Canonical Marriage, Religious Marriages, and the Proliferation of Civil Partnerships

Abstract

In these last years we are observing a slow agony of civil marriages. Married couples in Italy (as well as in the rest of Europe) are decreasing drastically for other forms of civil partnership. Today, this particular situation makes indispensable an action by the Parliament, both to rule some features of common-law marriage (a different form from a matrimonial one and concerned with the rights of persons and property connections) and, from a different point of view, to fully acknowledge the matrimonial religious freedom. The freedom of marrying, according everyone’s faith, should be protected by a special significance of the religious marriage in the legal order without any needed transcription in the public reginter. The acknowledge of this kind of choice by the State, to all intents and purposes, seems a consistent answer with the Italian laws about the protection of individual rights, but also a forward – looking solution compared with several alarming tendencies which are starting to seep from Europe.