The Ambivalent Impact of Religion on Human Rights: Empirical Studies in Europe, Africa and Asia (Religion and Human Rights, 7) 3030704033, 9783030704032

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Religion and Human Rights 7

Hans-Georg Ziebertz Francesco Zaccaria   Editors

The Ambivalent Impact of Religion on Human Rights Empirical Studies in Europe, Africa and Asia

Religion and Human Rights Volume 7 Series Editors Hans-Georg Ziebertz, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany Carl Sterkens, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

To the extent that modern societies are characterised by centrifugal forces like pluralization of norms, economic globalization, nationalism, political populism and claims of regional autonomy, the question of how to hold this society together becomes increasingly important. Democratic institutions proof to be vulnerable in such context. Even the possibility and desirability of democracy as it developed in Western countries after the Second World War is being questioned. Societal cohesion can no longer be achieved through shared religious beliefs, and common values seem to be scarce. Human rights are regarded as an important instrument to guarantee freedom and equality of citizens. This series investigates how religion can both challenge and contribute to a democratic society shaped by the culture of human rights in different national and cross-national contexts. Volumes address these questions by means of a theoretical, empirical and comparative approach. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15597

Hans-Georg Ziebertz  •  Francesco Zaccaria Editors

The Ambivalent Impact of Religion on Human Rights Empirical Studies in Europe, Africa and Asia

Editors Hans-Georg Ziebertz Institute of Practical Theology, Chair of Religious Education, Faculty of Theology University of Würzburg Würzburg, Germany

Francesco Zaccaria Apulian Theological Faculty Bari, Italy

ISSN 2510-4306     ISSN 2510-4314 (electronic) Religion and Human Rights ISBN 978-3-030-70403-2    ISBN 978-3-030-70404-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70404-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

 The Ambivalent Relation Between Religion and Human Rights����������������    1 Johannes A. van der Ven +, Hans-Georg Ziebertz, and Francesco Zaccaria Part I Europe  The Impact of Religion on Human Rights in Italy. An Empirical Research Among Secondary School Students ����������������������������������������������   11 Francesco Zaccaria, Francis-Vincent Anthony, and Carl Sterkens  Religion and the Rights of Refugees: An Empirical Enquiry Among Adolescents in England and Wales ����������������������������������������������������������������   55 Leslie J. Francis, Ursula McKenna, and Abdullah Sahin  New Atheism as a Predictor of Human Rights Attitudes Among Youth in Norway����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   81 Pål Ketil Botvar  Religion and Socio-Economic Human Rights in Post-Communist Countries: The Cases of Poland and Lithuania��������������������������������������������   97 Katarzyna Zielińska, Marcin K. Zwierżdżyński, and Milda Ališauskienė  How Young Muslims and Christians Structure Human Rights. An Empirical Study in Germany��������������������������������������������������������������������  125 Hans-Georg Ziebertz Part II Africa  Exploring Attitudes Towards Human Rights and the Religiosity of Adolescents in Nigeria ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 Modestus Adimekwe and Hans-Georg Ziebertz  Religious and Human Rights Attitudes of the Youth of South Africa ��������  199 Jaco S. Dreyer and Garth Aziz

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Contents

 Impact of Religion(s) on Youths’ Attitudes Towards Human Rights in Tanzania��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  225 Clement Fumbo and Hans-Georg Ziebertz Part III Asia  Predictors of Human Rights Attitude and Activism in the Multi-religious Context of Indian Democracy: Educational Implications����������������������������  263 Francis-Vincent Anthony and Carl Sterkens  Attitude Toward Human Rights: A Study Among Young People in Pakistan��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  307 Mandy Robbins and Sahar Nadeem Hamid  The Impact of Empathy and Religion on Human Rights Among Youth in Palestine��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  323 Raymond J. Webb, Fatma Jamal Asa’d, and Carl Sterkens Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  345

The Ambivalent Relation Between Religion and Human Rights Johannes A. van der Ven +, Hans-Georg Ziebertz, and Francesco Zaccaria

1  G  lobalization, Liberal Society, Democracy and Human Rights There is no doubt that present-day society can be characterised as being, or at least becoming, a global one. This means that we are increasingly living in and depending on networks of relations and information processes that span the entire planet. The global network society lives from and enhances economic networks (industries, labour markets, financial markets, and information networks), political networks (regional, international and continental), social networks (educational exchange in an information network society), cultural networks (migrations processes, multicultural societies, multicultural interactions) and religious networks (multi-religious societies, religious majority and minorities). In all these areas a process of a juridical network development is taking place also. We do not want to exaggerate Europe in an international book, but it will be possible to say that in this juridical network development process Europe plays a special role. On the one hand after World War II an increasing unification process was and still is going on that should guarantee that the endless wars that tore Europe apart time and again would come to an end. “No more war!” was also one of the strongest motivations for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. On

J. A. van der Ven + (Deceased) Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands H.-G. Ziebertz (*) Institute of Practical Theology, Chair of Religious Education, Faculty of Theology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] F. Zaccaria Apulian Theological Faculty, Bari, Italy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H.-G. Ziebertz, F. Zaccaria (eds.), The Ambivalent Impact of Religion on Human Rights, Religion and Human Rights 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70404-9_1

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the other hand, this unification process in Europe and all the issues, especially economic and political ones, that are implied in it, leads not only to satisfaction because of the successes that have been achieved so far, but also to all sorts of criticisms, frustrations and scepticism among some parts of the national populations. The economic crises, followed by the urgency to strengthen the political power of the European Union, fuel distrust and anger among several groups, incited by populist parties, because of the necessity to transfer more and more parts of national sovereignty to Brussels. People are uncertain to what extent the historically rather recent nation state will hold on the long term and what part of their economic, political, social and cultural legacy can be maintained. This also applies to European countries that are not a member of the European Union as yet, as they most probably in the long term shall and wish to become one (Varsflaten, 2005). In this complex transition process human rights is a key topic. It is one of the basic foundations of liberal democracy as a political structure, in which the people have the opportunity by their majority vote to make decisions on the men and women who govern them and on the political program they aim at and do so at a constitutionally pre-established period of time. The liberal character of this democracy consists of the prevalence of human rights in international treaties and national constitutions that shape the relation between the state and the individual citizens in order to protect them from illegitimate state power and juridically guarantee their fundamental freedoms and rights (Van Zweerde, 2011). This structure of liberal democracy connects Europe to other Western countries and other countries in the world as well. Moreover, the human rights structure binds all these Western countries together with still other countries in the world that lack a fully developed liberal and democratic architecture as yet, but nevertheless, ratified the international human rights conventions and inscribed human rights into their constitutions (Rawls, 1999). Democracy and human rights are not perfect institutions and they need continuous maintenance and improvement. But the conviction that liberal democracy and with it the validity of human rights are secure and without alternatives has been severely undermined in the recent years. It makes clear that both democracy and human rights are fragile institutions.

2  H  uman Rights Law and the Question of Legitimacy by Citizens Against this background the Religion and Human Rights program that underlies the studies in this volume, aims at continuing to conduct empirical research on the attitudes towards human rights among the young populations of some European, African and Asian states. The focus is on the topic of the legitimacy of human rights, which is to be distinguished from their legality. Legality refers to the fact that rights, in this case human rights, are juridical inscribed in law, in this case human

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rights law. In other words, they are ‘positivised’, which means that they do not originate from a divine statute or from natural law, as they are not natural rights which supposedly do not need to be decided upon nor even published, because they are legitimate by their very nature. On the contrary, the legitimacy of human rights refers to the extent to which the people at large agree with these positivised rights, inscribed in human rights law, and support them (Habermas, 1993). People’s reaction to human rights can have different values: negative and positive values, as well as values that express people’s ambivalence, which may be distinguished into negative and positive ambivalence. In other words, the answer to the question whether human rights, inscribed in human rights law, will hold depends on the people’s engagement with them. It is of utmost importance that people recognise the relevance of human rights, appropriate them and identify with them. This identification is a necessary condition for a human rights culture to develop. Such a culture does not only consist of enough knowledge of human rights (whereby ‘enough knowledge’ varies with various circumstances) but depends also on the awareness of their meaning as well as their reach of interpretation and application. In this respect the values that are underlying the norms within human rights are most important, like dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, citizens’ rights and justice. They attract people emotionally and affectively, from which they learn, as it were, to taste human rights, feel attracted to them and interiorise them. Authors like Fukuyama (2011) are afraid if human rights lose their support among the people, in extreme situations only two alternatives are left: either dictatorship or revolution. All this makes this research of utmost relevance for the liberal-democratic structure of societies, nations and states alike. The very basis of people’s support for human rights lies in their citizenship. This citizenship does not equal just living as a human being in specific area that is covered by the nation state. It is not a concomitant phenomenon alongside the nation state but is its very grounding. It is more than an indication that one belongs to a specific group of people and happens to be a fellow countryman or country woman. It is more than an administrative phenomenon that exists of having a national identity card or passport, paying taxes and making profit, if needed, from social security arrangements. Citizenship refers to the status, or more precisely, the office of state citizen within the constitutional democracy. Citizenship is based on the principle of popular sovereignty, which implies that one does not abide by laws being imposed from above, but laws people themselves (auto-nomos) create in order to comply with the norms which are inscribed in them (auto-nomos). It is people that make laws and observe them, they are the laws’ author and addressee at the same time (Habermas, 2011). But this democracy is not unlimited. The constitutional character of democracy implies that popular sovereignty is limited by a system of representation, by the rule of law in order to protect the individual freedom and rights of the citizens, as well as by checks and balances, among which is the two-chamber system. The democratic and constitutional character of this state architecture stems from two historically different traditions, the first one from the republican tradition of popular sovereignty, the second from the liberal tradition of rights, e.g. human rights. The

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tension between these two traditions has its origins in the fact that the first one is restricted to state citizens, whereas the second one does not entail any restriction at all but applies to all human beings, irrespective of their national origin. Independently of their different historical sources the constitutional and democratic characteristics of modern states are conceptually of equal weight, and at present mutually inclusive and complementary. From this perspective they are co-original (Habermas, 1993). Because of the political autonomy implied in popular sovereignty many constitutions, like the American and the Russian constitution, begin with the words ‘we, the people’ − in the first-person plural. They indicate the citizens’ authorship, office and responsibility. A similar wording is used in the German basic law, albeit in the third person singular, saying that “the German people has given itself its constitutional power of this basic law.” An adequate description is used regarding the South African constitution, of which it is said that it expresses ‘the nation’s compact with itself’ (Devenish, 1999). The idea of a compact or contract between the citizens and between the citizens and the government represents a fruitful and rich insight. But the question may be asked on what ground is the compact based, or in other words what are its underlying fundamental values? This question has been and still is the subject of a vivid and fascinating discourse, which cannot be treated here at length. One of the important answers is that at least three values, i.e. freedom, equality and solidarity, function as the compact’s fundament. This is to say that the value of freedom especially relates to the so-called first generation of human rights, that of equality to the non-­ discrimination principle in human rights, and that of solidarity to the so-called second generation of human rights. These three values are interdependent and interact which each other. The human rights in these constitutions may be considered to be founded on the principle of human dignity in an ontological sense, by which the human being is not only an instrument, but always also an end in himself or herself. In a social sense they are founded in the mutual recognition of this human dignity by people among each other – a recognition that is permeated by respect, sympathy and care, especially in relation to the most marginalised. Lastly, in an institutional sense, they are founded in juridical institutions that protect this human dignity (McCrudden, 2008). In this view the so-called first generation of human rights may be considered a juridical elaboration of this human dignity in terms of civil, political and judicial freedoms and rights. In the same vein the second generation of socioeconomic rights, which include economic, social security and cultural rights, may be seen as a shield for the protection of this human dignity especially of specific groups like women, children, homosexuals, refugees et cetera. The two generations are co-­ equal; there is no priority between them (Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action 1993). The official documents regarding human rights relevant for all studies in this volume are the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the Council of Europe European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) and the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000).

