Angelo Cardinal Scola: Let’s Not Forget God: Freedom of Faith, Culture, and Politics,

A Proposal from Milan: Making Space for Religion

By R. J. Snell

Christendom may have begun with an edict from Milan; now, in the waning days of Christendom, another voice from Milan, Angelo Cardinal Scola, in his little book Let’s Not Forget God: Freedom of Faith, Culture, and Politics, “brings back to our attention the issue, more relevant than ever, of religious freedom.”

Initially a speech celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan, the watershed declaration of 313 AD by which emperors Constantine and Licinius granted legal rights to Christians, Let’s Not Forget God provides a serious, if brief, examination of the prospects of religious liberty under the regime of secularism, although it does so by turning to earlier days of the Church.

Beginning in 286, Diocletian attempted a dramatic renovation of the empire, including a revived sacralization of the sovereigns, whose adoration ensured the “pax deorum and therefore the safety of the empire and its inhabitants.” For several religious groups, including Christians, this was intolerable, eventually resulting in an attempt to demolish the Church by prohibiting the liturgy, confiscating property, denying legal recourse, and execution.

While persecution ended in 311 with Galerius requesting “the faithful not do anything against the public order and … pray to ‘their God’ for its safety,” acceptance of Christianity as religio licita “continued to maintain that it was an inalienable prerogative of imperial power to ‘manage’ the relationship between the divine sphere and the subjects of the empire.” But, says Cardinal Scola, the Edict of Milan was the “dawn of religious freedom” insofar as it differentiated the juridical and religious dimensions and recognized, within the limits of its time, the secularism of the state, consequently granting freedom of religion for all, equally, without distinction. Or, in the words of the Edict itself, “we … grant both to the Christians and to all men freedom to follow the religion which they choose … each one should have the liberty of choosing and worshiping whatever deity he pleases.”

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