Sometimes I wonder which is preferable: to live in a place like the US, where religious nuttiness is rampant among the population (and certainly not unknown among politicians), or a place like Italy, where the population is largely complacent and indifferent thanks to an unoffical State religion and politicians submit sheepishly to the whims of the State church.

American separation has led to a lively “cafeteria style” marketplace for all religions to compete for customers. Italy, on the other hand, has the Vatican: it’s a separate country nestled in the city of Rome, an autocracy and a theocracy (the last in Europe, I believe) which has the constitutionally-recognized right to interfere in Italian political life and – and this is the kicker – immunity from interference from the Italian government.

In fact, the Italian constitution is schizophrenic on this issue.

Art. 3

All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without
distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and
social conditions.

—

Art. 7

The State and the Catholic Church are independent and sovereign, each
within its own sphere.
Their relations are regulated by the Lateran pacts. Amendments to such Pacts
which are accepted by both parties shall not require the procedure of
constitutional amendments.

—

Art. 8

All religious denominations are equally free before the law.
Denominations other than Catholicism have the right to self-organisation
according to their own statutes, provided these do not conflict with Italian law.
Their relations with the State are regulated by law, based on agreements with
their respective representatives.

And it goes on like this, first establishing perfectly reasonable things like freedom of conscience, and then goes on to contradict itself by stating that the Catholic church has an entirely separate set of rules which govern its relations with the state (rules which highly favor the church and undermine the secular nature of the constitution.)

The Lateran Treaty (“All foreigners in official ecclesiastical employment in Rome shall enjoy the personal guarantees appertaining to Italian citizens, in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of Italy.”) is the basis for an immense amount of biased and unfair treatment of non-Catholics in Italy as well as enormous and completely unjustified privileges for Catholics and clergy. They need to be abolished if Italy wishes to become a truly European nation based on secularism and rule of law and emerge from its illiberal, fascist-tainted past.

Of course, without Italy’s gentle nursing, the Vatican would probably wither away and disappear from the face of the Earth. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing for anybody.