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3  The Relation Between Religion and Human Rights The special character of studies in this volume and in this series so far is not only that they present empirical research about attitudes towards human rights, but also on the relation between religions (which is religious convictions and practices) and attitudes towards human rights. Historically this relation is extremely complex. When human rights for the first time were integrated into democratic constitutions, those of the United States of America (1791) and France (1791), most religious communities and institutions were inimical to them, unless they were minorities. Minorities took advantage of the freedom of religion (Hunt, 2007). When the occasion arose, they even profit more from the concomitant principle of the laicity of the state. The freedom of religion consists of the “freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance” (Universal Declaration 1948, article 18; Van der Ven, 2010, 2012). The principle of the laicity of the state minimally implies that all religions and beliefs are equal for the state and that the state withholds any preference or preferential support for any religion and belief (Maclure & Taylor 2011). In practice both the freedom of religion and the principle of the laicity of the state have been elaborated on and are still elaborated on in various ways, both diachronically and synchronically. For example, the actualisation of the freedom of religion and belief, especially in community with others and, even more so, in public, may be dependent on pre-requisite registration by the state of the religions and beliefs concerned (Torfs, 2002; Ferrari & Durham Jr., 2003). It may vary from very narrowly restricted places and times to full permission without any restriction or other obstacles in different periods and states. The laicity of the state may be developed and elaborated on in different ways. It may go together with an existing state church, the head of which may be the king, the government or the parliament, who by law may have authority on religious subjects, except (some or all) internal religious affairs. This is one end of the scale. The other end is an extreme interpretation of the so-called separation of church and state in which the state forbids any religious action or even any religious emotional or evaluative expression on the state of affairs in the public domain, be it the political domain or that of the civil society. Most regulations of state laicity are to be found anywhere in the middle of both ends of the scale (Bader, 2007; Kuru, 2009). Both the freedom of religion and the principle of the laicity of the state have been and still are trampled underfoot by majority religions, to the disadvantage of minority religions. This is not to say that minority religions always get the worst of it. Minorities may be small in number but dispose of much economic and/or political power, which may translate into the degree to which their religious communities are respected (Van der Ven, 2010, 226–261). Many times however, majority religions profit from the freedom of religion and the laicity of the state being restrictively applied or, even more seriously, banned from the political agenda (Durham, 1996).

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For example, the Catholic Church condemned the freedom of religion as being a heresy and prohibited the French clergy to sign the declaration of loyalty to the 1791 constitution. About a century later the same church declared that the US bishops were free to accept the American constitution and everything it, if and only if it was based on divine revelation and natural law regarding the origin of political power as being explained by the church teaching authority. Only after World War II during the Second Vatican Council did this church accept the regime of human rights, she also qualified the freedom of religion in the sense that all people were free to search for the truth of God, as taught by church doctrine. However, this church supported human rights openly and repeatedly since, also in politically difficult circumstances as she is considered a real advocate of them, especially in the case of socio-­economic rights and of immigrants’ and refugees’ rights. But she did not fully implement all human rights within her own walls. In her perspective, one may say, human rights are something valuable for the outside, not for the inside (Van der Ven, 2010). Generally, at present human rights are embraced by the majority of religion institutions and communities, albeit with some reservations, and ambivalence. Many religions however may express some fundamental difficulties, especially in the area of personal and family law in the broad sense, including gender equality, as well as in regard to the religions’ truth claims (their uniqueness, absoluteness and universality), which may contaminate the relations between majority and minority religions (equality of religions) (Ziebertz, 2010). One of the problems is that religions many times abide by the democratic status quo and its human rights enforcement for pragmatic reasons only, which is to say: for their own advantage. The ideal that they are ready and also able to support human rights for intrinsic reasons, legitimised by their own religious premises, has not been fulfilled as yet, not to say that the realisation of this ideal sometimes seems to be farther away than ever before (Rawls 2005). In many cases religions may appear to be fragile institutions (Thung, 1976). One may concede that they participate in the fragile ambivalence of peoples at large towards human rights as well as in the fragility of our democratic states. But this does not mean that the relationship between human rights and religion should better be neglected. In many respects’ religions may be considered powerful political, social and cultural institutions that carry much weight as far as the fundamentals of our political life and our life in civil society are concerned. Therefore, they need to be taken into account continuously and seriously. Besides the established religious communities, there is a so-called new spirituality in the religious field which an increasing number of people seem to feel attracted to. The adjective ‘new’ may refer to the fact that spirituality is considered a new phenomenon. But taking into account the age-old spirituality within the axial religions, the adjective ‘new’ may also be understood in terms of a criticism in regard to the ‘old’ spirituality within them, although especially recent Japanese and Western forms of Buddhism are welcomed and integrated in this ‘new’ spirituality. Most probably the criticism is directed towards Christianity. In this ‘new’ spirituality, the main part is played by the experience of and the reflection on the self, the deeper self, the self in its depth, because it is the centre for the relation of oneness with oneself as well as between oneself and the other, nature and cosmos. For that

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reason this ‘new’ spirituality is also called ‘self-spirituality’. This process also has been put on the public agenda (Heelas, 2012; Heelas et al., 2005). It would however be a mistake to think that this ‘self-spirituality’ is to be considered an exclusive alternative to spiritual traditions within the axial religions. Recent Japanese Buddhism has been mentioned already, but although the spiritual processes in traditional forms of Buddhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam differ in all possible aspects, they also greatly overlap, not only conceptually but also empirically. This means that not only ‘self-spirituality’ should be taken into account within research on the relation between religion and human rights, but also the spiritualties within the axial religions. While looking more closely into the aspects that are implied in the relation between religion and human rights the picture becomes more complicated when we differentiate between traditions within the great religions, like the Catholic, Eastern-­ Christian and Protestant traditions. The picture becomes even more complicated when the various wings within each of these traditions are taken into account. Generally, these wings maybe divided into three: orthodox, mid-orthodox and liberal ones. Moreover, the various regions and nations where these wings are located may represent a significant difference. The assumption is that all these wings in their various regions and nations exert mutually different influences on the attitudes towards human rights.

4  Outlook The question is how young people in the selected countries react to the outlined relationship between religion and human rights. Do they support human rights or neglect them? Has their religiosity impacted their attitudes towards human rights and is this impact a positive, a neutral or a negative one? Are there differences between students from different Christian denominations, between students from different religions, between religious and nonreligious students in this respect? Trying to answer these questions empirically grounded is a relevant research activity, because today’s students will be the leaders of tomorrow at the micro and meso-­ level of society. With this volume we present the most recent joint study of the research group Religion and Human Rights. This volume comprises studies in twelve countries, divided in three parts according to the tree continents in which they were carried out. Almost 10,000 young people participated in the studies. All chapters deal with the question of whether and, if so, to what extent religious or worldview convictions hinder or favour the support of human rights. Some studies are comparative, both in terms of different religious groups and different countries. Because human rights comprise a very broad area of issues, most authors have selected human rights in the interest of clarity. The findings of this volume shed more light on the complex issue regarding the impact of religion on human rights’ attitudes, taking into account personal, religious and socio-cultural differences from various countries in three

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different continents, showing the ambivalent role of religion in the long way to make the world safer, more democratic, just and compassionate by a culture of human rights.

References Bader, V. (2007). Secularism or democracy? Associational governance of religious diversity. Amsterdam University Press. Devenish, G. (1999). A commentary on the south African bill of rights. Butterworths. Durham, W. (1996). Perspective on religious liberty: A comparative framework. In J.  Witte & J. D. van der Vyver (Eds.), Religious human rights in global perspective: Legal perspectives (pp. 1–44). Nijhoff. Ferrari, S., & Durham, W.  C., Jr. (Eds.). (2003). Law and religion in post-communist Europe. Peeters. Fukuyama, F. (2011). The origins of political order. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Habermas, J. (1993). Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats. Suhrkamp. Habermas, J. (2011). Zur Verfassung Europas. Ein Essay. Suhrkamp. Heelas, P. (Ed.). (2012). Spirituality in the modern world. Volume I-IV: Explorations of explanations. Routledge. Heelas, P., Woodhead, L., et al. (2005). The spiritual revolution.: Why religion is giving way to spirituality. Blackwell. Hunt, L. (2007). Inventing human rights: A history. Norton. Kuru, A. (2009). Secularism and state policies toward religion. The United States, France, and Turkey. Cambridge University Press. Maclure, J. & Taylor, Ch. (2011). Laizität und Gewissensfreiheit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. McCrudden, C. (2008). Human dignity and judicial interpretation of human rights. The European Journal of International Law, 19(4), 655–724. Rawls, J. (1999). The law of peoples. Harvard University Press. Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism, Expanded edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Thung, M. (1976). The precarious organisation. Sociological explorations of the Church’s mission and structure. Mouton. Torfs, R. (2002). Relationship between the state and religious groups. In J.-F.  Flauss (Ed.), La protection internationale de la liberté religieuse: International protection of religious freedom (pp. 131–152). Bruylant. Van der Ven, J. A. (2010). Human rights or religious rules? Brill. Van der Ven, J.  A. (2012). Religious liberty in political perspective. In J.  A. Van der Ven & H.-G.  Ziebertz (Eds.), Tensions within and between religions and human rights (pp. 95–146). Brill. Van Zweerde, E. (2011). “Het is ook nooit goed”. Democratie vanuit politiek-filosofisch perspectief. Inaugurele rede. Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. Varsflaten, E. (2005). The vulnerable populist rights parties: No economic realignment fuelling their electoral success. European Journal of Political Research, 44(2005), 465–492. Ziebertz, H.-G. (Ed.). (2010). Menschenrechte, Christentum und Islam. Religion und Recht. Band 2. LIT.

