One of the major claims of secularism is that we should have separation of church and state. The reason being that religion imposes constraints to human freedom and sparks intolerance. They claim religion is a matter of opinion and superstition whereas secularism is based on scientific and historical facts. As a matter of opinion, religion should be reserved to private life, not the public debate. I would ask then, if religion is a matter of opinion, what is politics? Since when do politicians speak facts and truth instead of opinions?

We have seen in Part I, how science is misused by secularism to impose their ideology. In Part II, we have used the example of condom distribution to show that their “rationality” is so blind to the facts that it has lost all common sense with tragic consequences. We have seen in those two parts that secularism by its pseudo-scientific thinking and by its blindness is really no more than an opinion.

J’accuse

The other popular accusation is that religion has historically been intolerant and been the primary source of wars. This is being told to me on a regular basis by co-workers and unfortunately by my own brothers. Look at the Crusades, the Wars of Religions or the Inquisition. This is also believed as true by other Christians and even Catholics.

I must quickly add here that I do not intend to deny the facts of history nor do I want to defend anything that is indefensible. Horrible things have been done in the name of Christ. Today, sexual scandals exist in the Catholic Church and among other denominations and synagogues.[1] Sexual scandals also exit in public schools and even in kindergartens. Evil is evil and nothing can justify it. If the Church is holy by the virtue of Christ’s holiness, her sons and daughters are certainly sinners, starting with myself.

The Media

My reflection is not at the level of the individual church member but at the higher level of history. Today we see how the book “The DaVinci Code” distorts history. I have no problem with the book itself but I am astonished the book has had so much success. At the same time I am obliged to note how many “serious” cultural institutions have been promoting the anti-Christian ideas of the book. PBS, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, The History Channel, CNN, MSNBC. Unfortunately we know that this is where the public will get their knowledge of history.

History

I was raised in France but I find that the anti-Christian arguments given there are the same as those given here by American secularism. As my teachers explained Western History they made the point to show how religion in general, Christianity in particular and especially Catholicism were the cause of all wars. As I was growing in age and started to develop some critical thinking I came to ask myself:

“Hold on a minute, before the 15th century all Europe was Catholic. Why would Catholics make war to other Catholics if Catholicism was the one thing they had in common? It does not make sense. Think of the 100 year war between England and France. Joan of Arc was captured by the English; they convened an Inquisition; the Inquisitor was English not Italian - Italy or Rome had nothing to do with it; the Inquisitor found her innocent; so who burned her; the English; why, because of religion? It does not make sense. Religion has nothing to do with it.”

From there on it was relatively easy to start questioning history the way it was being taught to me when I was a child and the way it is being taught to our children, today. Actually when we think about it Christian history is quite amazing. When a war is fought the winners usually start imposing their culture on the losing country. It happens all the time. On the lighter side, when “we won” the cold war the American culture started invading Russia and Poland by exporting Coca Cola, Lee Jeans and McDonalds. On a more serious level, aren’t we trying to solve the Middle East problem by exporting our form of democracy to Iraq?

What happened to Christianity? It was a Jewish sect being persecuted by the Jewish authorities and then by the Roman Empire. Even though persecuted and at the same time as it was being exterminated other people around it started to convert. The Christian martyr is not one who kills but one who is being killed. After the Roman Empire collapsed, Europe was being invaded by all sorts of barbarians: the Franks, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, etc. Instead of imposing their culture to the losing people they ended up converting to Christianity. When the Vikings came down to France and won, they occupied Normandy and converted to Christianity. Christian lands were being invaded from all sides but Christianity was never overrun, instead it was a unifying factor. The only invaders who almost overran Christian countries were the Moors who imposed Islam on their occupied lands. In that respect Charlemagne unified Christianity against Islam. Islam waged an offensive war whereas Christianity waged a defensive one.

