The laity and the right to religious freedom within a contemporary secularsociety

This article investigates the meaning of the right to religious liberty wit hin a democratic society in which secularism is the norm. It shows how this contemporary secularism has certain difficulties in offering meaning, and so it turns towards ethics and moral values in order to give form to its or ientation. The notion of ethics under discussion here, however, is by its p ractical implications part of spirituality that is grounded in some absolut e. Secularism thus has a spiritual foundation or is fundamentally empty. Th is reality of the spiritual as a dimension hidden behind manifest reality i s what justifies and motivates the right to liberty since it is itself the ground for this liberty. Will it be capable, though, to express itself with out embarking into a struggle between itself and what tends to restrict its manifestation?