Part I

Europe

The Impact of Religion on Human Rights in Italy. An Empirical Research Among Secondary School Students Francesco Zaccaria, Francis-Vincent Anthony, and Carl Sterkens

Abbreviations CCC CSDC DE DH DV EG EMCC EV GS

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Promulgated by Pope John Paul II (October 11, 1992). Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (April 2, 2004). Declaration on Euthanasia. Congregation for the doctrine of the faith (May 5, 1980). Dignitatis Humanae. Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom promulgated by Pope Paul VI (December 7, 1965). Donum Vitae. Instruction of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation (February 22, 1987). Evangelii Gaudium. Apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis on the proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world (November 24, 2013). Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi. Instruction of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (May 3, 2004). Evangelium Vitae. Encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II on the value and inviolability of human life (March 25, 1995). Gaudium et Spes. Pastoral constitution of the Second Vatican Council on the church in the modern world promulgated by Pope Paul VI (December 7, 1965).

All (English translations of) documents of the Second Vatican Council, Popes and Vatican Congregations have been taken from the Vatican website: www.vatican.va. F. Zaccaria (*) Apulian Theological Faculty, Bari, Italy F.-V. Anthony Salesian Pontifical University, Rome, Italy C. Sterkens Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H.-G. Ziebertz, F. Zaccaria (eds.), The Ambivalent Impact of Religion on Human Rights, Religion and Human Rights 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70404-9_2

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Laudato Si’. Encyclical letter of Pope Francis on care for our common home (May 24, 2015). UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (December 10, 1948). UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees VS Veritatis Splendor. Encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II on some fundamental questions of the church’s moral teaching (August 6, 1993). LS

1  Introduction It is not enough that human rights are penned in declarations and constitutions, they also need to be defended and implemented by each generation. Promoting human rights is a continuous work that implies intense debates in the public arena of contemporary societies. Religious voices have a say in these debates as well, because they cover moral, religious and philosophical questions raised by the people involved. In this study, we explore the impact of religion on human rights issues in the Italian context. We shall do so by presenting, firstly, some of the main features of the current human rights’ debate; followed by an overview of the position of the Catholic Church concerning the debated issues; finally, we shall consider empirically how these human rights issues are evaluated by a sample of secondary school Italian students and to what extent their evaluation is influenced by their religious attitudes, among other characteristics.

2  Debates on Human Rights in Italy Current public political debate concerning human rights in Italy is rather complex; we present here some of the most important trends: namely those referring to civil rights, socioeconomic rights, immigrants’ and refugees’ rights and those regarding the right to life and its limitations in the cases of abortion and euthanasia.

2.1  Civil Rights Civil rights belong to the first generation of human rights, namely those rights that stipulate the non-interference of the state in matters pertaining to people’s freedoms, such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. These ‘modern liberties’ developed in the 17th and 18th centuries shaped the shift from absolute monarchies to democratic states, where people

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are not subjects of a sovereign monarch, but are equal citizens entitled with rights (Alexy, 1985, 194ff; Van der Ven et al., 2004, 98–99). Civil rights were internationally proclaimed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and codified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966. The Constitution of the Italian Republic affirms that “the Republic recognizes and guarantees the inviolable rights of the person” (Art. 2), and that “all citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions” (Art. 3). Freedom of religion is included among these constitutional principles, freedom for the Catholic Church (Art. 7) and for all other religions: “All religious denominations are equally free before the law” (Art. 8). Civil liberties specifically declared in Part I – Title I of the Constitution refer to personal freedom, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and religious freedom. One of the most debated civil rights in Italy nowadays, due to the country’s increasing multi-cultural and multi-religious landscape, is the freedom of religion. Concern for the freedom of religious minorities emerges in the face of a strong cultural religious monopoly of the Catholic Church. Italian law stipulates three different levels of rapport between religions and the state. At the first level, there is the Catholic Church, which enjoys a preferential juridical position, on account of its majority status among Italians and its peculiar significance for the Italian history. This relation is regulated by the Concordat between the Italian state and the Holy See revised in 1984. At the second level, there are those churches and religious communities, which have signed an Agreement (Intesa) with the state; currently these agreements have been established with many historical protestant, evangelical and orthodox churches, and with Jews, Mormons, Buddhists and Hindus. At the third level, there are those religious communities that have not yet reached an agreement with the state and so are regulated by the common law for associations (Ferrari, 1996, 185). According to Marzano and Urbinati (2013), the privileged status of the Catholic Church and the virtual religious Catholic monopoly endangers democracy and the separation between church and state in Italy, constituting a “tyranny of the religious majority” at the expense of religious minorities and the autonomy of the civil law from religious stance. The only way to achieve a real laicité in Italy, according to the two Italian sociologists, is to apply the strict traditional liberalism as intended by James Madison in the eighteenth century: only a social and religious pluralism and a state that does not embrace any single secular or religious worldview can ensure a sound democracy. These currents of thought highlight how the defence of minorities’ rights – not only the rights of religious minorities but also of those based on ethnic roots, gender differences, sexual orientations, political ideas, etc. – is crucial to the debate on civil rights; the role of religious views in these debates is essential and therefore needs to be empirically investigated.

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2.2  Socioeconomic Rights Socioeconomic rights generally are said to belong to the second generation of human rights, they developed in order to defend the welfare of the working classes amidst the industrial revolution and especially under the influence of the Marxist thought across the 19th and the twentieth century. The preamble of the UDHR affirms the dignity, worth and equality of the human person and endorses the effort “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”. This is specified as right to work (Art. 23), to rest and leisure (Art. 24), adequate standard of living for oneself and for one’s family (Art. 25), right to education (Art. 26) and cultural life (Art. 27). These rights are further elaborated by the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966. It commits the states parties to the Covenant to create conditions that ensure economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights. As of 2018, the Covenant has 166 parties; four other countries, including the United States, have signed but not ratified the Covenant. Italy signed it on 18 January 1967, and ratified it about forty years ago on 15 September 1978. Nolan et al. (2007) point out that there is a lot of resistance to acknowledging the justiciability of socioeconomic rights, even though they are interdependent and inseparable from the civil and political rights. Firstly, because the socioeconomic rights impose positive resource-dependent obligations on the state (with often limited resources), whereas the civil and political rights entail only negative costless obligations for the state. Secondly, the socioeconomic rights are said to be rather ‘vague’, whereas the civil and political rights are precise in their formulation. Yet, a survey of the current jurisprudence at the national and international level, according to the authors, suggests that socioeconomic rights are justiciable; the importance of such a prospect emerges from the fact that these rights touch the most vulnerable in the society. The Italian Constitution solemnly opens with the following unique affirmation: “Italy is a democratic Republic, founded on labour” (Art. 1); its concern is for all citizens independently of their working status, with a certain universalistic perspective (Paci, 2009, 115–118). Among the Fundamental Principles, it affirms that “it is the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of an economic and social nature that, by in fact limiting the freedom and equality of citizens, impede the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic and social organisation of the country” (Art. 3). In the same vein, “The Republic recognizes the right of all citizens to work and promotes those conditions that will make this right effective. Every citizen has the duty, according to capability and individual choice, to carry out an activity or a function that contributes to the material or spiritual progress of society” (Art.4). These principles are further developed in the section on Economic Rights and Duties (Articles 35–46) of the Constitution.

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As Paci (2009, 115) suggests “while we can recognise a series of provisions in the Constitution guaranteeing the rights of work and essential social protection in the historical phase of Italy’s transition to an industrial society, with its typical “Fordist-Bismarckian” (and “family”) organisation, we can also recognise another series of provisions aimed at guaranteeing work tout court as a universal right of citizens, which […] could prove useful for guiding the reform of social and labour legislation in the present ‘post-industrial’ transition of our society”. Some of the sensitive issues in the public debate at this transition phase refer to socioeconomic rights and to the role of the state in enhancing the socioeconomic welfare of its citizens. For example, the debate on maximum working time, which according the Constitution (Art. 36) should be fixed by law, or that on equality of men and women at work, stipulated by the Constitution (Art. 3 & 37) and specifically recognised and guaranteed by Law 903 (9 December 1977) and Law 125 (10 April 1991), allowing for affirmative action to encourage equal opportunity for women in having access to employment and while employed (De Matteis et  al., 2018). A more recent debate in this field refers to the introduction by the government in 2018 of a new poverty relief scheme called the “citizens’ income”, which has raised doubts about the possibility of offering a minimum standard of living and social security to the unemployed, in a country where unemployment rate in 2018, already before the pandemic, was as high as 10.5%.