Even the badly accused Crusades were a defensive war to liberate the Holy Land. Christianity started in Jerusalem and spread throughout the Middle East before reaching Greece and Rome without a single sword. The Middle East has been a Christian land since the beginning of Christianity. It is the Arabs who invaded Palestine and imposed their religion by the sword. The Crusades were wars of liberation. Like all wars, horrors were committed by both sides but the Crusades were justified. The only event that was never justified and was only brought about by greed was the sack of Constantinople.

This is not the way history is explained by school teachers to our children. They teach that by order of the Pope, Christians invaded the Muslim countries, whereas the Muslims were the invaders and the Christians were rescuing their brothers from these invaders. History teachers also like to emphasize the role of the Templars and the strange conspiracy theories that surround them. On the other hand they forget the Order of the Hospitaliers. The Hospitaliers still exist today. Who speaks of the Hospitaliers?[2]

Example

The facts of history are still the same but the way they are interpreted are based on ideology not on truth. They are taught in a very subtle way. Little by little, we are being indoctrinated to have a skewed view against Christianity.

The other day I was watching a program on the History Channel. It is called The History Channel Classroom. These are history documentaries created especially for use in our public schools. The video I was watching was on the plague.[3]

The documentary was saying that the estimates we have, where one third of the population of Europe died might be underestimated. Some scholars think that possibly half of the population might have died. This had also some impact on the social structure and basically brought an end to feudalism. It also said that the plague spread in urban areas where there is a concentration of people and the countryside was free of plague. The plague stopped because so many people died that it could not reproduce itself fast enough to support its growth. As they were telling the story they remarked that the nobility were not affected as much as the common people because most of them had country estates and went there to protect themselves. Later on, maybe ten minutes later, the remark was made that Pope Clement VI, who lived in the south of France, deserted Avignon.

In an otherwise truthful documentary, why did they have to say that the Pope deserted? If he had left he would have done what the nobility did. Why is it acceptable for a count or duke to go to their country estate and it is not acceptable for the Pope? The comment made by the History Channel Classroom was not an objective historical fact it was an opinion made casually and gratuitously. This was out of character with the facts they were reporting. It struck me because the documentary did not say where the Pope went. Unfortunately, it is passing remarks like this, that will be imprinted in our school children brain.

The Pope deserted? Did our president deserted the White House when Washington was attacked on September 11, 2001? No matter what one thinks about President Bush, he did not desert. What he did is part of risk management and recovery, it is called assuring “continuity of government.”[4] If you are in business, as part of your business plan, you should have a section about disaster recovery and continuity of operations. If the Pope had left Avignon this would have been a normal procedure. Actually he does not even seem to have ever left Avignon as he attended to the suffering and the dying, defended the Jews from mounting anti-Semitism and died in Avignon one year after the end of the Black Plague.[5]

Facts

Like in the other previous thoughts about secularism and science, I did not set myself to argue science. Here I am not setting myself to argue about history. It is not history I am contesting; facts are facts. I am contesting the subtle, underhanded, constant, indoctrination and misinformation that Christianity is subject to by the media and by an education system that is supposed to teach our children objectively and raise them as responsible citizens. It is not history I am contesting. I am not a historian. I am contesting the way it is being taught.

It is interesting to use the French Masonic organization, Le Grand Orient, as an example of what secularism (or laïcité) stands for.[6] Now I am not choosing them to criticize Masonry or to criticize the French. The reason I am choosing them is because, in a few pages, they express precisely and concisely the dominant thought of our culture.

When I referred my brother to this web site he recognized that there is nothing unusual said here and it does represent the secularist views of the French republican ideals. Notice here several points made by Le Grand Orient that are typical of our culture:

  • The Roman Catholic Church is the church that is being singled out.
  • The claim is “freedom of thought” and a “reference to reason.”
  • “[Secularism] admits neither exception nor modulation nor adjustment. Its totality and its integrality are the conditions for its existence.” (Which sounds to me much like Marxism: it cannot exist unless we force all people to be free, whether they want it or not).
  • Those are republican, revolutionary, Masonic ideals born of the age of Enlightenment.
  • “Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution, and Republic: are all steps toward the formation of laïque thought.”

