Paris, February 6, 2014
"France has become violently anti-Christian," believes Pierre Manent, professor of political philosophy of the Institute for Social Science Research, reports Sedmitza.ru.
"The civil war in France. The republic against Christianity," is is the title of the interview, given by the philosopher to the Italian weekly, Il Foglio.
"What we call secularism is legal wording, which indicates a victory of one side and a defeat of another side".
“Republican France has conquered Catholic France and Catholic France has accepted this. Today we are living in the period after the civil war," explained Manent.
"The French ‘Enlightenment’ hated God, while the founding fathers of America separated the church from the state in order to protect the previous from the latter. In France it goes the other way round," believes the philosopher.
Secular banners on fronts of all schools, compulsory sexual education courses for 6-year-old children, the planned reform of the calendar for the purpose of introducing of secular days instead of Catholic feasts, arrests of opponents of same-sex "marriages" for silent protest actions--France is trembling before secularism, believes Manent.
"The socialist government has created a new progressive ideology, where democracy is completely freed from all meaning and boils down to no more than the acceptance of individual rights. We have lost the idea of reality. This is an aggressive conception of equality and freedom, an idea of life with no connection to the public good. There are only individual rights, desires," explains the philosopher.
" French secularism has driven the Church away from the public space. This project, which was successful, was initiated by the citizens with the new moral code. And the Church is considered the enemy of the republic in this project," concludes Manent.