2.3  Immigrants’ and Refugees’ Political Rights Citizenship marks the borderline between the socioeconomic community and the political community in Europe and North America (Brubaker, 1989). Foreigners are generally entitled to economic and social rights if they legally work and reside in a Western country, even though non-citizens can often be found in lower socioeconomic strata. But in order to be fully part of the political community, through for instance voting rights, citizenship is often a requirement. The very idea of universality of human rights challenges the restrictions that come with not having citizenship and triggers intricate questions such as: to what extent political rights are or should be guaranteed to immigrants; to what extent human rights are or should be granted to political asylum seekers. These and similar questions polarize the public arena in Italy, at a time when fear of immigrants fuels the political debate and leads to the success of populist parties. Political rights belong to the first generation of human rights, namely civil rights; they were not new rights but the extension of existing rights, generally of the aristocracy, to new sections of the population, eventually to all adult citizens (Van der Ven et al., 2004, 99–100). In Italy, the right to participate in political life through universal suffrage was introduced only in 1946. As a further elaboration of political rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates that “every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity […] to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives; to vote and

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to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage” (Art. 25). What about those who work and reside in a country but are not citizens? What about immigrants’ political rights? According to many scholars, Italian migration policy denies immigrants the rights and opportunities that local population enjoys, especially when it comes to their political participation (Grillo & Pratt, 2002; Mantovan, 2013; Perocco, 2003). In Italy, non-European immigrants have no right to vote. Nevertheless, the 1992 Strasbourg Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at Local Level made provision to grant “to every foreign resident the right to vote and to stand for election in local authority elections” after a period of five years of residence (Art. 6). Italy ratified this Convention but expressed a reservation precisely on this matter of the right to vote and to run in local elections. By denying immigrants’ right to vote, Italy appears not to recognize the social change it has undergone through immigration. Giving migrants more opportunities to participate in politics, would symbolically and effectively contribute to a more inclusive society in a country that otherwise struggles with social cohesion in different forms (Mantovan, 2013, 261). According to national 2019 statistics, about 8,7% of the total legal residents in Italy are foreigners, with non-EU nationals just under 8,0% (Istat, 2019). Italy has a quota system of entry for work, but in reality, legal migration mainly consists in family reunion and periodical amnesties of undocumented immigrants. It means that the economic system absorbs more foreign workers than Italian politics would like to allow (Ambrosini, 2008). The public and political discourse is in fact characterized by the presence of populist voices, which increase xenophobic sentiments among the population and reinforce a de facto refusal by the public opinion of Italy’s transformation into a multi-ethnic society (Ambrosini, 2013, 139–140). The media attention for refugees arriving in Southern Italy in combination with xenophobic sentiments probably explain why Italians in general overestimate the presence of foreigners, with a wider gap between estimation and reality than anywhere else in Europe (Istituto Cattaneo, 2018). Political rights also comprise the possibility to express political ideas and to freely associate and participate in the public political life. Therefore, countries which guarantee these rights should offer protection and shelter to those who are denied these possibilities in their own countries, because of war, persecution or different sorts of discrimination. This is the case for political refugees and asylum seekers, namely, foreigners who need their fundamental freedoms and rights to be guaranteed. According to the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, a refugee is any person who is unable or unwilling to return to his/her country because of a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” (Art. 1). According to the UNHCR 2014 report, there are globally 16.7 million refugees, 1.2 million of them have applied for asylum and are therefore formally considered asylum seekers. In the first half of 2014, Italy was the sixth in the list of main destination countries for new asylum seekers, with its 24.500 new applications (after Germany, USA, France, Sweden and Turkey). Mostly, refugees

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arrive in Italy for political reasons from turbulent areas and war torn zones such as Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan. The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights broadens the possibility of asylum through the so-called “subsidiary protection”, also to those who do not qualify as refugees but risk violation of their human rights in their countries (Goodwin-Gill, 2010). In fact, we can say that refugees’ rights in Europe are in principle agreed upon; but doubts and question arise when general principles become more specific and have practical consequences (Hentges, 2013). Focusing on Italy, it should be mentioned that out of the 92 recommendations sent by the United Nations Human Rights Council to the Italian government in 2010, about 60% referred to immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. A further and more recent example of the heated political debate on this matter is the government decision in 2018 to abolish the “humanitarian protection”, a third form of protection, additional to the recognition of the refugee status and the subsidiary protection, which allowed more foreigners to receive residence permit for humanitarian reasons. All these instances show the importance of political rights for immigrants and refugees in the current Italian debate.

2.4  T  he Right to Life and Its Limitations: Abortion and Euthanasia The right to life is identified for the first time in an international document in 1948 in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, shortly afterwards followed by UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 1953 European Convention on Human Rights, in Art. 2, for the first time calls for legal enforcement of the right to life: “Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law”, while stipulating a list of exceptions when intentional deprivation of life is permissible (e.g., death penalty). A similar compromise was reached by the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Art. 6 states that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life”, hence allowing for circumstances in which the right to life cannot be considered an absolute right. These two examples make clear that the right to life in human rights documents is open to interpretation in so far it concerns its limitations (Wicks, 2012, 200–205). The ambiguity in declarations of the right to life suggests the uncertainty regarding the application, protection and limitations of this right in the current legislation. The debate focuses mainly on the protection and the dignity of human life at its beginning and at its ending stages, namely on the bioethical issues surrounding abortion and euthanasia.

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2.4.1  Abortion In Italy, elective abortion is regulated since 1978 with Law 194. According to this law, abortion must be carried out in a public hospital and can be performed for health-related, social, economic, family reasons within the first three months of pregnancy, after which a woman can be allowed a termination of pregnancy only if her health is at risk or a foetal abnormality has been diagnosed. With the certificate issued by a physician testifying that legal requirements for the abortion are met, the law prescribes a 7-day waiting period before the abortion can be carried out (Bo et al., 2015, 273). The rationale behind the law is to prevent rather than encourage abortions, to protect human life rather than to consider abortion as an instrument of birth control (Law 194/1978, Art. 1). Nevertheless, abortion is still a debated issue, in spite of the historic development that brought to its depenalisation and legalisation; it is vital for a democratic society to be aware of the voices within the public opinion that question the current abortive policies. We confine ourselves here to two main debated issues, especially from the Italian point of view: conscientious objection of physicians and the link between abortion and poverty. When termination of pregnancy is requested in Italy, physicians have the right to conscientious objection, as stipulated by Art. 9 of the Law 194/1978. The objectors are exempted from performing any actions that may directly cause termination of pregnancy, unless there is a medical emergency. Over the years, the proportion of objectors has risen from 59.1% of all Italian gynaecologists employed by public hospitals in 1983 to 69.3% in 2011 and has since then been stable around 70%. This phenomenon fuelled public debate about the legitimacy of conscientious objection since it might imply difficulties and delays for women who wish to have access to abortion. Empirical data do not seem to offer a clear picture in this regard: in 2012, the statistics of the Italian National Committee on Bioethics concluded that no correlation exists between the number of objectors and the length of waiting time for abortion, yet a more recent study of Bo et  al. (2015) appears to challenge this conclusion. A second issue that fuels debate on abortion and its ethical legitimacy concerns economic reasons being increasingly lined to the choice of termination of pregnancy: a first analysis of the number of abortions in European countries has shown how the declining trend of abortions between 2000 and 2009 was reversed during the “great recession” of the years 2010–2012, especially among younger generations (Lima et al., 2016). Official data of the Italian Ministry of Health (2015) shows that the rate of abortions among immigrant women, notably in more difficult economic circumstances, is three times higher than the rate among Italian women. Various reports disclose that economic reasons are the major trigger of the abortion choice. These data raise some intriguing questions: if the purpose of the legalisation of abortion was to ensure women the freedom of choice and their medical safety, how can it be attributed to economic hardship? How effective are the policies in favour of life, as is foreseen by Law 194, if so many women today in Italy resort to abortion for economic reasons?

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2.4.2  Euthanasia Euthanasia is currently understood as the conscious choice to accompany or induce a painless death, either by abstaining to do something to prevent death or by actively performing actions to accelerate it (Schockenhoff, 1997, 314–315). Its legalisation or decriminalisation is a recent phenomenon associated with the development of the Western thought regarding ethical public acceptance of euthanasia: the Netherlands legalised euthanasia in 2000, Belgium in 2002, Luxemburg in 2009, Colombia in 2015, Canada in 2016 and Spain in 2021. In Italy the case of Eluana Englaro, very much present in the national press, strongly influenced the public and political discussions on euthanasia. Ms. Englaro, a 37-years-old woman, was reduced to a persistent vegetative state for 17  years, after a car accident. A long and public legal battle undertaken by her father, in November 2008 led to the Italian Supreme Court accepting Mr. Englaro’s request to suspend the artificial nutrition and hydration of his daughter Eluana. While affirming the principle that active euthanasia is prohibited, the Supreme Court compared artificial nutrition and hydration to a medical treatment, and concluded that refusing it expresses a right enacted by the Italian Constitution, namely the right of a patient’s autonomy regarding health and, as in this case, life itself (Solarino et  al., 2011). Eluana’s case and the related ground-breaking decision of the Court gave rise to intense discussion on euthanasia in Italy. After many years with several draft laws on euthanasia and “living wills”, the Parliament approved the law on living wills in December 2017 (Law 219/2017). It explicitly excludes active euthanasia but gives adults in full capacity the possibility to formally indicate which medical treatments they wish to receive in case they will no longer be capable of making such choices. Nevertheless, the Italian debate over a more comprehensive law on euthanasia is still open. One of the most vocal actors in this debate and against such trend has been the Catholic Church; and that explains the reason for taking up, in the next section, the position and the role of the Church concerning this issue, together with its public stance on the other human rights issues we have presented in this section.

3  Catholic Church and Human Rights In order to elucidate the role of religion in the current debate over human rights, we will briefly sketch the Catholic Church’s doctrine related to the human rights issues in the following section. We focus on the stand of the Catholic Church because of its overwhelming majority in Italy.

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3.1  Civil Rights The position of the Catholic Church on civil rights has been intertwined for a long time with the political clashes between the Papal States and modern states like France and Italy. These states were founded on the affirmation of modern liberties and civil rights between the 18th and 19th centuries and eroded the secular power and the properties belonging to the Holy See or to institutions of the Catholic Church. The preoccupation with civil rights of the Catholic Church was further motivated by the fact it felt that the transcendental foundation of the social order was undermined by the primacy of the will and the deliberation of free and equal citizens. Therefore, Gregory XVI fiercely condemned modern liberties in 1832 with the encyclical letter Mirari Vos, viewing freedom of conscience, freedom of thought and freedom of the press as serious errors leading to the destruction of both religion and society. With the military attack of the Kingdom of Italy on the Papal States, the conspiracy theory about the threat of modernity and its liberties to religion gained momentum in the official position of the Catholic Church (Menozzi, 2012, 43–55). In 1864, the encyclical letter Quanta Cura of Pius IX and the related Vatican document Syllabus Errorum reiterated – on higher doctrinal level – the condemnation of modern liberties. In the twentieth century, the stand of the Catholic Church towards civil rights continued to be very intertwined with the political situation in Italy. Under the fascist regime in 1929, a Concordat was signed between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, which put an end to the clash between them. Nevertheless, it widened the gap between church statements and the values of liberal democracies, as for example, the missed opportunity of the pope in 1938 to openly defend the Jews against the racial laws (Perin, 2013). After the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, pope Pius XII did not make any statements in its favour. His disappointment was motivated by the fact that the UDHR lacked any reference to God, which also mirrored the failure of the Catholic parliament members to mention God in the Italian Constitution promulgated in the same year. These decisions were in contrast to the traditional Catholic understanding that all human rights and duties should be founded on the divine law inscribed in nature. As the Italian Jesuit Messineo pointed out, the UDHR was therefore doomed to be frail and ineffective in defending human rights against the attacks of both liberal and totalitarian regimes (Menozzi, 2012, 168). In this period, there were also Catholic thinkers and leaders who supported the UDHR, viewing it as compatible with Catholic doctrines, but they did not succeed in influencing the official view of the Catholic hierarchy. A shift in the Catholic magisterium’s attitude towards human rights occurred in 1963 with the Encyclical Pacem in Terris of John XXIII. In this document, there were statements referring to the traditional doctrine of the ultimate foundation of human rights in nature and ultimately in God, and a certain ambivalent attitude towards specific rights (Bloch, 2008). Nevertheless, there was a real change: for the first time the rights listed in the UDHR and those officially presented by the Catholic Church moved in the same direction, namely, the attainment and the defence of the

