Religione, società e diritto in Europa occidentale

This article considers the apparent contradiction between the secularisation of private life and the way in which the public life in a certain number of Europeans countries currently seems to feature a return to religious confession. A brief description is given ot the theses propunded by the theorists of "religious economy", who maintain that the near future wil witness the prevalence of religious groups with a strong, rigorous identity, which puts them in opposition to those who identify the future of Christianity with its transformation into a sort of civil religion of the Europeans. The concluding part of the essay looks at the various different scenarios of ecclesiastic policy that may derive from the two different perspective.