Even in Europe the attack on secularism is no joke. Certainly, the Kaczinsky brothers’ fundamental-ism was defeated, as was the Spanish bishops’ challenges to Zapatero, and Sarkozy’s promise to re-vise French secularism might well never be followed up; and so my fears might just be an “Italian syndrome” (Italy where, the clerical onslaught weighs every day on political choices, would thus be the unique exception in Europe). Yet these defeats point to a desire for revenge unthinkable in the Vatican II era, and history’s verdict can always turn around (as Mao feared).

The analysis by Gauchet (and Clastres) of religion as the original and pervasive form of political bond, and thus of Christianity as the religion that permitted the “exit from religion”, is of such a great importance to me, that I cannot reply off-handedly to Marcel’s observations. But the belief that religion power in Europe is without a future seems to me to smack of Hegelian finalism, in-compabible with the role that Gauchet himself, in his writings, ascribes to contingency. Other Kaczinsky brothers could very well win tomorrow. In the days of John XXIII, it seemed that no catholic would even dare to achieve such a goal.

Moreover, the power of religion still operates over a question that for citizens seems to be one “of life and death”, literally: the right not to be tortured against one’s will. Today, in the western “secu-lar” world, a few geographically irrelevant exceptions apart, someone who is condemned to death without being guilty of any illegal act - that is, a terminally ill patient - cannot escape torture , this in the name of an excusively religious taboo. And whoever helps the patient avoid torture and eases death is condemned to years of jail. In other words, to the crucial question “to whom does your life belong”, the hardly secular response of western societies, sanctioned in its laws, is still “it belongs to God”.

Roberta De Monticelli invites us to remember to be philosophers, and thus to reflect upon God in a theological and not only in a political vein. For me this is an “invito a nozze” : it is exactly what I did between 2000 and 2005 with cardinal Ratzinger, cardinal Tettamanzi, cardinal Caffarra, and cardinal Scola, and with the theologian Bruno Forte, of whom the other theologian cited by De Monticelli (Vito Mancuso) is the most famous pupil. In all these occasions I attempted to perform a “defence of atheism … in the name of reason, but not by a «party of reason»” - but, as Dan Sperber noted, that “is an altogether different issue” from the theme of this debate, which is not that of the conflict (or compatibility) between faith and reason, but between democracy and religion.

Because, as one can gather from the controversies I just referred to, if the “essence” of religion - what is common to all religions - were really that “with no exception, the divine is characterized as transcendent of all categories of our language” and that “absolute transcendence is affirmed by … and in fact common to the three «religions of the Book»”, if, in short, the experience of God were radically vertical, and recognized as such by religions, then faith would not be communicable ver-bally and all theology would end with Wittgenstein: that of which one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

But that is not actual religion. When it is, exceptionally, no problems arise between the secular and the believing (and it is no accident that De Monticelli, who is a believer, has written beautifully in defense of the right to euthanasia). There is no problem if faith is like Karl Barth’s (which De Mon-ticelli seems to be taking up), and if it sets grace against religion, without any possible mediation, so that “religion compels us to the perception that God is not to be found in religion”. Cardinal Martini never risked becoming Pope, sadly, and it seems that the Holy Spirit partakes of the obses-sive anti-Enlightenment stance of Wojtyla and Ratzinger.

What Roberta De Monticelli emphasizes thus only has sense as a (highly valuable) program of phi-losophical-theological disputations within Christianity and other religions, not as a critique of the atheist’s presumed insensitivity before the “spiritual”.

Savater, Sperber, Harris and Dennett have already replied convincingly to many of Nagel’s theses. I just would like to underline two things:

- It isn’t true at all, unfortunately, that, “given three choices – (1) avoid the fight; (2) fight and win; (3) fight and lose – (2) is only slightly better than (1), and (3) is much worse than both of them”. This would be true, at least in part, if religious people were staunch utilitarians. In fact, for many believers, “fight and win” is not at all “slightly better than” “avoid the fight”. For many believers – for Jews and Christians as well as for Muslims - this latter choice signifies giving in to Satan, and so the worst of all possible choices.

- The freedom of which Nagel is the herald is the freedom of individuals or the freedom of families? One would think, the second. But if the subject (owner of freedom’s rights) is not the individual citizen, why should the collective entity be the family, and not the clan, the ethnic group, the religion, or any other group? The freedom of the family often means that of the parents, even that of the pater familias, of the “padre padrone”, and thus the non-freedom of other individuals. And the child is an adult in becoming, and thus has the right – even against the will of the “padre padrone” or of two “loving” parents - to a schooling capable of bestowing the critical knowledge available today. For, in order to be sovereign tomorrow (that is, to be in possession of one’s inalienable fragment of sovereignty), one has to grow up today in possession of all the tools that allow one to make autonomous choices tomorrow. Without critical tools, the autos nomos cancels itself out and becomes flatus vocis.

Finally: are we sure that the danger to the separation between religion and state only comes from Islamism? Are we sure that the absolutist and fundamentalist impulses of the various religions could not find themselves in “synergy”, thus jeopardizing basic freedoms? I am not only referring to cases of homicides and persecution (although they also seem to me underrated), or to cases of censorship or self-censorship (too frequent, and menacing to immune our conscience) but to the very recent cases in England, where people who have a public duty to honor the rights of all (such as doctors and pharmacists) refuse to sell the morning-after pill (a “right” just claimed for them by Pope Ratzinger), or to check in on a patient of the opposite sex, because their religion does not al-low such actions. And many people in the establishment, as well as opinion makers, are defending these choices. Will it next be the case that a newsagent or bookseller could refuse to sell “immoral” works, and a policeman or judge refuse to prosecute the “family” that forced a child to undergo genital mutilation?

NB The Italian word “laicità” and its cognates - similar to the word in French and Spanish - is here translated into English as “secularism”. But the Italian “secolarizzazione”, which is quite different from “laicità”, is also “secularism” or “secularisation” in English. This might have given rise to some misunderstandings, which, we hope, can be resolved by the context.