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dignity of the human person. The Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, promulgated in 1965 by Paul VI, reaffirms a positive assessment of human rights, also motivated “by the strength of Gospel”, but with certain restrictions: their definition is not to be left to the autonomous will of the people, but has to be grounded in human dignity, which can never be safeguarded if estranged from the divine law (GS 41). Another Conciliar document that opened up a new attitude towards human rights was the 1965 declaration Dignitatis Humanae. It recognized religious freedom, i.e. the right to be free from coercion in religious matters for both individuals and communities and the inviolability of human conscience by external powers (DH 1). In the 1960s, the Catholic Church seems to have completed a shift from playing the traditional role of ally of authoritarian regimes to being a critical voice on the world stage displaying powers of both extreme right and extreme left (Langan, 1986). To sum up, the stand of the Catholic Church as regards civil rights has been ambivalent, moving from opposition to appreciation of modern liberties, particularly religious freedom. Based on this overview, we aim at exploring empirically the extent to which the ambivalence of the Catholic teachings is mirrored in what Catholic students think about civil rights today.

3.2  Socioeconomic Rights Over a period of a century and a quarter, the papal encyclicals and exhortations, from Rerum Novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII to Laudato Sì (2015) of Pope Francis, have progressively build up a consistent body of social doctrine, addressing the emerging socioeconomic and political questions in an ever-widening perspective. The modern Social doctrine of the Church largely draws attention to what has come to be known as the second generation of human rights, namely, socioeconomic rights (Fredericks, 2015, 109–110, 114). The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in 2004, brings together these teachings of the Catholic Church about socioeconomic issues. Here we shall delineate some features of the Catholic social thought central to human labour. Work and personal development  According to the scriptures, work as caring for creation, is part of God’s plan for man and not a punishment or curse even after the fall of man; he participates in God’s own creative work (CSDC n. 255–256, 265). Work as an essential expression of a person reveals its true dignity; for, the end of work remains man, and as such, has an intrinsic social dimension (CSDC n. 270–274). Given the centrality of labour for personal and social development, the state has the specific responsibility of promoting active employment policies that can encourage the creation of employment opportunities within the national territory, and stem the growing rate of unemployment (CSDC n. 291–293).

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Social security and participation  The rights of workers also include the right to healthy working environment; the right to appropriate subsidies that are necessary for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families; the right to a pension and to insurance for old age, sickness, and in cases of work-related accidents; the right to social security connected with maternity; and the right to assemble and form associations to defend their interests and common good (CSDC n. 301). The free market is to be at the service of common good and integral human development. The inversion of relationship between means and ends, however, can make the free market degenerate into an inhuman and alienating institution, with uncontrollable repercussions (CSDC n. 348–350). Everyone has the right to participate in the economic life and has the duty to contribute to it, each according to his or her own capacity (CSDC n. 330–334). The Church’s social doctrine recognizes the legitimacy of striking when every other option for resolving disputes has been ineffectual (CSDC n. 304). Labour unions insofar as they defend the vital interests of workers pursue the specific purpose of common good; have a positive impact on social order, solidarity and justice. Work should be the basis for labourers to participate in ownership, management and profit (CSDC n. 305–306, 309, 281–282). Just wage and common good  A just wage is the instrument that permits the promotion of the material, social, cultural, and spiritual life of the worker and of his or her dependents. Hence, wage cannot fall below the subsistence level of these persons. Steps are to be taken to ensure a level of equity in the distribution of income, which allows everyone to have access to what is necessary for their personal development and perfection. The centrality of the anthropological vision, with man as the subject of work, requires that man not be reduced to an object or means of production (CSDC n. 302–303; Boni, 2003, 9–12). Although private property is fruit of one’s work, wealth gained through work and legitimately owned has also a universal destination. On the one hand, totalitarian socialism, particularly of Marxist type, is to be criticized for not sufficiently recognizing the independence of the person, the legitimacy of subsidiarity and the intermediate nature of institutions. On the other hand, a laissez-faire capitalism that is not open to the common good tends to exploit human interdependence, rather than seeing it as a possibility for new forms of global solidarity. When the inalienable human rights of workers are at stake, new forms of solidarity need to be envisioned taking into account the interdependence existing among workers, firms and markets. Such solidarity has to be globalized to include the less advantaged among peoples (CSDC n. 319, 321; Fredericks, 2015, 112–113; Boni, 2003, 16–28). Rest, leisure and protection of children  According to the scriptures, the Sabbath rest provides human beings the freedom to recognize themselves as God’s creative work, without becoming slaves to work, resisting antisocial degeneration of human work and other kinds of exploitation. By freeing people from evil and by practising fraternity and sharing, Jesus showed that the Sabbath was a day for dedicating oneself to God and to others. Obviously, this does not mean that one should simply live at the expense of others (CSDC n. 258–265). Sundays and holy days of obligation

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are then an occasion for engaging in worship, reflection, silence, study and meditation that foster the growth of interior life. It is a time for works of mercy and for appropriate relaxation of mind and body. Hence, public authorities need to ensure that workers are not denied time for rest and divine worship (CSDC n. 284–286). With reference to work, income and family, children have a vital place. In other words, the society has to ensure respect for children’s personal dignity and for their rights, particularly in the case of the younger ones and the sick, the suffering or the handicapped. Child labour is a violence that, beyond all political, economic and legal implications, remains essentially a moral question. The exploitation of children represents a serious violation of human dignity (CSDC n. 296). In our empirical exploration, we will examine the extent to which the strong and consistent defense of socioeconomic rights in Catholic social teachings is reflected in the attitudes of our young Catholic respondents.

3.3  Immigrants’ and Refugees’ Rights In the recent debate over non-citizens’ rights in Italy, the Catholic Church has become a vocal agent in favour of a welcoming culture towards immigrants and refugees who reach the Italian shores across the Mediterranean Sea. Examining the biblical roots of foreigners’ rights, Brett (2013) points out that, although the specific modern vocabulary of human “rights” is not found in the biblical law, we do find the notion of mishpat (“justice”, “right”) referring to the rights of the widow, the orphan and the alien as being universal, i.e., as belonging to every person, no matter her or his nationality. In the seventh century BC, with Deuteronomy and the later prophets, the rights of the vulnerable were extended consistently to the gerim (which can be translated as “strangers”, “aliens”, “refugees” or “immigrants”); a concern for strangers becomes a standard test of moral concern. The experience of the Assyrian aggression and the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel were theologically interpreted in the light of the Exodus experience: “Love the refugee (ger), because you were refugees in Egypt” (Deut 10:19) (Brett, 2013, 133). In later centuries, both the First Testament (i.e. the wisdom tradition) and the New Testament include increasingly the idea of rights that extend beyond any narrow confine of the covenant community (Barrera, 2005; Sacks, 2003). Welcoming the stranger, according to the Gospel, goes beyond the law of justice and rights; it turns into the supreme commandment of love. In Matthew 25, Jesus identifies himself with the xenos (“undifferentiated stranger”, rather than with paroikos which usually translates the Hebrew ger). It means that the love for Jesus Christ is to be expressed through the love towards all kinds of strangers, resisting the danger of categorizing foreigners or of narrowing the inclusive message of the Gospel (Brett, 2008, 186). On the basis of these premises, the Christian communities considered themselves as witnesses to a welcoming love for all people, already at the dawn of their mission: “Here there is no Greek and Jew, circumcised and

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uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all” (Col 3,10). In spite of the obvious historical incongruences of the church institutions to meet these high standards of acceptance and inclusion, the Catholic Church clearly teaches that “welcoming the stranger is thus intrinsic to the nature of the church itself and bears witness to its fidelity to the Gospel” (EMCC 22). Making reference to the biblical roots, the moral teachings of the Catholic Church solicit a welcoming attitude toward foreigners, immigrants and refugees alike. As substantiated by Rowlands in his study (Rowlands, 2011; Tomasi, 2010), the Catholic social teaching can be summed up in some basic principles. Firstly, the church teaches that there is a fundamental right “not to migrate”; this is clear from the fact that the church denounces the social and economic imbalances and injustices which are often the cause of migration and kerb the possibility of individuals to have a flourishing and fulfilling life in their countries if they wish (EMCC 29). Secondly, the church magisterium points out that people have the right to migrate in the face of conflict, persecution, violence and hunger, and to seek sanctuary in a safe political community (GS 65). Another principle of the church’s social teaching refers to the core issue of our study, namely that the recognition of the fundamental social and political nature of the human being requires a meaningful integration of the migrant in the political life of the host community (John Paul, 2001, 3). This principle invokes the extension of political rights to immigrants and challenges the modern democracies, like Italy, to sufficiently ensure these rights. Pope Francis has further underlined the Catholic teachings in favour of immigrants’ rights by making his first papal visit on Italian soil, outside of Rome, to Lampedusa, the island that most migrants try to reach in spite of numerous tragedies while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Invoking solidarity with the poorest peoples on earth, Pope Francis stresses that “we must never forget that the planet belongs to all mankind and is meant for all mankind” (EG 190). In this vein, the Pope invokes legal protection for those migrants fleeing from poverty because of environmental degradation, but are not recognized by international laws as refugees (LS 25). This again suggests how, according to Catholic social teaching, the rigid legal distinction between migrants (who supposedly freely choose to leave their countries for economic reasons) and refugees (who are forced to leave on account of war or other danger) is difficult to make, and hence needs to be revised in the light of the newly emerging causes that drive people to leave their home seeking a better future elsewhere (Goodwin-Gill, 2010). With such social teachings and official statements, the Catholic Church is numbered among the voices which encourage the extension of political rights to immigrants and refugees in Italy and denounce their being discriminated, even at the cost of open contrast with populist parties (Ambrosini, 2013). Obviously, in order to verify if religion has an impact on the public discourse concerning these rights, we cannot confine ourselves to the statements of the church’s hierarchy, we need to examine it empirically among our Italian respondents.

