When Your Government Attacks Your Faith
Is the separation of Church and State really a good thing?
The modern Western world rests upon an apparatus of contradictions. Upon doctrines marketed by simplistic and idealistic slogans which mask far more sinister realities.
It is taken as a given, for example, that the overthrow of the ‘Old Order’ was a ‘good thing’, ‘enlightening’ man and ‘liberating’ him from the oppressive dogmas of religion. It is a compelling message, if we allow the reality — that liberal democracies are far more dogmatic and authoritarian than the European ancien régime ever was — to be quietly muffled in the corner.
The ‘Enlightenment’, after all, has always taken as its central premise that we need to separate the state from ‘religion’ in order to prosper as free men. It has proved to be so compelling a message that even many conservatives today uncritically accept the separation of church and state as a necessary evil. But is it?
120 years ago, this precise question took center stage in dramatic fashion, following the passage of one of the most sweeping acts of anti-Christian legislation the world has ever seen — the Law of Separation, by which the French Republic in 1905 formally erased all traces of Christianity from the state.
On the 11th February 1906, Pope Pius X publicly responded to the Law with a call to all Catholics in France. Over a century on, his words are a rallying cry to any who find their faith under attack by their own governments…
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The Epicenter of the Overthrown West
Throughout the many centuries of the medieval and early modern West, France was famously hailed as the ‘Eldest Daughter of the Church’, whose sovereigns were recognized with the title of Rex Christianissimus.
That is, until a tight urban clique in Paris could stand accountability no more, and through a combination of legal obstructionism, libelous publication and rigged elections, subordinated the entirety of France to its will. With the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, the last obstacle was removed, and France has never truly been stable since.
Following decades of strife, to be a Catholic and to live in rural France in the late 19th century was to live in the knowledge that a government you did not vote for was hell bent on the destruction of your country’s thousand year culture, and the humiliation and subversion of your faith, all while refusing to condemn the appalling violence which had first given birth to it. It was a sorry state which many other societies across the West would come to know in turn, from the Russians of the 1920’s and Spanish of the 1930’s to those today who are witnessing an unprecedented frequency of arson attacks on churches, assaults on clergy and the eagerness of ruling regimes to legislate against hate crimes on behalf of other faiths, but never Christianity.
Thus after years of provocations, ranging from the removal of religious references in legal oaths to the forced closure of Catholic schools, the 44 articles of the Séparation des Églises et de l’État, passed by the Chamber of Deputies on the 9th December 1905, were the realization of those worst fears. Among many onerous conditions, the majority of churches in France were seized and declared property of the state, state schools were banned from conducting religious education to students aged between six and thirteen, and religious symbols were banned, with trivial exceptions, from public monuments or public places.
The Law was passed under the pretense of ‘freedom of conscience’. Mysteriously, however, only Christianity seemed to be targeted, a fact that Pope Pius X addressed head on in his encyclical Vehementer Nos, issued to the people and clergy of France just weeks later:
“You know the aim of the impious sects which are placing your heads under their yoke, for they themselves have proclaimed with cynical boldness that they are determined to ‘de-Catholicise’ France. They want to root out from your hearts the last vestige of the faith which covered your fathers with glory, which made your country great and prosperous among nations, which sustains you in your trials, which brings tranquillity and peace to your homes, and which opens to you the way to eternal happiness”
Pope Pius X, Vehementer Nos, 16, February 11th 1906
‘Freedom of religion’ in the Western world, after all, has only ever been a legal fiction to provide legal cover for the persecution of the Christian faith. As Pius makes explicit, the consequences of such an act are far-reaching, with fatal consequences for the confidence, cohesion and contentment of a people.
After all, a central fact which is casually ignored in mainstream accounts of early 20th century France is that in 1901, well over 90% of the French population was Roman Catholic, and the Séparation des Églises et de l’État was the result of purely top-down government.
This therefore brings us to the critical question that the separation of Church and State poses — from where do governments derive legitimacy?
The Problem of Legitimacy
“We cannot, therefore, without the keenest sorrow observe that the French Government has just done a deed which inflames on religious grounds passions already too dangerously excited, and which, therefore, seems to be calculated to plunge the whole country into disorder”
Pius X, Vehementer Nos, 12, February 11th 1906
There is a great question of modern history which remains studiously unanswered. What precisely is the sin of Christianity that is so great that its erasure from the state has been deemed essential by post-revolutionary governments?
Furthermore, why is said erasure deemed so essential and so pressing by ostensibly democratic regimes that the public can never be permitted a say on the matter? The Law of Separation is a typical example of this. France over the prior century, after all, had become accustomed to plebiscites whenever major matters of state were concerned. Curiously however, despite being vastly more intrusive to the character of the nation, the Law of 1905 was simply forced upon France from upon high, without any mechanism for the French people to stop it.
One may cite, too, the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’ in England, by which Parliament conspired with a foreign power to overthrow a sitting British monarch, enforce sweeping anti-Catholic discrimination and fundamentally redraw the structure of power in the British Isles. This event, likewise, is widely termed a ‘milestone in the development of democracy’, in the hope the public does not notice that at no point were they asked if they wanted this.
All of which brings us to the fatal flaw which plagues all modern Western regimes. ‘Democratic accountability’ is loudly preached, yet when things get serious, it is never practiced. One can vote out individuals, but one cannot vote out the agenda, and thus now, after decades of uninvited changes to the very fabric of nations, the crack between the marketing of democracy and the product has widened into a chasm, and the legitimacy of the system has collapsed.
The standard argument in favor of the separation of Church and State is that such a thing is necessary to prevent outside forces from influencing the governing process. A noble sounding goal, yet what actually happened? In the 21st century, Western governments are openly beholden to supranational authorities, and lobbying is a daily occurrence in Western parliaments — are we seriously to believe that these interest groups have more innocent motives than the clergy?
If a State is rooted in religion, then it has a clear basis of legitimacy which transcends the moment. The ‘character’ of the state, and therefore the guiding principle which underpins the making of its laws and drafting of its policy, is an ideology shared by rulers and ruled alike. The rulers may certainly err, but there is a clear standard against which to judge them, one that is neither arbitrary nor subject to fleeting trends. It is for this reason that Christian monarchs swear their coronation oaths before an altar, and not political rallies.
So if a State dispenses with religion, yet also views popular assent as optional, to whom or what is it accountable?
