The Church and its Churches between Polis and Civitas

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to deal with the question of the form of Catholic places of worship in the current secularization process phase, and with special reference to the Italian case and once assumed a sociological perspective. First of all, the relevance of the artifacts for the sociological understanding of secularization will be highlighted. The next step will be dedicated to the reciprocal and very important relationships between the form of the place of worship and the type of social order. These relationships will be illustrated by focusing on the relationship between the religious dimension of Catholicism and some different variants of secularization. Having elaborated on this basis a typology of forms of the religious dimension of Catholicism, it will show and discuss how the solution of some architectural questions can influence the success or the demise of one or an other among different forms that the religious dimension of Catholicism can assume copying with the secularization process current phase.