120 Years of French Secularism

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ER Editor: The thesis of Helene de Lauzun is readily found online. Indeed, anything we’ve ever read about the much-vaunted French revolution turns into a pure Freemasonic attack on Christianity in the country. See this as just one iteration —

The Genocide of French Catholics

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120 Years of French Secularism

French-style secularism is not an ode to tolerance but a destructive project targeting France’s Catholic identity.

HELENE de LAUZUN

One hundred and twenty years ago, on December 9th, 1905, the French National Assembly voted in favour of the separation of church and state, establishing the principle of ‘secularism’ that is still today considered one of the intangible principles of the French republican state.

French-style laïcité (secularism), to which no one can hope to raise the slightest objection, has become untouchable—defended now even by those against whom it was initially used as an offensive weapon. But although it is now presented in an idealised and irenic light, ‘secularism’ as it was conceived in 1905 was never the wonderful republican openness towards all religious practices that is sold to us today. Conceived as part of a militant, openly anti-Catholic project, rather than as a hymn to tolerance, it is now showing its limitations in the face of the growing place of Islam in French society.

The law separating church and state did not appear as if by magic one fine morning in December 1905. Rather, it was the result of a long process that began 116 years earlier with the French Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Introduced in 1790, it radically changed France’s relationship with Catholicism, which, until then, had been immediate and unquestionable. For the first time, the religious institution was radically subordinated to the state institution, when the latter was conceived in principle only as the servant of a divine order greater than itself, of which the Church was the ultimate representative.

Deeply rooted in the land of France, Catholicism resisted. Throughout the 19th century, France underwent a slow but sure process of secularisation, aimed at erasing the Church from a society and a people with whom it had forged special ties over centuries. The process was not continuous and was accompanied by a profound revival of religion after the heavy blows dealt by the revolution. Education was the main battleground between supporters of a Catholic Church that was a public figure, keen to maintain its visible imprint on a society it had shaped, and opponents of many different kinds, from staunch anti-religious figures to mild anti-clericals.

The Third Republic developed in its early years with predominantly monarchist personnel. At first, during the period of the Ordre Moral (Moral Order), those in power clumsily attempted to regain lost ground in the minds of the people by promoting the place of the Church in public life. But they lost the battle. When the republicans triumphed over the Ordre Moral in 1879, anticlericalism became definitively and for a long time synonymous with the republican idea. The ‘new’ regime set itself the quasi-official goal of eradicating from public life all evidence of the Catholic Church’s influence in France.

It was difficult for French Catholics to identify with this regime, and as a result, they found themselves politically excluded in their own country. In the early 1890s, the Church attempted to bridge this divide by advocating the Ralliement (Rallying) of Catholics, who could not be forever excluded from participation in political life, but the deep-seated dispute did not disappear.

It was in this context that the law granting freedom of association was passed in 1901. This measure, which today’s leaders like to celebrate as an early milestone in the so-praised ‘living together’, since it grants the benefits of legal administrative status to all sports and cultural associations in France, was conceived with a strong anti-clerical aim. The message was clear: all associations were welcome in public life, except religious congregations.

This was a terrible political choice, given that these same congregations were responsible at the time for virtually the entire ‘social’ sphere, including welfare and health. In the name of this supposed freedom of association, all those who did not fit into the associative frameworks established by law, namely religious men and women, deliberately deprived of any legal status, were condemned to dislocation and expulsion.

People protested and revolted. Religious figures were hunted down and exiled. Officers preferred to face court martial and ruin their careers rather than carry out orders that contradicted their Christian beliefs. Striking images remain, such as the expulsion of the Carthusian monks in the snow: twenty elderly men, benefactors of the department of Isère, were taken away by the police and the army.

The 1901 law was followed by a second salvo: the law of July 1904, which provided for the permanent withdrawal of all teaching from religious congregations. No fewer than 14,000 schools closed in two years. The government walled up chapels, had calvaries torn down, and denied clergy the right to take teaching exams. To put it in contemporary terms: citizens were attacked and excluded, in defiance of some of the most basic human rights, namely freedom of conscience and freedom of religious practice. The law created second-class citizens, deprived of some of their rights. Secularism was conceived as an attack on religion. But today, in commemorating the law, we curiously remain silent about these very serious attacks, which are unworthy of a so-called democratic society.