I don’t want to do here a critique of the Grand Orient. Suffice to show the similarities to the democratic ideals that are being postulated in the United States. Suffice also to know that these ideals have also been the motivators for the American, French, Italian, Spanish and Mexican revolutions.

So what’s wrong with those ideals of liberty and what’s wrong with teaching those to our children? In theory nothing much except that the views about the Church and history become slowly distorted.

Distorted Views of History

Let’s look at another web site. This one is French Culture Ministry official web site.[7] They say, speaking of the age of Enlightenment, that this age was from 1715 to 1799 and this age of Enlightenment “gave France about eighty years of peace and prosperity.”

My question would be then, why was there a Revolution if all was peaceful and prosperous? What was the “Reign of Terror?” [8]

Coming back to the Grand Orient, in defense of secularism they say, referring to the 1905 law instituting the separation of state and church in France:[9]

“In imitation of our lustrous ancestors, who, a century ago, thought and voted the law of the separation of church and state, a law that gave France a century of religious peace, the Grand Orient of France reaffirms its will to be the spearhead of the fight and defense of the founding values of our republic.” Let’s make some critical points:

  • Was the 20th century a century of peace?
  • Was France at peace during the First World War, the Second World War, and the wars in Indochina and Algeria?
  • If the Grand Orient of France is talking about religious wars, they say France did not have any religious wars during the 20th century, secularism stopped all religious wars, then they have to admit that the 20th century wars were driven by secular ideals of economic dominance, power, oil, etc.
  • If they were not religious wars then the wars and genocide of the 20th century have been committed by atheists and secularists from Verdun to Hiroshima, from Stalin and Hitler to Mao.
  • If Hitler killed 12 million people in concentration camps, Stalin killed 62 millions and Mao 40 millions of their own people.[10]

My little brain must be a little slow understanding the subtleties of ideological semantics. I see very little difference in an organization or social view that “admits neither exception nor modulation nor adjustment” in the defense of the “values of the republic” with those political views that proclaim to defend without “exception nor modulation nor adjustment” the values of the nation, the race, the class or the party.[11] Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Where is the peace and liberty that secularism and atheism promises? How much more blood than the secular 20th century shall be shed in the name of secularism and atheism? Where is the truth of History? Who is the revisionist of History? The Church or the State? Conclusion The DaVinci Code is re-writing history, but it is not the first one nor will it be the last to do so. The DaVinci Code is only one drop of ink in the re-writing of history. The subtle control on our children’s mind by the educational system is more insidious. The Church and Christianity have always been attacked from the beginning and have survived all other secular institutions. For a full discussion there is the classic of all classics of all Christian literature that is still relevant today as it was 1600 years ago: the City of God by Saint Augustine. Nothing has changed. The Church is attacked and will survive.

Notes[1]Christianity Today http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1999/august9/9t9021.html

[2] Order of Malta http://www.orderofmalta.org/index.asp?idlingua=5

[3] History Channel http://www.historychannel.com/global/listings

[4] Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_government

[5] Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Clement_VI
New Advent http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04023a.htm
The Columbia Encyclopedia http://www2.bartleby.com/65/cl/Clement6.html
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/C/CL/CLEMENT.htm

[6] Grand Orient de France http://www.godf.org/foreign/uk/laicite_uk.html

[7] French Ministry of Culture http://www.culture.gouv.fr/lumiere/documents/cadre_historique.html

[8] Fordham University http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/robespierre-terror.html

[9] Grand Orient de France http://www.godf.org/comm_p_detail.asp?num=65

[10] Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll

[11] Mit Brennender Sorge, Encyclical of Pope Pius XI, On The Church And The German Reich, March 14, 1937, http://www.cin.org/docs/mitbrenn.html, paragraph 8