Chiesa e web: il valore della dimensione digitale nella chiesa e la pandemia

The global pandemic has produced rules that impose suffering on religions, which must now reconsider their social role. This entails the need to examine the rules of coexistence within societies, where the COVID-19 phenomenon raises existential and religious questions. We need to look at the condition of the state of religious freedom, referring – in the European context – to globalisation in a climate of restriction of personal, social, and religious freedom. This complexity has underlined the role of states and delimited competences regarding relations with religions. Because building relationships with communities and associations where religious freedom is expressed is fundamental, believers are therefore bearers of specific interests. This particular situation calls for a new function for religions, focused on the value of the person, which can lead to a common identity and guarantee of “those values of social and community integration that seem particularly discovered today”. Today, religious confessions not only create a qualifying moment in the European process, but they act concretely, asking the European institutions to protect religious interests because these are an expression of values at the basis of civil coexistence. Gradually, dialogue becomes an instrument that is used juridically as part of the legislative construction through the production of appropriate programs. In the face of the challenges and needs resulting from social and international coexistence, religions must become part of the democratic process without forgetting and betraying the authenticity of their religious message and, at the same time, without conditioning or mortgaging the development of democracy.