Nicholas and Benedict: a pas de deux to the tune of “positive laïcité”
Laïcité (French for secularism)“allows everyone to live together, whatever their beliefs or lack of beliefs.” However, now it is being threatened in the very country which gave it to the world. This extract comes from the president of a multi-faith group, UFAL, devoted to gender euality, human rights and the separation of church and state.
Extract from
Nicholas and Benedict: a pas de deux to the tune of “positive laïcité”
by Marie-José Letailleur
President of l’UFAL (Union des Familles Laïques) in Champs sur Marne
Riposte laïque, Nr. 56, 16 September 2008
[...] The word laïcité comes from the Greek laikos: people. Laïcité [secularism] is a norm to ensure freedom of thought in order to let people blossom as individuals and citizens. In the language of the Church a lay person was, in the Middle Ages, someone baptised who didn't belong to the clergy.
It was the French Revolution which provided the first legal framework in which secularism could be even imagined.
The Proclamation of the Republic of 21 September 1792 became synonymous with the abolition of the monarchy. This was Year I of the Republic, the [first] year of “Liberty-Equality-Fraternity”. The sovereignty of royal power was replaced by “the sovereignty of the nation”: the concept of a republican nation, united and indivisible. Henceforth France was to be ruled by the will of the people.
1795, Year III, was the year in which the Constitution was proclaimed – a crucial element of the French Republic. It was this constitution which says: “No one may be forced to contribute to the costs of a religion. The Republic subsidises none of them”. This is the first declaration of the separation of church and state. It was to be applied only briefly and partially. The First Republic, born of the French Revolution, was the first society in history which tried to live without a public religion.
In 1875, after almost a century of struggle against the monarchy, religious power and several authoritarian regimes, the Third Republic (1871-1940) emerged victorious and in its final form.
This was the one finally to put secularism into practice and also to establish a republican framework, with its values of liberty and democracy, in a way that has persisted to the present day: universal suffrage, a multi-party political system, the right of assembly, permission to form unions (1884), freedom of the press, the right to be accorded French nationality (1889), freedom of association (1901).
Under the Third Republic secularism became a (basic) concept for organising society, one whose aim was an impartial, reciprocal balance between spiritual and religious authorities [on the one hand] and political, civil and administrative authorities [on the other]. The aim was to combat clericalism, that is to say, the influence of the clergy and of religious movements or parties on public affairs.
It was under the Third Republic that the Law of 1905 was voted in which definitively confirms the separation of church and state. It was the Constitution of 27 October 1946 that proclaimed for the first time “France is a republic which is indivisible, secular, democratic and social”.
This sentence became the first article of the Constitution of 1958 which remains in force today.
This historical background is essential for our understanding that secularism is a revolutionary idea [in both senses] and, though it dates back several centuries, it still governs our daily life.
What is particularly shocking today is that the President of the Republic, who according to Article 5 is the appointed guardian of our Constitution, publically flouts — in public and before the Pope — that very Constitution.
What right has he to to take it upon himself to pass judgements on religion when he is obligated to maintain neutrality by virtue of his office?
Actually, his stance follows from the argument that he developed in his 2004 book [with a co-author from a Vatican think tank]: we do not have a President of the Republic who is a representative of all French people and for all French people, but rather someone who wants to impose his own ideas and his own personal beliefs.
The Republic, as you say, is the hope of a better life here below. Religion is the hope of a better afterlife. To recognise the hope embodied by religion is not to deny the hope embodied by the Republic. I affirm that religion and the Republic are complementary. (Nicolas Sarkozy in an interview with Denis Jeambar, 29/10/2004)
From what he says here in his own words, we can see what he’s aiming for: to break with the republican past which is the foundation of our society. Secularism allows everyone to live together, whatever their beliefs or lack of beliefs.
The term “positive secularism” makes no sense. If one talks about positive secularism, that presupposes that there's a negative secularism.... Secularism cannot be qualified, as the Freemasons of the Grand Orient remind us.
However, the Pope is taken with the term “positive secularism” [in fact, he appears to have invented it] to preach his own ideas. [Literally ‘to preach his own parish’ This is a play on the concepts of ‘Republic’, a secular social group, with ‘parish’, a religiously organised one].
“It doesn’t both me that you have religious beliefs, but I cannot allow you to judge me for having none”, this is what I wish to be able to keep on saying without needing to be afraid or despised. I will brook not a single person, whoever that might be, to make value judgments about my convictions.
Secularism allows everyone to be true to themselves without having to worry about any considerations of politics, philosophy or religion.
Chipping away at laïcité: On his visit to the Vatican at the end of 2007 the French President claimed that “laïcité hasn't got the power to cut France off from its Christian roots”. This historical pronouncement, retorted the head of the socialist party PS, was “false”, “serious” and would lead to “real confusion between religion and politics” — which, of course, is exactly what the President wants. The next year, during his visit to Lourdes, the Pope continued this attempt to undermine laïcité by recommending a “(spiritually) healthy laïcité”....
See also:
- “Positive secularism” and the retreat from Vatican II
- Nicolas Sarkozy and the threat to French secularism
- Steady erosion of church-state separation
Last update 24 April 2010
