162US Secularism

English Comments #162US

february 18, 2015 (0162sUS)
Secularism

Careful ! Political secularism is a totem.
Bow to it and it makes you
what it claims that it pushes aside precisely:
a religion !
totem

Nothing has ever been more secular but Eden. In its depiction (Genesis ch.1 & 2) you can't find the slightest trace of religion.
Nothing is more secular but The Revelation of Arès and what it asks us to set up on earth: Good eminently secular.
Penitence (Rev of Arès 30/10-11), that we have been preaching over forty years, is the absolute opposite of ideology; penitence is secular, neutral, because The Revelation of Arès leads us to be free from prejudices whatever they may be.
Now, that which is clear in The Revelation of Arès does not appear to be so in the Republic.

Faith is not necessarily an ideology — just take the Arès Pilgrims' faith for instance — , but an ideology whether deistic or atheistic, whether denominational or political, is necessarily a religion. It sooner or later starts partisanship, smugness, and then haughtiness and violence. Violence, originated whether from on high: crusades, inquisition, gulag, gas chambers, or from below: Hashashins (from which "assassin" has derived), Ravaillac (French King Henry IV's murderer), the World Trade Center's destroyers, the Kouachis in January, 2015, only to mention a few, has been caused by ideology, except when it is pathological..
Which means that secularism, had it its turn to grow into ideology or law, causes the same calamities and prolongs the night of Evil.
Real secularism has to be as natural as life.

In Parliament, Paris, le 13 janvier, Premier Valls bangs his fist on the pulpit and thunders, "We're having one important issue: secularism! secularism! secularism,is the core of the Republic... and the guarantee of unity and tolerance!" Secularism according to Mr Valls may be a guarantee of unity vague albeit well-intentioned as long as it does not turn into ideology or law imposed upen citizens, that is, a danger. But it is not a guarantee of tolerance. "Charlie Hebdo" adds to Mr Vall's specch: "If you say 'I am Charlie', you say 'I am secularism'... No positive [?] secularism, no inclusive [?] secularism, no certain secularism, just secularism period. It alone enables people to exert equality, liberty and fraternity." Has anybody seen Muhammad's caricature as fraternal in the one-off of "Charlie Hebdo", january 2015?

The 1905 law for the separation of the Church and State proclaims the power's secularism in France, but it does not proclaim the citizens' secularism. But this has been a rather blurred principle, a fact we notice when the State by the 2004 law forbids Muslim women to wear a veil and by the 2010 law forbids them the burka. The gap between secularism and freedom is well-marked then. Is Muslim women's conscience respected by the State when it forbids them to wear the veil or burka? I have my doubts.
The government is right to ask citizens to consider the murderers at "Charlie Hebdo's" and the Kosher Supermarket not as secular men but as religious sacrificers. But only 3 violent men in the midst of 65.000.000 French citizens are involved in the murder and we have to dampen the zeal of some members of the parliament, that are advocating an extension of the 1905 law, so as to regard all of militant believers as potential fanatics. If secularism ever became a lawful tool to discriminate between unbelief and belief, what might freedom of conscience end up in?
Politics cannot define secularism. It can only be defined by Good and penitence which leads to it, both as neutral as The Revelation of Arès teaches that they are. It might be time that the French government looked at us Arès Pilgrims and help us to spread the concept of neutrality of Good and the ways people can take to reach it. We have been experienced forty years missionizing in a secular manner, preaching private effort to be good, but never preaching a doctrine, marvels, miracles, help and justice from On High, so we are well aware of the difficulties in preaching constructive faith instead of receptive faith to a society which is still expecting the mash to be served even though its boast is to be rationalistic.

Of course to believe is a dynamic verb. To believe is to beget an action, which is the private quest for as well as the public spread of Good through penitence. All that is dynamic is risky. Creation, whether the work of the Quite Other, in which we believe, or the work of nature, which the masses think it is, has required risks to be taken. Likewise, Good and freedom would not be Good and freedom, if they were not risky.
Consequently you governing men are certainly going to take risks, if you trust us, but you would take even more risks, if you imposed secularism as a law upon citizens. You would put up a totem in front of which the population should make up a devout fellowship, you would institute a compulsory religion, which in the end would be altogether opposite to what you would have looked for and what The Revelation of Arès states.
You members of the government are going to tell me that The Revelation of Arès asks mankind to free itself from all ideological powers allegorized by the princes of religion — religious religion, political religion, money religion, rationalistic religion —, the white king (religion) and the black king (politics, business, money and so on), all the leaders and their lookouts (Rev of Arès xLv/11). so you will retort to me; "We can't call for help the Arès Pilgrims who expect us to disappear." I answer: "That's true, but we are a long way from reaching that stage. Why fot the time being not be together for a while?"

Let's make secularism as natural as life.

copyright2015