When the 1905 law came into force, the damage that had been done was already profound.

The law affirmed freedom of conscience and guaranteed the free exercise of religion. It also specified that the State does not recognise (i.e., does not grant any privileged status) or subsidise any religion. A final, material provision stipulated that places of worship and clergy housing would be declared state property and made available to religious associations. This was a massive act of spoliation, complementing that already carried out at the time of the Revolution.

The 1905 law therefore no longer recognised the Church as a legal entity, placing it outside the scope of common law. True to liberal principles, it enshrined the division between the private and public spheres. It refused to acknowledge that beliefs could have a social role, reducing them to the status of individual opinions that must never interfere with the political world in the full sense of the term. Even though it recognised the collective fact of “worship”, which nevertheless gave a social dimension to religious belief, it did not know what legal status to give it: for a long time, mass remained a hybrid offshoot of the right of assembly. Secularism was not freedom of expression, as we tend to say today. It was advocated at a time when the myth of republican unity prevailed, and this myth was undermined by the Catholic religion, which was at odds with its ideal.

It should not be forgotten that the Church of the time strongly condemned this law. The papacy was not consulted when the act was drafted, breaking the previous bilateral agreement, the Concordat. Attempts at reconciliation failed. Encyclicals condemning the law multiplied, poisoning the already tense relations between the Holy See and the French state: nothing could be expected from a government that had made the Church its public enemy number one.

The First World War eased these serious tensions. After the conflict, the anticlericalism of the 1900s was no longer a political driving force. In the early 1920s, the situation gradually stabilised, both in practice and in law. Relations with Rome were re-established, and diocesan associations, compromising between state control and ecclesiastical hierarchy, made it possible to envisage a more peaceful management of Church property. The French still live under the modus vivendi obtained at that time.

Unfortunately, the return to calm had the effect of lulling people into complacency about the nature of the secular project as it was originally conceived and as it still exists today. Gradually, a tempting myth about secularism has developed. Its definition is quite simple: all that is required is for everyone to put their religious identity aside in society, and we will find ourselves in the best of all possible worlds. There are loud calls for a return to a hypothetical ‘spirit of 1905’ that never existed (if there was a ‘spirit of 1905,’ it could rather be defined as a rare form of intolerance), under the illusion that such a return will solve all the thorny problems that are rearing their heads. Headscarves in schools and veils in the street? Let’s go back to 1905, and the headscarf will disappear. As if the secularism of 1905 could in any way accommodate today’s militant Islam.

The spirit of the 1905 law was based on the idea, inherited from the Gospel—render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s—that there is a distinction between the public and private spheres. It has been transformed into a paralysing and destructive cult of neutrality. In the name of secularism, any possibility of resorting to moral principles, whatever they may be, is now rejected because they are suspected of being ‘religious.’ The debate on abortion and euthanasia, for example, is painfully bearing the brunt of this in the public sphere.

Moreover, the paradox of the 1905 law is that it was designed against Catholicism, but in a Catholic society, for a Catholic society. By banishing the Church from French society, it is now proving unsuitable for dealing with the issue of Islam, which does not recognise the separation of the public and private spheres. The antidote to Islam is not secularism but the recognition of France’s Catholic identity.

French Catholics, who should know all too well that the idea of secularism conceals substantial attacks on their existence, often turn a blind eye to this illusion, which smacks of historical hypocrisy. Secularism does not have their best interests at heart—far from it. The generosity that drives many Catholics to defend the 1905 law makes them forget that the political world they hope to enter by displaying a neutrality of good standing is not well disposed towards them. Today, Catholics are welcome, as long as they are not heard. While the French Republic continues to settle its scores with the Church of Christ—but will it ever be finished?—by fighting against calvaries, bell towers and nativity scenes, Islam continues to flourish.

Source

Featured image source: https://carmelitenuns.uk/the-blessed-carmelite-martyrs-of-compiegne/

Hélène de Lauzun is the Paris correspondent for The European Conservative. She studied at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. She taught French literature and civilization at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in History from the Sorbonne. She is the author of Histoire de l’Autriche (Perrin, 2021).

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