Regulating the time of religion: the teaching of the Catholic religion as an administrative device between the Italian public schools and the Catholic Church

This article deals with Catholic religious education in Italian State schools from a political-sociology perspective. The 'hour of religion' works as an arrangement, not limited to classrooms, that involves practices of control across State schools and ecclesiastic administrative bodies. The school's management of this arrangement leads to practical negotiations between teachers and personnel, related to its legitimization as a subject of 'religious culture'. However, bureaucratic rationalization also occurs in Church dioceses, through the management of human resources and periodic checks of teachers' 'proofs' of faith. Catholic religious education appears then as a case study of the informal, hybrid regulation of religion in the ` grey areas' of State institutions.