courts. These groups view it as a violation of the principles that allow freedom of religion that is well outlined in the constitution of Italy.

Legal Principles Implementation

The Roman law is the legal system, legal development of jurisprudence going over a thousand years, derived from the Twelve Tables (c. 449BC). The Romans had their laws divided into written and the unwritten rules, which were the custom one. The code forms the primary framework for civil law that is presently and commonly used. History shows the importance of Roman law through the using of Latin Terms and words in most legal systems, even the common law (Bilgin 49). The initial two-hundred and fifty years on the modern era are a period where Roman law and Roman legal science, and is called the Classical Period of Roman Law, which gave it a unique shape in the present day. In early years the constitution was not written down due to legitimacy issues in the first century. The roman law is not applied in the current legal practice, though some countries still refer to it in their legal systems. Many rules were deriving their codes to Roman Law and expressed in the national language in more coherent systems. It is still a compulsory subject for law students in civil law jurisdictions. The older law is still used in the everyday application of the legal systems in Rome, and many people view it as a role model to modern law and teaching of the legal system. There is a law called Eight per thousand, through which Italian taxpayers allocate 0.8 % of the income taxes to all religions that are recognized by the state. It aims to support their activities and social assistance (Bilgin 44).

Tolerance and Religious Diversity of Rome.

Freedom of worship and religion is guaranteed in the 1947 constitution, of the Republic of Italy. Before its existence, religious tolerance had been provided for by the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy. Rome is dominated by Roman Catholic people, with other religions being minor in the country. Nearly eighty-seven percent of the population declares itself as Catholics, while thirty-six percent are practitioners.  In 2006, estimations show that there were fifty-three million Christians, four million Atheists and Agnostics, one million, two hundred thousand Muslims, one million, six hundred thousand Buddhists, one hundred and fifteen thousand Hindus, seventy-thousand Sikhs, forty-five thousand Jews, and approximately fifteen thousand Pagans. The government allows everyone to worship and practice their religion freely, without interrupting other’s, as stated in the Constitution of Rome. Everyone has the right to worship and practice their religious beliefs in Rome. The government has laid policies and measures to curb the religious extremism that is rising in Europe at large, posing a threat to the people of several nations and their property. A few individuals are using religious doctrine to bring a division on the people of Rome, but proper measures are laid to address the issue.

Works Cited

Beckford, James A. “Re-Thinking Religious Pluralism.” Religious Pluralism, 2014, pp. 15-29.

Bilgin, Vejdi. “Al-Ghazālī as a Representative and Initiator of the Idealized Attitude in the Relationship between the Class of Religious Scholars and Government.” Ilahiyat studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 2013, pp. 41-64.

Conger, Kimberly H. “Religious Actors in State Political Institutions.” Mediating Religion and Government, 2014, pp. 187-208.

Porterfield, Amanda. “Religious Pluralism in Religious Studies.” Gods in America, 2013, pp. 21-40.

Shapiro, Howard M., and Arnold Dashefsky. “Religious Education and Ethnic Identification: Implications for Ethnic Pluralism.” Review of Religious Research, vol. 15, no. 2, 2014, p. 93.

Wiznia, Lauren E., and Nada Elbuluk. “Differences in Skin Structure and Function in Ethnic Populations.” Dermatoanthropology of Ethnic Skin and Hair, 2017, pp. 35-48.