With all due respect to French leaders, I think they could start by reviewing the implications of laïcité.

At this time, they have much to say about "Islamic terrorism". Worse, some of the language they are using is the language of warfare and of terrorism itself.

Obviously, there can be no justification for what was done in Nice. But in wanting to explain the causes of such violence they are looking no further than Islam.

In a recent BBC Hardtalk programme, Stephen Sackur interviewed French professor of sociology and political advisor, Dominique Schnapper, who explained what she called the French form of secularism, which she assured us is superior to what we find in Britain and USA.

Most of us accept the separation of Church and State, including agencies of the State, and rightly. But laïcité goes further by including "the public sphere" with the State. Consequently, religion is mainly for the private sphere.

According to the Professor, curtailing the scope of religion in the public sphere gives people freedom!!

I suggest, on the contrary, that the State and the public forum are not the same; the public forum belongs to the people, to society.

It is where minds meet to be enriched by each other; it is where proper integration takes place.

Relegating religion and cultural diversity to the private sphere prevents integration! In fact, it is a recipe for creating ghettos! I would have thought this was obvious, though she did mention that she would not expect the English to understand!

I suggest that institutions dedicated to health care, social welfare and education, though administered by the State, are also not agencies of the State: they too belong to society, to the people, and therefore should be allowed to reflect society, including its pluralism, and not have to avoid or banish religious and cultural expressions.

Perhaps they should be called "State-run" institutions, not "State institutions".

The professor points out that the French understanding of secularism is a "product" of the French revolution and its rejection of previous forms of authoritarianism (of aristocracy and Church).

True, but that makes it a form of push-back, and a product of negative experience. It needs to move beyond its origins, and become positive. But that requires dialogue at every level, which is what laicite inhibits!

She is surely justified in allowing criticism of other people's views, including religious views, and she is right to say that criticising people's views is not necessarily insulting the people who hold them. But somewhere there is a line between critique and mockery?

It seems to me mere sophistry to say that mocking what is sacred to other people is not disrespecting those people.

Pope Francis' latest encyclical letter (especially chapter 6) is spot on where he talks of the crucial role of dialogue and need for greater respect and kindness within cultures and within politics.

It is within a culture of genuine respect for others, kindness and dialogue, that we instinctively know the difference between critique and mockery, between fair comment and incitement, between free speech and hate speech…

Schnapper is genuinely concerned that some kind of aberration seems to have taken place within Islam. But might she also need to ask whether there is some kind of aberration within the French form of secularism?

• Bishop Peter Cullinane, Bishop Emeritus, Diocese of Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Mutual hostility began with the 1789 French Revolution.

Until then monarchical France bathed in the glory of being recognized as the ‘elder daughter of the Catholic Church'.

But the revolutionaries saw the Church, like the aristocracy, as a pillar of the old regime that had to be rooted out, often by violence.

Many took their cue from the Enlightenment philosopher Diderot: ‘Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.' Anti-clericalism and de-Christianisation of the State became features of the revolutionary tradition that has continued until today, albeit in muted form.

The Islamist terror attack in Nice's Notre-Dame — two worshippers and the church's sexton murdered by attempted decapitation — had a remarkable effect.

President Macron immediately flew to Nice and made a very significant, sober and original speech:

"I want to express, first and foremost, the nation's support for the Catholics of France and elsewhere. After the assassination of Father Hamel in summer 2016, once again Catholics are attacked in our country, threatened before All Saints' Day celebrations.

"The whole nation is at their side and will remain so in order that religion can continue to be freely exercised in our country because our country knows that.

"Our values are that everyone is allowed to believe or not believe, but that all religions can be practiced.

"Today the whole nation is beside our Catholic compatriots.'

What is striking in this speech is that ever since the 1905 Separation, French heads of state have attempted to keep the Catholic Church at arm's length — even in its times of crisis — as a demonstration of neutrality.

After the 2016 Islamist assassination of Father Hamel as he prayed, President François Hollande — while not lacking in compassion — went no further than declaring that: ‘To kill a priest is to profane the Republic'.

Macron has gone further, putting France's arm around French Catholics and — most significantly — Catholics abroad.

Is this a breach in the tradition of rigorous state neutrality and a return to France as protector of French Catholic enclaves around the world, as was the case in the 19th century when they were under attack in Syria and the Lebanon?

If it is indeed Macron's intention that France move to defending more actively Catholic minorities abroad, that should be supported by other western governments.

Christian minorities generally have been forsaken by Western governments and their media, unlike minorities such as Uighurs in China.

Why, for instance, shouldn't French and British development aid be tied to state recipient's respect for Christian minorities in countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh?

The second part of Macron's speech was a robust defense of France's values of free speech and laïcité — the rigorous outlawing of religion from the State sphere. But here is where France has a problem. Continue reading

Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer on November 14, 1745, Guillaume-Louis-Nicolas Leclercq entered the novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Lasallians), where he took the religious name of Brother Salomon and eventually became Superior-General.

Following the promulgation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which gave the state control over the Church in France, he refused - along with most Lasallians - to take the required oath.

He was arrested on August 1, 1792 on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activism and imprisoned in the Carmes Convent in Paris along with many bishops, priests and religious. On September 2, he and 200 other church figures were killed by sword blow in the garden of the convent.

Salomon Leclercq thus became the first martyr for his congregation leading to his veneration by Lasallians around the world, particularly in Venezuela. It was there in 2011 that the Diocese of Caracas attributed the miraculous healing of a young girl bitten by a snake to the intercession of Blessed Salomon Leclercq to whom the religious sisters taking care of her had been praying.

What were the reasons for the September 1792 massacre?

Following the fall of the French monarchy in August 1792, hundreds of priests, religious and lay people, who had been arrested by the revolutionaries as enemies of the people and opponents of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, were imprisoned in various religious houses, including the Carmes Convent, which had been transformed into improvised prisons.

On September 2, amid panic among the revolutionaries caused by the Austro-Prussian invasion and by rumors of an internal conspiracy, the prisons were taken over by the sans-culottes who established a kangaroo court leading to the executions of more than 1,000 people. Of these, 191 people, comprising three bishops, 127 secular priests, 56 religious and five lay people, and including Salomon Leclercq, have since been recognized as martyrs of the faith. They were beatified in 1926. Continue reading

Sources

• Global Pulse, article by Clémence Houdaille, a journalist who works for Radio Notre Dame, Paris
• Image: Catholic News Agency