Il matrimonio in Italia tra dimensione religiosa e secolarizzazione

According to the pluralistic and personalistic feature of our Constitution, the religious marriage freedom - as a freedom to choose a religious legal order for own marriage and the right to have such marriage recognized by the State - should be at the center of our law and jurisprudence. Concordat, agreements between State and religious communities and law on "tolerated cults" do not grant such right, although they give civil relevance to the religious marriage. In a future perspective, arranging a different structure (as the Lebanon's personal statutes) may be advantageous. The return of the sacred in our societies should be an opportunity to revitalize religious marriages. But such revitalization cannot be just a legal response to the challenges of secularization. Not only the law and its instruments, but social custom and pastoral theology have a fundamental role in dealing with and winning the challenges of the secularization with regard to the model of family.