FRANCE: SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES AND THE STATE

Allegorical photo of the 1905 French Law

Yesterday, The Grandma was following the events of the Giletes Jaunes in France. When a movement like this appears, it can be the beginning of something bigger and unexpected. The economic crisis, that is affecting Europe since more than a decade, has created disaffection and desperation in a population that observes how its politicians approve laws that benefit rich people in opposition to poor ones.

France has a history full of struggles in a favour of social rights and it's, without any kind of doubt, the European reference in protests and organized population. Since 1789, with the French Revolution, this country has been the mirror and the best example to follow to protect social contracts and to fight for a better and equal society.

The famous French motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, is not only a sentence but the life way of French people and something very important to preserve and vindicate.

France is a great example of advanced policies in social rights and one of them was the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State that was approved on a day like yesterday in 1905.

The Grandma wants to talk about this important law but before doing it, she wants to invite you to study a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 37).

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The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established state secularism in France. France was then governed by the Bloc des gauches, Left Coalition, led by Emile Combes. The law was based on three principles: the neutrality of the state, the freedom of religious exercise, and public powers related to the church. This law is seen as the backbone of the French principle of laïcité or secularism.

Prior to the French Revolution of 1789, Roman Catholicism had been the state religion of France, and closely identified with the Ancien Régime. However, the revolution led to various policy changes, including a brief separation of church and state in 1795, ended by Napoleon's re-establishment of the Catholic Church as the state religion with the Concordat of 1801.

Separation of the Churches and State, 1905

An important document in the evolution toward religious liberty was Article Ten of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, stating that No one may be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, as long as the manifestation of such opinions does not interfere with the established Law and Order. The 1871 Paris Commune had proclaimed state secularism on 3 April 1871, but it had been cancelled following the Commune's defeat. After the 16 May 1877 crisis and the victory of the Republicans at the following elections, various draft laws requesting the suppression of the Concordat of 1801 were deposed, starting with the 31 July 1879 proposition of Charles Boysset. 

Beginning in 1879, the French state began a gradual national secularization program starting with the removal of priests from the administrative committees of hospitals and boards of charity, and in 1880 with the substitution of lay women for nuns in hospitals. Thereafter, the Third Republic established secular education with the Jules Ferry laws in 1881–1882, which were a significant part of the firm establishment of the Republican regime in France, with religious instruction in all schools forbidden.

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In 1886, another law ensured secularisation of the teaching staff of the National Education.

Other moves towards secularism included:

-The introduction of divorce and a requirement that civil marriages be performed in a civil ceremony.

-The legalizing work on Sundays.

-Making seminarians subject to conscription.

-Secularising schools and hospitals.

-Abolishing the law ordaining public prayers at the beginning of each Parliamentary Session and of the assizes.

-Ordering soldiers not to frequent Catholic clubs.

-Removing the religious character from the judicial oath and religious symbols from courtrooms.

-Forbidding the participation of the armed forces in religious processions.

The 1901 Law of Associations, which guaranteed freedom of association, also enabled the control of religious communities and, notably, limited their influence on education.  In 1903, while Emile Combes was minister, a commission was selected to draft a bill that would establish a comprehensive separation between the state and the churches. Its president was the former Protestant pastor Ferdinand Buisson, and its minute writer, Aristide Briand.

A joke about the Law

On 30 July 1904, the Chamber of Deputies voted to sever diplomatic relations with the Vatican following the sanction, by the Holy See, of two French bishops, Albert-Léon-Marie Le Nordez and Pierre Joseph Geay, who had declared themselves Republicans and in favour of conciliation with the Republic. The relationship was not reestablished until 1921, after the Senate accepted a proposition brought by Aristide Briand.

The 1905 law put an end to the government funding of religious groups by France and its political subdivisions. The state had previously agreed to such funding in the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 as compensation for the Revolution's confiscation of Church properties. At the same time, it declared that all religious buildings were property of the state and local governments. Other articles of the law included the prohibition of affixing religious signs on public buildings, and laying down that the Republic no longer names French archbishops or bishops.

Pope Pius X condemned the law in the February 1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos as a unilateral break of the 1801 Concordat.

Alsace-Lorraine is still governed by the 1801 Concordat that recognises four religions, but not secularism. When the 1905 legislation superseded the Concordat elsewhere in France, Alsace-Lorraine was part of the German Empire; thus, the 1905 law has never applied there. Similarly, the law has never been applied in the overseas Department of French Guiana as it was a colony in 1905.

More information: France Diplomatie

Although the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State initially was a particularly painful and traumatic event for the Roman Catholic Church in France, the French Government began making serious strides towards reconciliation with the Catholic Church later during the 1920s by both recognizing the social impact of organized religion in France and amending the law itself through new legislation and rendering court decisions that were favorable to organized religion in France. 

In 1921 the Roman Catholic Church and French State began a series of negotiations for pacification of law in respect to both civil and canon law to create a harmonious day-to-day working relationship. These negotiations culminated in 1926 when Aristide Briand negotiated the Briand-Ceretti Agreement with the Vatican whereby the state reclaimed a role in the process of choosing diocesan bishops.

Pope Pius XII later supported what he called, la légitime et saine laïcité. At Vatican II through the encyclical Gaudium et spes the Church recognized a belief in a non-confessional state, that the Church should not be involved in politics and that there should be a fair separation of powers marked by co-operation for the benefit of society.

The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State declared that cathedrals remained the property of the state and smaller churches that of the local municipal government. 

Grandma's memories at Notre Dame, Paris

Those public authorities had to hand over the buildings to religious organizations, associations culturelles, representing associated formed of laymen, instead of putting them directly back under the supervision of the church hierarchies.

These laymen associations created under the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State were independent legal entities having rights and responsibilities in the eyes of the law in all matters appertaining to money and properties formerly owned in France by organized religions: churches and sacred edifices, ecclesiastical property, real and personal; the residences of the bishops and priests; and the seminaries. These laymen associations were also authorized by the law to act as administrators of church property, regulate an collect the alms and the legacies destined for religious worship. The resources furnished by Catholic liberality for the maintenance of Catholic schools, and the working of various charitable associations connected with religion, were also transferred to lay associations.

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Implementation of the law was controversial, due in some part to the anti-clericalism found among much of the French political left at the time. The law angered many Roman Catholics, who had recently begun to rally to the cause of the Republic, supported by Leo XIII's Inter innumeras sollicitudines 1892 encyclical and the Cardinal Lavigerie's toast in 1890 favour of the Republic. However, the concept of laïcité progressively became almost universally accepted among French citizens, including members of the Catholic Church who found greater freedom from state interference in cultural matters, now that the government had completely stripped itself of its former Catholic links. 

The Affaire Des Fiches produced a considerable backlash, after it was discovered that the Combes government worked with Masonic lodges to create a secret surveillance of all army officers to make sure devout Catholics would not be promoted.

A few French politicians and communities have more recently questioned the law, arguing that, despite its explicit stance for state secularism, it de facto favors traditional French religions, in particular the Catholic Church, at the expense of more recently established religions, such as Islam. Indeed, most Roman Catholic churches in the country were built well before the enactment of the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, and thus are maintained at full public expense, although not always on time and to the extent that the church would like. With the exception of the historically anomalous Alsace-Lorraine, followers of Islam and other religions more recently implanted in France instead have to build and maintain religious facilities at their own expense.

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Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious 

may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. 

It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged 

say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that.

Richard Dawkins