Published on November 1, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.updated on November 1, 2024 at 8:52 a.m.
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By considering charging tourists visiting Notre-Dame de Paris, the Minister of Culture is violating secular principles and showing profound ignorance of the 1905 law.
This article is a column, written by an author outside the newspaper and whose point of view does not commit the editorial staff.
Hallelujah! The thurifers who carry at arm's length the censer of the “values” of secularism in the public space have found its market value: in annual leasing, it is worth 75 million euros, the sum of what a year of visitors to Notre-Dame de Paris if they were taxed 5 euros. If, for the good King Henry IV, Paris was worth a mass, for the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, the state budget is well worth a genuflection to Notre-Dame of the commodification of the world. With his idea that “charging entry to Notre-Dame would save all the churches in France”the principles of the first title of the 1905 law, establishing the separation of Church and State, including the guarantee of the free exercise of religion, stop at the value of secularism estimated by Rachida Dati. She set the price: the 2023 turnover of the Stade de France.
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One thing is certain: the implementation of Ms. Dati's bright idea would therefore require a revision of the law of 1905. With an economy of words (thirty-three), the latter establishes the principles of separation from the Church and the State in its first two articles. The forty-two which follow specify the modalities of application of these principles, including article 17, which states: “The visit to the buildings and the exhibition of classified movable objects will be public; they will not give rise to any tax or fee. » This method of implementation results from the principle of free exercise of religion.
In no article of the law does we speak of “values of the Republic”. Because they are subjective, varying according to societal supply and demand, just as stock values fluctuate on the markets. Today the values of secularism are the subject of a speculative civilizational bubble. The far right and its identity brokers of all stripes are trying to sell toxic secular derivative products with all their might.
Deep lack of culture
This proposal, which is adorned with common sense, received the assent of Stéphane Bern who, in 2017, made the same proposal for all cathedrals when he was tasked by the President of the Republic with inventorying France's heritage. must be protected. He based himself on the examples of our European neighbors… forgetting the specificity of our country and its law of 1905. His idea was ultimately not followed. Budgetary necessity becoming law, here it comes back seven years later.
At a time when its vital prognosis is in jeopardy, does the government need a debate on the law of 1905, and therefore on secularism? Unless this is the objective sought by Rachida Dati: opening a front on secularism with Bruno Retailleau and the National Rally in ambush who will take advantage of the parliamentary debate to present amendments on the control of mosques: the survival of the government is at stake. price of a dish of lentils (with pork sausage) which erodes the foundations of our secularism.
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In the current budgetary context, the declaration of the Minister of Culture is a good political move: it will in fact be foreign tourists who will fill part of the French budget deficit due to the management of its immense religious heritage, including the State has been the owner since 1905. In short, Rachida Dati is a political hit: she quietly relaunches the debate on secularism, shows her budgetary creativity and glances at President Macron.
But above all it reveals its profound lack of culture, its profound misunderstanding of the springs which underpin our national history and, among these, pilgrimage, which since the early Middle Ages has been a vector of spiritual mixing of peoples. The history of our country is made up of these exchanges: the welcome of visitors from all over the world, entering through the north door and exiting through the south door of the building maintained this spirit, even desecrated, of openness to others. Rachida Dati is very much in tune with the times: the opening of the cathedral to the temple's merchants is the spirit of withdrawal into identity.
BIO EXPRESS :
Christophe Courtin was program director of the CCFD and is a member of the Catholic magazine “Golias”