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3.4  T  he Right to Life and Its Limitations: Abortion and Euthanasia Catholic doctrine strongly opposes abortion and euthanasia. Abortion is considered an “intrinsically evil” act that is to be avoided in all circumstances (VS 80; Sgreccia, 2007, 567–571). The doctrine of the church against abortion is founded on the conviction that human life must be protected from the very beginning, as is declared in Gaudium et Spes: “from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes” (GS 51). The official teaching of the Catholic Church did not enter the debate on the theoretical definition of the embryo as a person or the ancient debate on the “animation” of the foetus, regarding which not all early and medieval Christian thinkers agreed. In this sense, Donum Vitae, the 1987 Instruction of the Vatican Congregation lead by Joseph Ratzinger, clarified that “the Magisterium has not expressly committed itself to an affirmation of a philosophical nature, but it constantly reaffirms the moral condemnation of any kind of procured abortion. This teaching has not been changed and is unchangeable” (DV I, 1). Such a stand is reiterated by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae (1995): “Human life is sacred and inviolable at every moment of existence, including the initial phase which precedes birth” (EV 61). Therefore, the church considers elective abortion a grave sin and punishes it with “excommunication” for all those who are involved in the process (CCC 2272). Excommunication means that from a canonical point of view only some priests can grant absolution for abortion, depending on the diocesan guidelines. It is opportune to mention here that Pope Francis in 2016 extended this faculty permanently to all priests, in order to uphold the mercy of God as limitless covering also grave sins. Does this doctrine apply equally to all cases? What if we take the extreme case of a pregnancy, which puts at risk the survival of the mother? How to solve the dilemma between two absolute values to be defended, namely the mother’s life and the unborn baby’s life? Here the theological interpretation of the Catholic doctrine might differ. On the one hand, a strict interpretation of the abortion as intrinsic evil would not permit any exceptions or circumstances; then choosing the life of the mother to the detriment of the life of the baby would assign a lower value to the weaker one, which would not be ethically admissible (Sgreccia, 2007, 574–581). On the other hand, other theological interpretations are open to a moral justification of abortion in this case, on the principle that a life, which can be saved should be given preference over a life, which cannot be saved. When there is a moral certainty, in the light of the current scientific and medical knowledge, that not terminating a pregnancy would lead to the death of both the mother and the unborn child, it appears ethically acceptable to intervene in order to save the mother’s life even if it may result in the loss of life for the child (Schockenhoff, 1997, 337–338). Probably only in such a case the church doctrine on abortion is open to diverging interpretations, in all other circumstances there is a general consensus that in Catholic Church’s teachings abortion is never to be justified.

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Church doctrine retains also euthanasia among the “infamous” acts opposed to life, like murder, genocide and abortion (GS 27). Such condemnation is rooted in the traditional church teachings on suicide and homicide. Catholic Church teaches that euthanasia is an “intrinsic evil” (VS 80); “to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin” (EV 55). The 1980 Declaration on Euthanasia of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirms: “no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a foetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly, nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action” (DE, II). At the same time the church permits the rejection of medical treatments which are disproportionate to the expected results or which are particularly burdensome for the patient: “When inevitable death is imminent in spite of the means used, it is permitted in conscience to take the decision to refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted” (DE, IV). A vital question here is the meaning of “normal care”. For example, can situations like that of Ms. Englaro, whose lifesaving measure was artificial nutrition and hydration, be considered as normal care? According to the authoritative interpretation of the Vatican Congregation responsible for these matters, the answer is positive: “A patient in a ‘permanent vegetative state’ is a person with fundamental human dignity and must, therefore, receive ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2007). This answer did not prevent some Catholic theologians from reflecting further on this matter and extend the prohibition to stop artificial nutrition and hydration always and in every circumstance (Sgreccia, 2007, 901–902), while others assess the termination of such care in cases of permanent vegetative state as morally acceptable (Ernst, 2007; Schockenhoff, 2013). The debate among the Catholic theologians regards more the definition of “disproportionate” measures and the question if stopping artificial nutrition can be considered an act of euthanasia. In other words, the general Catholic theological consensus on rejecting euthanasia is not the issue here. The presence of the Catholic Church in the public debate over bioethical issues has been rather consistent during the last decades, particularly in the Italian context. According to Garelli (2013), the Catholic Church exercised a more direct political presence especially since the collapse of the Christian Democratic Party in the 1990s, with the launching of a “cultural project”, namely a series of initiatives aimed at the proposition and justification of the traditional Christian values in the public realm, focusing especially on the defence of the so called “non-negotiable values” regarding the protection of life and family, central to bioethical issues. According to the Italian sociologist, in these years the Catholic Church started to function as a lobbying group in the Italian politics as never before in history, in order to preserve a decisive role in the increasingly pluralistic culture and to defend

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the values the church retains essential to the Italian society. Such a model of direct intervention of the Catholic hierarchy in Italy appears to be in decline in the recent years, probably due to the change of church leadership with the election of Pope Francis in 2013. In an interview with Spadaro (2013), the pope said that one cannot insist only on issues such as abortion and contraceptive methods, and that the church has “to find a new balance” in the transmission of her moral teachings, covering also other moral and social issues, such as poverty, immigration, and climate change. This explains our interest in analysing empirically the religious influence on what young Italians think about bioethical issues of abortion and euthanasia.

4  Conceptual Model and Research Questions In the forgoing sections, we have presented some relevant human rights issues in the current Italian public debate and the church’s stand on these issues: an ambivalent approach to civil rights, a strong support of socioeconomic rights and immigrants’ and refugees’ rights, a firm defence of the right to life, with a firm condemnation of abortion and euthanasia. Do these religious stances have an impact on the public discourse? According to Habermas (2009, 27) secularisation theories were right in suggesting the loss of social functions of religion; they were right in predicting a correlation between the specialisation of social systems and the privatisation of religious practice. Nevertheless, secularisation does not mean per se a loss of relevance and influence of (remaining) religion in the public political and cultural sphere nor in the moral choices of the believers. In other words, linking modernisation, decline of religion, and decline of religious influence on the public and private sphere are distinct matters. Modern societies do not exclude flourishing religious communities with real-life impact. Habermas points out that, in a post-secular society, democracy is safeguarded not by the total privatisation of religion, but by “the public use of reason both on the part of religious citizens as on that of nonreligious citizens” (Habermas, 2011, 24). Accordingly, the burden of translating religious language into a generally accessible language should fall equally on both sides, namely on the secular and on the religious side; both unbelievers and believers should engage conscious reflection of their statements and in a mutual learning process. A distinction has to be made between informal communication in the public arena and formal deliberations of public institutions, i.e., parliament, courts, and administrative bodies. Religious citizens should not be prevented from bringing religious arguments in their opinions about society at the informal level of communication, for this would entail an asymmetrical burden for religious citizens compared to secular citizens. But for Habermas, religious citizens should avoid religious language and argumentations (only) at the formal level of communication. Habermas affirms that religions in a post-secular society can exercise their influence in the informal communication from below; through these channels of communication “religions can become a transformative force in the centre of a democratic civil society” (idem, 25).

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Our conceptual model aims at investigating the impact of religious variables on what young people think about different human rights, since they are the citizens who will steer this “informal communication from below” on human rights in the future. In order to research the impact of religion on human rights issues, we differentiate religion with a set of religious attitudes, considering them as independent variables. We distinguish between personal and contextual religious attitudes. Personal religious attitudes generally comprise a cognitive dimension (e.g. beliefs about God), an experiential dimension (e.g. religious experiences) and an operative dimension (e.g. religious practices). Contextual religious attitudes refer to the interaction between religious traditions and between religion and society. Contextual attitudes can include convictions about how one’s own religion relates to other religions, express confidence in one’s own and others’ religious traditions, or may describe the function of religion in today’s world, the effect of contemporary society on religion, and the relation between religion and state. Thus, the list of independent variables in our research model comprises personal religious attitudes (beliefs about God, critical approach to belief, religious experiences and religious practices) and contextual religious attitudes (religious plurality, trust in religions, function of religion, religion in contemporary society, relation between religion and state). Background variables in our conceptual model are individual characteristics, which might affect students’ attitudes on human rights. First, we take into account personal characteristics of age, gender, geographical location. Being a woman, for instance, can have a different impact on personal convictions about abortion; living in Southern Italy or in its capital city can mean rating differently the importance of socioeconomic rights. The religious socialisation of the respondents, such as being a churchgoer and more often in contact with church teachings, can be related to the degree of support for human rights, such as of political rights for immigrants and refugees. Therefore, we deem religious identity (affiliation and practice), family/ peer religious influence and interreligious contacts to be background variables. Finally, we have considered the respondents’ psychological and socio-political traits to be background variables in relation to social issues: different psychological characteristics and ideas about society, culture and politics are involved in the moral evaluation of human rights issues. The list of psychological traits includes the personality tendencies of authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and empathy. We have also added views on multiculturalism and political orientation as socio-­ political traits. As shown in Fig. 1, the conceptual model underlying our empirical study of the impact of religion on human rights attitudes comprises three groups of variables: attitudes about human rights, namely civil rights, socioeconomic rights, immigrants and refugees’ political rights, right to life and its limitations by abortion and euthanasia (dependent variables); personal and contextual religious attitudes (independent variables); and personal characteristics, religious socialisation, psychological traits and socio-political traits (background variables). We intend to investigate the extent to which Italian secondary school students support or reject these human rights. We begin by studying the relationship between human rights attitudes and religious affiliation and practice, followed by the study

The Impact of Religion on Human Rights in Italy. An Empirical Research…

Background variables Personal characteristics · Age · Gender · Location Religious socialisation · Religious identity (affiliation and practice) · Family and peer influence · Interreligious contacts Psychological and socio-political traits · Authoritarianism · Social dominance · Empathy · Political orientation · Multiculturalism

Dependent variables

Independent variables Personal religious attitudes · Beliefs about God · Relevance of God and religion · Religious experiences · Religious practices Contextual religious attitudes · Religious plurality · Trust in religions · Function of religion · Religion in contemporary society · Religion and state

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Human rights attitudes ·

Civil rights

·

Socioeconomic rights

·

Political rights of immigrants & refugees

·

Right to life (abortion & euthanasia)

Fig. 1  Conceptual model

of the impact of personal and contextual religious attitudes on human rights attitudes, taking into account in these analyses also the background characteristics – personal, religious, psychological and socio-political traits – in order to identify the most important predictors of human rights attitudes. The conceptualisation and operationalisation of these variables are part of the international research project Religion and Human Rights coordinated by Hans-Georg Ziebertz from the University of Würzburg. We will therefore limit ourselves to a synthetic presentation of the operationalisation of some concepts from Fig. 1 in the next section. Does religion make a difference in what young people think about human rights? We can encapsulate this research problem in two main research questions: • Question 1: Are there significant differences in attitudes towards human rights between student groups as defined by their religious affiliation and practice? • Question 2: What are the predictors of students’ attitudes towards human rights?

