Michael October - November

On May 27, 2013, Most Rev. Christian Lepine, Arch-

bishop of Montreal, gave a presentation at the confer-

ence “Bridging the Secular Divide: Religion and Can-

adian Public Discourse”, held at McGill University. The

following text, The Secular Government and Religion

Duality, recapitulates this presentation, and is also re-

produced on the website of the archdiocese (www.dio-

cesemontreal.org

Discussions about secular government and religion

are important because they concern democracy and

human dignity.

There are two pitfalls that must always

be avoided in society: theocracy and state religion.

Our society itself is not secular, but pluralist. The gov-

ernment, however, is secular. The question is whether it

consists of an open secularism or a closed one.

What is the difference between a theocracy and

a state religion? In a theocracy, a religion takes over

the political role. (

Editor’s note: one country that fits

that description is Saudi Arabia, where only the Mus-

lim faith has the right to exist officially, and where the

law of the State is the law of Islam, sharia. The Roman

Catholic Church does not ask for such an absolute

power: she only asks for the freedom to express her-

self and propose her message, and the very fact she

is separated from the State allows her to denounce

unjust laws or situations that might be caused by the

State.

) The other pitfall to avoid is the opposite, a state

religion, which is a religion or a system of values that is

exploited by politics.

Our democracy is designed to be pluralist. Our so-

ciety is composed of various religious and philosophic-

al communities, and is home to a wide range of schools

of thought. A society that is not ruled by a religion or in

which there is no dominating state religion, and where

religious freedom, the freedom to believe or to not be-

lieve, is respected, is likely to progress.

Religious freedom includes the freedom to not

believe in God, for atheism is itself a form of faith—in

that which is material, or in humankind—which is ex-

pressed through various trends. Every human being

wants to find the meaning of life, and doing so requires

freedom of conscience, whether it be religious, agnos-

tic, or atheist. Religious freedom applies to all sets of

beliefs and values, and an absence of religious freedom

could be interpreted as a form of atheism that is im-

posed by the state religion, not only to the detriment

of religious people, but also to people of other beliefs.

Secularism that is closed to religion

gives rise to

a state religion, for once its policy is enforced; it be-

comes permanently positioned in opposition to reli-

gion’s public dimension. Closed secularism attempts to

inculcate in people the belief that this life is the only life

and that human beings should not hope for anything

other than present life, no matter how great their thirst

for the absolute may be. An individual could hold this

belief, and an association could try to propagate it, but if

the state embraces such a belief, we find ourselves back

at the beginning.

We wanted a society where no religion was imposed

on us, and we ended up with a government that impos-

es its philosophy, its system of values, and its discourse

on religions. In doing so, the government claims to rep-

resent all aspects of life and contributes to the loss of a

sense of God and to the destruction of the transcendent,

reducing religion to a theoretical cultural phenomenon.

Not only is religious freedom at risk here, but so

is humanity, which is stripped of its true greatness of

having been created in God’s image, and which is left

powerless before a state that assumes it has the power

to decide what is good and bad without referring to a

set of moral values that transcend it. Secularism that is

closed to religion can exist as a concept, but if it takes

over politics, or if politics makes use of it, it becomes a

state religion whose beliefs are imposed.

Secularism that is open to religion

, and respects

the religions as it respects the different forms of athe-

ism and agnosticism, gives back to the people their own

freedom, responsibility, and conscience, and sets the

stage for them to continue their search.

Religious and non-religious acts, public or private,

cannot be imposed on people, nor forbidden from them.

Everyone has a right to religious freedom, whether it is

practiced individually or jointly with others.

The secular government here is a government that

is open to religious freedom, and this religious freedom

is manifested with a respect for a free connection with

God and all its implications. Here, the government and

religion duality becomes a strength; it keeps humanity

at the heart of things, in all its dignity, allowing people

to refer to their conscience in determining their involve-

ment in family, work, and society, while remaining open

to God and to the transcendence of moral values.

Secular does not have to mean without God or

against God. It refers to a commitment to a world that

is autonomous and that is free to be inspired by God

and propelled by the fundamental universal values out-

lined in God’s commandments, which reflect humanity’s

vocation. Atheists and agnostics also benefit from such

a freedom because a life constantly evolves. In a plur-

alist democracy, we can only gain from secularism, for

in keeping paired an open secular government and reli-

gious freedom, we protect ourselves from being impris-

oned by absolutisms and from having a closed future.

Archbishop Christian Lepine

How the separation of Church

and State should be understood

Louis Even

The Pharisees, anxious to trap Jesus in His talk,

sent their followers to Him, along with the Herodians

who were supporters of Rome, to pose this question:

“Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, or not ?”

(Mat-

thew 22:17.)

In those days, “tribute” was something different

from the income tax paid by our free citizens today.

Tribute implied subjugation: it was a contribution ex-

acted of the vanquished by the conqueror, as Rome

had conquered Palestine by force.

Our Lord answered by first exposing the trap

prepared by the Pharisees:

“Hypocrites, why do you

thus put Me to the test ?”

He then asked them to

show Him the coin of tribute, on which was engraved

the image of Caesar. Then he said to them:

“Render,

therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,

and to God the things that are God’s.”

A curtailed quote

Usually, those who quote this line of the Gospel

do it to stress the duty to pay taxes. And they do so

with much eloquence. Most of the time, they quote

the first part of the text only — that which concerns

Caesar. The latter part, concerning God, is usually

passed over in silence, because these speakers are

too much preoccupied with the importance of Caesar

today.

Even when people quote the first part, they

seldom draw attention to the limitative nature of

the words “what is Caesar’s”. We say “limitative”,

because Caesar does not own everything. But ap-

parently, if one listened to the “tax preachers”, one

should give to Caesar all that he demands. Caesar

usually has a good appetite, caring little whether

there are things that are due to those he robs by

taxes.

You understand that Caesar means the govern-

ment, or more precisely, the governments, since

there are as many Caesars as there are levels in the

political structure of a nation. In Canada, there are

municipal Caesars, provincial Caesars, and a federal

Caesar. And before long, to top it all off, perhaps we

will also be afflicted with a supranational Caesar with

universal jurisdiction.

The result of this hierarchy of Caesars, stretching

higher and higher, has been the extracting of larger

and larger “tributes”. The ears of these Caesars have

become more and more distant from the voices of

the people, while their sticky fingers reach down into

every strata of society, taking every bit of our incomes

and squeezing all they can from every economic trans-

action.

But does something belong to Caesar simply

because he demands it ?

Limits to Caesar’s power

In a speech delivered in the House of Commons

on July 6, 1960, during the debate on the Canadian

Bill of Rights, Noel Dorion, the MP for Bellechasse (a

few months after he became a minister in the Con-

servative cabinet), quoted the reply of Jesus to the

Herodians. However, Mr. Dorion did not use it in fa-

vour of taxes. On the contrary, the topic debated in

Ottawa that day was human rights and not the rights

of Caesar. Mr. Dorion rightly remarked:

“It is Christ who really set forth the first char-

ter of human rights, summing it up in these suc-

cinct words which, after two thousand years, are

still timely: Render to Caesar the things that are

Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Mr. Dorion did not elaborate further on this state-

ment. But considering the subject of the debate, he

certainly meant that man, the human person, belongs

to God, and not to Caesar; that Caesar does not have

render to Caesar

what is Caesar’s

and to God

what is God’s

MICHAEL October/November/December 2013