European Culture Wars and the Italian Case

Mediatized Catholicism—Minority Voices and Religious Authority in the Digital Sphere

“…In contemporary Italy, religion has a prominent space in the public sphere: religion-related issues frequently enter the political agenda, religion-related topics are publicly discussed, and religious actors express their voices in different media outlets (Ozzano and Giorgi 2016).…”

“…In addition, there are 42 missionary magazines, 650 media channels issued by associations and movements, 320 magazines devoted to the Sanctuaries, 422 magazines of male and female religious orders, other magazines on Catholic culture, 200 publishing houses, and about 200 bookstores (Ceccarini 2001;Zizola 2019). Although with some internal differences (Bertuzzi 2017;Ozzano and Giorgi 2016), these media platforms channel the official voice of the Catholic Church. In 1957, Pope Pius XII welcomed new technologies as a gift from God in the Encyclical Letter Miranda Prosus 5 (and many specific guidelines were issued in the following years).…”

“…Since the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Christian Democrats-the main political channel for Catholic values-political actors have been vying to attract the supposedly dispersed Catholic vote. Center-right parties became the champions of Catholic values, upholding neo-confessional moral conservatism and promoting and defending 'non-negotiable' values (Bolzonar 2016;Diotallevi 2016;Ozzano and Giorgi 2016). Center-left parties instead gave prominence to Catholic social teachings and solidarity (Giorgi 2019).…”

Religion and local politics in Southern Europe: a research agenda

“…Social movements can also choose to mobilise at the local level in order to pressure the government. This strategy is also used by offensive and defensive social movements related to 'morality politics', as, for instance, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement in France, Italy, Belgium and Spain (Ozzano and Giorgi 2016;Paternotte 2008) or, on the other side, the Manif pour tous (Béraud and Portier 2015). The municipal level is also relevant in aspects relating to the governance of religious diversity, notably concerning urban planning and places of worship, and some welfare services.…”

“…In the European context, the religious factor is often the object of a double reduction: on the one hand, religion is politicised, for example, in the discussions around the foundations of a European identity; on the other hand, mass media often focus only on the conservative and radical aspects of religions (Itçaina 2015a). In the same direction, recent research on the Italian debates concerning religions underlined the role of religious and political actors in structuring the debates in binary 'either-or' terms (Ozzano and Giorgi 2016). In other words, the polarisation of political debates is not a datumrather, it is the result of a political process in which actors frame and reframe the issues at stake and advocate for their significance in public terms by means of various grammars of generalisation (see Boltanski and Thévenot 1991;Chateauraynaud 2009;Chateauraynaud and Trom 1999;Tilly 2008;Wright Mills 1940).…”