5  Research Methods In this section, we will shortly present the data collection procedure and the sample of this study, followed by the instrument and the statistical methods utilized.

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5.1  Data Collection and Sample In order to study the impact of religion on human rights attitudes among young Italians, we collected data from students at the end of their secondary education in state schools. We contacted teachers who were willing to distribute our questionnaires in three areas with different geographical location and varied levels of urbanisation: Pordenone (in northern Italy with about 50,000 inhabitants), Rome (the capital in central Italy; population approximately 2,800,000), and in Monopoli and Conversano (two cities in southern Italy with about 50,000 and 30,000 inhabitants respectively). A total of 1162 questionnaires were filled in. With reference to our first research question, we needed to compare sufficiently large groups defined by their religious affiliation and practice, therefore, given the quasi-monoreligious landscape of Italy, we decided to exclude students belonging to religions other than the Catholic Church from the sample. Respondents belonging to other churches and religions made up about 5% of the original sample. Our final sample thus consisted of 1087 students. The sample of secondary school students comprises 54.7% girls and 45.3% boys. The age breakdown of students was as follows: 15 to 16 (4.6%), 17 (39.5%), 18 (41.4%), 19 (12.1%), and 20 to 21 (2.4%). In terms of geographical location, 372 are from northern Italy, 348 from central Italy and 366 from the south of Italy. Respondents were classified by religious identity into four groups according to their self-declared church affiliation and practice: Catholic churchgoers (30.8%), Catholic non-churchgoers1 (39.3%), generally religious (9.2%) and non-religious (20.7%).

5.2  Measuring Instrument The questionnaire used in our study is an instrument designed by the group of international scholars involved in the Religion and Human Rights 2012–2019 research project. The questions used to determine the respondents’ background and religious attitudes towards human rights were selected from the broader tool. Background variables comprise three groups of characteristics that could play a role in shaping students’ human rights attitudes: personal characteristics, religious socialisation, psychological and socio-political traits. Personal characteristics include age, gender and geographical location. Religious socialisation includes the religion to which respondents say they belong and their religious practice (religious identity), the faith of their parents and best friends, their parents’ expectation that their children adopt their faith (family and peer influence), and time spent with people of other religions (interreligious contacts). Psychological traits refer to respondents’ psychological profile in terms of authoritarianism, social dominance 1  “Churchgoers” are defined as those who claim to go to church at least once a month; “nonchurchgoers” claim to attend church a few times a year, hardly ever or never.

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orientation and empathy. Socio-political traits include evaluation of multiculturalism and political orientation (left-wing or right-wing). Independent variables refer to the religious attitudes of our students. Religious attitudes are assumed to include beliefs about religious issues and religious activities. We divided religious attitudes into two groups: personal and contextual religious attitudes. Personal religious attitudes comprise beliefs about God, namely beliefs in a personal God (theism, panentheism), beliefs in a non-personal God (deism, pantheism), beliefs in a aniconic God (agnosticism); they also include convictions about the relevance of God and of religion in daily life, such as having a critical approach to religious beliefs, believing in the existence of God and in his intervention, and considering religion as influential in life. Personal religious attitudes also encompass behavioural aspects, such as religious experiences (faith experiences and spiritual experiences) and religious practices (praying). Contextual religious attitudes include beliefs about religion in relation to other religions and society. For the purpose of our research, we have included beliefs about religious plurality (exclusivism and pluralism), trust in religion (trust in one’s own religion and in others’ religions), the function of religion (public function, cultural conformity and spiritual service), religion in contemporary society (relevance/irrelevance), and the relationship between religion and the state (strict separation and consultation). Attitudes towards human rights constitute the dependent variables in our model and refer to four categories: civil rights, socioeconomic rights, political rights of immigrants and refugees, and right to life in the case of abortion and euthanasia. Civil rights’ attitudes were operationalised in sixteen items referring to the following rights (Table 1): right to privacy (items 1 and 8), freedom of speech (items 2 and 14), freedom of assembly (items 6 and 9), freedom of religion for communities (items 7 and 3) and for individuals (items 11 and 13), preventing discrimination of women (items 15 and 10) and of homosexuals (items 16 and 4), and preventing inhuman treatment (items 12 and 5). Attitudes towards socioeconomic rights were operationalised in ten items (Table  2): state’s obligation regarding right to work (items 1 and 7), social security (items 2 and 9), living wages (items 3 and 6), rest and leisure (items 4 and 10), and the rights of children (items 5 and 8). Attitudes towards immigrants’ and refugees’ political rights were measured with the help of four items (Table 3): our respondents expressed their opinions on the right of immigrants to participate in political elections (items 1 and 2), and on the right of political refugees to decent life and to freedom of movements (items 3 and 4). Attitudes towards the right to life in case of abortion and euthanasia were measured in ten items (Table 4): our students indicated whether and in which cases abortion should be permitted (items from 1 to 7), and whether and under which circumstances euthanasia should be allowed (items from 8 to 10).

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5.3  Statistical Methods The collected data were inserted and analysed with the help of the statistical software package SPSS 25. As shown in Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4, means and standard deviations were calculated for each statement about human rights attitudes, and factor analyses (principal axis factoring) were used for the purpose of data reduction and scaling.2 We used variance analyses (ANOVA) and Scheffé’s tests to answer the first research question: these calculations indicated variations in the mean scores for different groups of students on each scale of support for human rights issues. The four religious groups taken into account were Catholic churchgoers, Catholic non-­ churchgoers, generally religious and non-religious students. The relationships Table 1  Number of respondents (N), means and standard deviations of items on civil rights in descending order of average agreement 12. Women should have the right to be protected from sexual harassment in the workplace. 10. The state should protect women’s right to adequate job opportunities. 15. Women should have the right to be equally paid for equal work. 2. People should be free to express any opinion whatsoever. 5. Inhuman treatment is forbidden in any circumstances. 14. People should be free to discuss all moral ideas, no matter what. 4. Homosexuals should have the right to hold any public office. 8. The state should not interfere in any sexual activities freely chosen by adults. 16. The state should prosecute behaviour which discriminates against homosexuals. 9. Radical political groups for law and order should have the right to assembly. 7. The state should not interfere with missionary activities in both the majority and minority religions. 6. People without criminal intent should have the right to associate, however extreme they may be. 13. The state should not prevent female teachers from wearing a headscarf for religious reasons. 3. The state should not be involved in public manifestations by majority and minority religions. 1. Our laws should protect people’s right to live by any moral values they choose. 11. Students should be offered time, space and a room in schools for their prayers.

N Mean s.d. 1084 4.60 .70 1079 1085 1086 1085 1085 1086 1086

4.46 4.38 4.22 4.18 4.17 4.03 3.87

.76 .86 .87 1.13 .83 1.24 1.15

1086 3.69

1.23

1080 3.54

.86

1081 3.42

.97

1075 3.38

1.03

1082 3.25

1.33

1084 3.18

1.01

1082 3.11

1.09

1079 2.81

1.15

Interpretation of means: 1.00–1.79: total disagreement; 1.80–2.59: disagreement; 2.60–2.99: negative ambivalence; 3.00–3.39: positive ambivalence; 3.40–4.19: agreement; 4.20–5.00: full agreement

 Only in the case of “authoritarianism” measurement, principal component analysis was employed.

2

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Table 2  Number of respondents (N), means and standard deviations of items on socioeconomic rights in descending order of average agreement 5. The state should be obliged to protect children from forced child labour. 2. The government should provide health care for the sick. 6. Everyone should have the right to just and reasonable pay for work performed. 9. The government should provide a decent standard of living for the old. 8. The state should be obliged to protect children’s right to engage in play and recreation. 4. Everyone should have the right to reasonable limitation of working hours to get enough rest. 1. The government should provide a job for everybody who wants one. 3. Everyone should have the right to equal pay for equal work. 7. The government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed. 10. Hiring people for salary or hourly work without periodic holidays paid for should be forbidden.

N 1083 1085 1082

Mean 4.47 4.46 4.37

s.d. .78 .73 .77

1082 4.22 1081 4.21

.73 .85

1081 4.02

.85

1084 3.93 1083 3.86 1081 3.84

1.06 1.09 .93

1078 3.58

1.06

Interpretation of means: 1.00–1.79: total disagreement; 1.80–2.59: disagreement; 2.60–2.99: negative ambivalence; 3.00–3.39: positive ambivalence; 3.40–4.19: agreement; 4.20–5.00: full agreement Table 3  Number of respondents (N), means and standard deviations of items on political rights of immigrants and refugees in descending order of average agreement 1. Everybody, living here for some period prescribed by law, should have the right to vote for political leaders. 2. Everybody, living here for some period prescribed by law, should have the right to run for public office. 3. The government should provide a decent standard of living for political refugees. 4. The government should guarantee political refugees freedom to travel.

N Mean s.d. 1083 3.48 1.09 1082 3.23

1.11

1079 3.22

1.04

1083 3.00

1.00

Interpretation of means: 1.00–1.79: total disagreement; 1.80–2.59: disagreement; 2.60–2.99: negative ambivalence; 3.00–3.39: positive ambivalence; 3.40–4.19: agreement; 4.20–5.00: full agreement

between religious attitudes and attitudes towards human rights were examined by calculating Pearson’s r correlation coefficients; the same calculations were resorted to in studying the relationship between background characteristics and human rights attitudes.3 Independent and background variables which showed moderate or strong correlations with dependent variables (r  ≥  .15) were taken into account in the

3  In the case of the variables “religious identity” and “geographical location”, only “eta” coefficients were calculated. The results of these correlations’ analyses are shown in detail in previous publications: Zaccaria et al., 2018a, 110–113; Zaccaria et al., 2018b, 62–64; Zaccaria et al., 2019, 127–131; Anthony et al., 2020, 89–91.

