Abstract

Historians and sociologists of religions have analyzed and understood the links between Christianism, and more particulary Catholicism, and modernity according to three main paradigms. The first one, that I will call conflictual confrontation, argues that modernity is a process that is external to christianism; this interpretational framework identifies antagonistic principles between modernity and Catholicism and focuses on a series of crises. In a second, adaptative paradigm, christianism moves on to an aggiornamento and accepts the main characteristics of modernity, after a long period of resistance. This is visible in its relationship not only to politics and culture, but also internally. A third, homothetic paradigm posits that modernity was not born outside of Christianism, but rather, inside it and resulting from it. This is the paradigm of a modernity intrinsic to christianism. Controversies around post-modernity and the end of religion outline a new configuration that goes beyond these three paradigms.