Autonomia confessionale e sistema delle fonti del diritto ecclesiastico. Riforma del Terzo settore e tutela della privacy: un banco di prova per la produzione normativa confessionale

[Autom. eng. transl.] The contribution has the objective of conducting a systematic reflection on the contents, on the concrete implications and on the limits of the principle of confessional autonomy in the light of the most recent developments in inter-ordinal arrangements in relations between the State and religious confessions and of reflection on the system of sources. of ecclesiastical law. The Constitutional Charter, with far-sightedness, through the particular formulation of Articles 7 paragraph 1 (principle of sovereignty and independence of the Catholic Church) and 8 paragraph 2 (statutory autonomy of religious confessions other than Catholic) allowed, with a systematic reading, the enunciation of the general principle of confessional autonomy which it was able to hold up to to date, to the affirmation of a complete religious pluralism, contributing to the enhancement of the common framework of equality in the freedom of all confessions and of the "institutional projections" of social formations of a religious nature. Seventy years after its entry into force, the structure of the operational limits of this principle is today being tested through some legislative innovations that end up questioning the consolidated structures of the system of sources of ecclesiastical law. The recent reform of the Third sector, in redesigning the meaning and role of "civilly recognized religious bodies" through the provision for these of the "Third sector" and "Social enterprise" branch with the provision of a cd. "Branch regulation" imposes a sort of compliance which, pushed to the extreme, translates into a compatibility check regarding the limits of the recognition of confessional autonomy. The even more demanding European GDPR on privacy has moved in the same direction, even requiring a reorganization of the rules on the "confessional" management of personal data of a religious nature and beyond. Both disciplines require, in hindsight, albeit in partially different ways, a correct and delicate balance between the imperative legislation of unilateral common law, which also religious confessions must respect as "legal actors", and area of specialties which, in the respect for the organizational structure and the specific purposes of religious bodies, the same legislator of common law cuts them out, with variable formulas and gradations, in which their own and peculiar confessional disciplines are inserted. In hindsight, it is a question of a new and more demanding redefinition of the operational limits of confessional autonomy which already today and increasingly in the future will have to be questioned for its realignment with new rights and new forms of operation with which religious confessions they will have to be able to confront.