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Table 4  Number of respondents (N), means and standard deviations of items on attitudes towards abortion and euthanasia among all students in descending order of average agreement N Abortion 2. Abortion should be permitted in case of rape. 5. Abortion should be permitted when the woman’s own health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy. 3. Abortion should be permitted in case of incest. 4. Abortion should be permitted when there is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby. 7. Abortion should be permitted when the woman cannot afford any more children psychologically. 1.Abortion should be prohibited in all circumstances because it terminates human life at its beginning. 6. Abortion should be permitted when the woman cannot afford any more children economically. Euthanasia 10. Euthanasia should be permitted in the case of unbearable and irreversible suffering. 9. Euthanasia should be permitted in the case of unbearable and irreversible suffering, if palliative care is exhausted. 8.Euthanasia should be prohibited in all circumstances.

Mean s.d.

1085 3.77 1082 3.76

1.14 1.00

1085 3.35 1087 3.34

1.18 1.27

1087 2.65

1.27

1087 2.63

1.30

1083 2.58

1.24

1086 3.95

1.01

1083 3.87

1.05

1087 2.36

1.16

Interpretation of means: 1.00–1.79: total disagreement; 1.80–2.59: disagreement; 2.60–2.99: negative ambivalence; 3.00–3.39: positive ambivalence; 3.40–4.19: agreement; 4.20–5.00: full agreement

multiple regression analyses, performed in order to answer the second research question, namely to see which religious attitudes and background characteristics are the main predictors of our respondent’s human rights attitudes.

6  Empirical Results In order to answer the two research questions, we firstly need to see how attitudes towards human rights were measured. For this reason we present (Tables 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) the results of the factor analyses which led to the reduction of the items and to the constructions of the scales measuring human rights attitudes among our respondents. Factor analyses of civil rights items led to the removal of 6 items. Of the remaining ten items, as shown in Table 5, analysis brings to light four meaningful factors that explain a total variance of 47%. Three items loading on factor 1 represent “women’s rights”; two items loading on factor 2 refer to “gay and sexual rights”; two items representing “freedom of assembly” and two representing “freedom of religion” load respectively on factor 3 and factor 4. The reliability (Cronbach’s

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Table 5  Factor analysis, commonalities (h2), percentage of explained variance, and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of attitudes about civil rights 10. The state should protect women’s right to adequate job opportunities. 12. Women should have the right to be protected from sexual harassment in the workplace. 15. Women should have the right to be equally paid for equal work. 4. Homosexuals should have the right to hold any public office. 14. The state should prosecute behaviour which discriminates against homosexuals. 8. The state should not interfere in any sexual activities freely chosen by adults. 6. People without criminal intent should have the right to associate, however extreme they may be. 9. Radical political groups for law and order should have the right to assembly. 11. Students should be offered time, space and a room in schools to do their prayers. 13. The state should not prevent female teachers from wearing a headscarf for religious reasons. Cronbach’s alpha Number of valid cases

F1 .88

F2

F3

F4

.75 .66

h2 .72 .54

.13

.57

.84 .68 .54

.21

.11

.75 .51

.19

−.14 .36

.64

.39

.47

.25 .52

.26

.49

.35

.81 .74 .46 .42 1075 1084 1064 1075

Eigenvalue  =  1; Oblimin rotation with Kaiser Normalisation; extraction: PAF; Explained variance = 47.0%; F1 = Women’s rights; F2 = Gay and sexual rights; F3 = Freedom of assembly; F4 = Freedom of religion

alpha) of these factors is fairly high for the first two factors and rather modest for the last two. In the case of socioeconomic rights, factor analysis necessitated the removal of one item for low commonality and low factor loading. As shown in Table  6, the other nine items load on one factor representing attitudes towards “socioeconomic rights”, with a total explained variance of 38.3%, and high reliability (α .84). Factor analyses bring the two items measuring immigrants’ rights and the two items referring to refugees’ rights as one single factor that we named “Political rights of immigrants and refugees” (Table 7). It explains a total variance of 40.1% and has a fairly high reliability (α .73). Factor analysis of the seven items referring to abortion reduced the data to two factors, we named the first factor “abortion for reasons of violence and health”, while the second factor was labelled “abortion for psycho-economic reasons” (Table 8). This factor analysis explained a total variance of 56.8%. Factor analysis of the three items about euthanasia formed one single factor, titled “euthanasia”, with an explained total variance of 53.2% (Table 9). These three scales have fairly high reliability.

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Table 6  Factor analysis, commonalities (h2), percentage of explained variance, and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of attitudes about socioeconomic rights

6. Everyone should have the right to just and reasonable pay for work performed. 2. The government should provide health care for the sick. 9. The government should provide a decent standard of living for the old. 8. The state should be obliged to protect children’s right to engage in play and recreation. 4. Everyone should have the right to reasonable limitation of working hours to get enough rest. 5. The state should be obliged to protect children from forced child labour. 1. The government should provide a job for everybody who wants one. 7. The government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed. 3. Everyone should have the right to equal pay for equal work. Cronbach’s alpha Number of valid cases

Socio-economic rights .73

h2 .53

.70 .65

.49 .42

.61

.38

.61

.37

.61

.37

.58 .54

.33 .30

.51 .84 1087

.26

Eigenvalue  =  1; Oblimin rotation with Kaiser Normalisation; extraction: PAF; Explained variance = 38.33% Table 7  Factor analysis, commonalities (h2), percentage of explained variance, and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of attitudes about political rights of immigrants and refugees

2. Everybody, living here for some period prescribed by law, should have the right to run for public office. 3.The government should provide a decent standard of living for political refugees. 4.The government should guarantee political refugees freedom to travel. 1. Everybody, living here for some period prescribed by law, should have the right to vote for political leaders. Cronbach’s alpha Number of valid cases

Political rights of immigrants & refugees .69

h2 .48

.62

.38

.62

.38

.60

.36

.73 1078

Eigenvalue  =  1; Oblimin rotation with Kaiser Normalisation; extraction: PAF; Explained variance = 40.1%

Having presented the scales measuring human rights attitudes, we now proceed to answer the first question of this study. Research Question 1  Are there significant differences in attitudes towards human rights between student groups as defined by their religious affiliation and practice?

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Table 8  Factor analysis, communalities (h2), percentage of explained variance, and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of attitudes about abortion 2. Abortion should be permitted in case of rape. 4. Abortion should be permitted when there is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby 3. Abortion should be permitted in case of incest. 5. Abortion should be permitted when the woman’s own health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy 1.Abortion should be prohibited in all circumstances because it terminates human life at its beginning (item recoded). 7. Abortion should be permitted when the woman cannot afford any more children psychologically. 6. Abortion should be permitted when the woman cannot afford any more children economically. Cronbach’s alpha Number of valid cases

F1 .85 .73

F2

h2 .61 .56

.69 .65

.49 .47

.63

.47 .87

.71

.74

.67

.84 .81 1078 1083

Oblimin rotation with Kaiser Normalisation; extraction: PAF; Explained variance = 56.84%; F1 = Abortion: violence and health reasons; F2 = Abortion: psycho-economic reasons Table 9  Factor analysis, communalities (h2), percentage of explained variance, and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of attitudes about euthanasia 9. Euthanasia should be permitted in the case of unbearable and irreversible suffering. 10. Euthanasia should be permitted in the case of unbearable and irreversible suffering, if palliative care is exhausted. 8. Euthanasia should be prohibited in all circumstances (item recoded). Cronbach’s alpha Number of valid cases

Euthanasia h2 .94 .88 .71

.51

.45 .72 1082

.21

Explained variance = 53.15%

Significant differences with regard to human rights attitudes were researched for four groups of students differentiated by religious identity, namely self-declared belonging to a religious community and frequency of attendance to religious services. In other words, does Catholic belonging and practicing make a difference in what students think about human rights? Do teachings of the church about human rights leave a trace on young people who are more church committed? As Table 10 shows, among civil rights, no differences were detected about women’s rights and freedom of assembly: all students in average support very strongly the rights of women not to be discriminated and harassed at work; similarly, even though to a lesser extent, all groups support the civil right of the people to freely associate and come together in order to express their views. Differences between groups emerge in the case of gay and sexual rights and of freedom of religion. When it comes to non-discrimination of gay people and non-interference of the state in sexual freedom, all young respondents support these rights, but Catholics (both

38

F. Zaccaria et al.

Table 10  Levels of agreement (mean and standard deviation) with regard to attitudes towards human rights for Catholic churchgoers, Catholic non-churchgoers, generally religious and non-­ religious students; and comparison of means between groups of respondents (Scheffé’s tests)

Women’s rights Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Gay and sexual rights Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Freedom of assembly Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Freedom of religion Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Socioeconomic rights Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Pol. rights of immigrants & refugees Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Abortion: reasons violence & health Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious Abortion: psycho-­ economic reasons Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers

Cath. non-churchgoers

N

Mean s.d.

335 427 100 225

4.45 4.48 4.50 4.52

335 427 100 225

3.71 3.81 4.15 4.06

335 427 99 225

3.43 3.44 3.43 3.56

335 427 100 224

3.24 3.07 2.87 2.73

.92 1.00 .86 * 1.02 **

334 427 99 225

4.26 4.06 4.14 4.19

.52 ** .59 .66 .56

334 425 100 224

3.24 3.13 3.32 3.39

.77 .75 .73 .86 **

335 427 100 225

3.31 3.43 3.59 3.96

.89 .91 .99 .80 **

335 2.42 427 2.54

Generally religious

Non-­ religious

** *

** *

*

** **

.70 .66 .62 .64 .92 1.01 .86 * .99 * .72 .73 .78 .87

1.08 1.07

**

** ** * *

** **

The Impact of Religion on Human Rights in Italy. An Empirical Research…

39

Table 10 (continued)

Generally religious Non-religious Euthanasia Catholic churchgoers Catholic non-churchgoers Generally religious Non-religious

Cath. N Mean s.d. non-churchgoers 100 2.77 1.24 225 3.02 1.26 ** 335 427 100 225

3.66 3.73 3.96 4.15

.90 .85 .76 .75 **

Generally religious

Non-­ religious

** **

Interpretation of means: 1.00–1.79: total disagreement; 1.80–2.59: disagreement; 2.60–2.99: negative ambivalence; 3.00–3.39: positive ambivalence; 3.40–4.19: agreement; 4.20–5.00: full agreement Intergroup differences are significant at p