French Estates General for Laïcité Makes an Appeal

One year after IHEU’s French Member Organisation the Libre Pensée Française convened a massive demonstration in defence of laïcité in Paris (IHEU was represented by Babu Gogineni), on 9 Dec 2006 the Libre Pensée Française convened an Estates General for Laïcité to examine the state of laïcité in the country.

500 delegates participated, including leaders of the Libre Pensée Française, The Ligue de L’Enseignement, the Trade Unions CGT-Force Ouvrière and SNETAA- EIL; the Grand Orient de France; the organisations Laïcité-Liberté; Comité-Laïcité-République; IRELP, the Research Institute of Libre Pensée; Movement Europe et Laïcité; Union des Athées etc. IHEU was represented by its Executive Committee Member and Treasurer Roger Lepeix.

At the meeting it was revealed that an astounding 10 billion Euros are being siphoned away by the Roman Catholic Church through the agency of the ‘laïque’ French state! The meeting decided to prepare a ‘Black Book’ on this assault on French laïcité – it has since been published.

The Estates General Meets in Paris

“The Republic does not recognize, does not pay, nor subsidize any religion” (Article 2 1905 French Law on Separation of Church and State)

10 December, 2005: 12,000 free thinkers, secularists, trade unionists, freemasons, democrats and republicans, displaying the broadest unity on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the 1905 law, took to the streets in Paris to demand the defence and the promotion of the 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State. At the end of the demonstration it was decided that secular inventories would be drawn up everywhere in France, to take stock of the exact situation for secularism in the country. The principle of secularism provides that religion should be a strictly private matter and that public funds should be allocated only to the public education system.

During 2006: At the initiative of the local federations of the Libre Pensée, secularists and republicans drew up an inventory of the municipal, departmental, regional budgets and that of all public authorities to draw up the exact picture for secularism in the country.

9 December 2006: Gathered as the Estates General in defence of secularism in the Great Paris Labour Hall, a venue which symbolizes the union of the working class with republican democracy, delegates from all the regions of France brought together the results of their survey. The following conclusion was inevitable: Laïcité is being hijacked!

The result of the survey are both telling and distressing.
• ¤9.2 billion of public funds are being embezzled to finance private schools – most of them Catholic. Of this amount, the share of the French state is ¤8.2billion, while municipalities give ¤530 million, and regional and local authorities subsidize up to ¤499 million. The funds given to private schools meant for the select few as opposed to the schools open to all – the public school – are the equivalent of the budget for more than 200,000 jobs. Every aspect of French public life is being plundered to finance religion.
• ¤242 million are being embezzled through tax exemptions favouring religions, through subsidies to pro-life associations, and through payment for the healthcare system for priests.
• Nearly ¤100 million are being paid for building maintenance work – for which work or payment departments, municipalities and regions are not responsible.
• Throughout France, the estimated budget of ¤uro 54 million that is required for housing the 16,000 Roman Catholic diocese priests is being met by local authorities.
• The clerical laws that exempt Alsace-Moselle and the French Overseas Territories from the requirement of laïcité allow an unjustifiable anti-secular expenditure of ¤72 million. More than 2,000 priests are paid from public funds to teach religion in state-owned schools. The monthly income of a Roman Catholic bishop in Alsace is ¤4,484.57; that of a Roman Catholic priest: ¤2,703. 99; that of a protestant minister: ¤3,150; that of a Grand Rabbi: ¤2,916. 07. Thousands are being paid by the state out of the citizens’ public funds.
• The regulation known as the Martinière Circular (1966) makes it possible for religious associations to run profitable business activities. Thus, the Notre- dame de Paris Cathedral sells altar candles earning more than two million Euros every year without paying all the taxes to the State. The shortfall for public finances? 660,000 Euros!

More than Euros 10 billion are being stolen from the secular republic! We repeatedly wrote to government ministries (Finance Ministers Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-François Copé) to ask for information on the amount of the shortfall in the State budget caused by the special tax exemptions favouring religions. We received no reply. We particularly alerted the public authorities on the practices of the private Catholic TV channel KTO which delivers illegal tax receipts to get tax exemptions. There again, we received no reply. It looks like for the authorities, louts live only in suburbs and never in bishops’ palaces!

These anti-secular provisions were established by Petain’s law of 25 December 1942. We wish to make aware our fellow-citizens that Petain’s anti-secular laws (5 February 1942; 8 April 1942; 25 December 1942) have never been repealed since the Liberation of France. They have set a precedent. As regards anti-secular regulation, Paris is still in the age of the Vichy regime.

Citizens need to be aware that in France the income tax paid annually amounts to ¤49 billion while the annual national debt amounts to ¤42 billion. The equivalent of 20% of the total income tax paid by citizens and one fourth of the annual national debt is being given away every year to the Roman Catholic Church by the French state!

It is time for a secularist mobilization!

On 9 December 2006, with the National Federation of the Libre Pensée, hundreds of secularists, trade unionists, labor activists, freemasons, democrats and republicans from all over the country, gathered to collect their secular Book of Grievances in defence of the indivisible and secular republic.

Together, the 500 delegates decided:
• To publish a Black Book of the violations of secularism, recording the results of the secular inventories and the report of the Estates General in defence of secularism, and to circulate it to the public on a large scale.
• To send a delegation to the Speaker of the National Assembly and to the chairpersons of parliamentarian caucuses and political groups to hand in petitions to repeal the law of 25 December 1942.
• To write to all the candidates running for Presidential and general elections, asking for the repeal of Petain’s laws.
• To publish the results of the secular inventories in all the departments of France.
• To endorse the Appeal of the Lamoura National Congress of the Libre Pensée in defense of public education, an absolute prerequisite for democracy and equality among citizens.

In defense of Secularism!
Public funds exclusively to public state-owned schools!
Paris, 9 December, 2006