President Nicolas Sarkozy of France rejected calls for secular values to be enshrined in his country’s constitution and urged religious leaders to do more to spread their message in the country. “A secular society is one which has decided to separate churches from the state, so the state doesn’t have to account for its choices to churches, and churches don’t depend on the state to live and organize—this is secularity, a secular republic,” he told religious leaders at a traditional New Year meeting on Jan. 25. “But this doesn’t mean churches, respecting the law, are forbidden from speaking. Nor does it mean your words shouldn’t go beyond the walls of your places of worship. That would be a strange idea of democracy: Everyone has a right to speak, except you.” He said it would be a “strange schizophrenia” to preserve France’s religious heritage while insisting religions had “nothing more to say, offer and impart.”
Sarkozy on Secularity
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
In Los Angeles, people stay for the movie credits. After the awful images of these fires are gone, they will stay to rebuild their city, too.
Catholic Charities USA is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, and the L.A. archdiocese has created a dedicated relief fund.
Warning of “the increasingly concrete threat of a world war,” Pope Francis called for “the diplomacy of hope” in his address to the ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian Consolata missionary, as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.