What kind of secularism?

The Bishop of Gozo’s recent public intervention on assisted fertility attracted two kinds of objection. One is that what he said was rash. The other is that his intervention was not even legitimate. That is, as a cleric he should not trespass into politics; religion should remain in the private realm if we want to be a truly secular country.

... different understandings of ‘secularism’ have coexisted for a long time- Ranier Fsadni

Well, is that secularism – the degree to which religion is privatised? Is there only one kind? If not, how do we choose between them?

Even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, different understandings of “secularism” have coexisted for a long time. Contrary to widespread belief, the doctrine that politics and religion should be kept strictly separate was the platform of the Herodian party, not Jesus Christ.

The Herodian dynasty promoted the massive project of the rebuilding of the Temple but saw itself as a champion of Hellenistic education and Roman rule. The last king, Agrippa II, saw no contradiction between discussing points of Mosaic law with rabbinic teachers, insisting on the circumcision of his sister Bernice’s non-Jewish husband, aiding the historian Josephus with his history of Jewish antiquities... and with sending in the army to aid his bosom friend (and future emperor) Titus crush the Jewish rebellion of 66 AD.

Whatever Jesus’s gnomic utterance on God and taxes means, it astonished the Herodians in the crowd as much as anyone else. Over the ages, a major stream of Christian political thought has understood it in the light of Aristotle: politics as the social organisation of ethics, the art of living well with one’s fellow citizens, as a community of “friends” under justice. It is a political tradition with non-religious as well as religious branches, which gives importance to civic engagement and the formation of consensus.

It is a “liberal” conception of politics in the broad sense that it values liberty, distinguishes between the realms of the sacred and the secular and sees the legal confusion of the two as tyranny. But it is “anti-liberal” in the narrower sense that it profoundly rejects the libertarian idea that society is made up of strangers whose only mutual public obligation is to leave each other alone.

In the Christian branch, the sacred belief in humanity as God’s children informs the secular sense of civic obligation – of a commitment to fraternity as much as to liberty and equality. John Paul II’s public interventions against communism, abortion laws and the 2003 Iraq war had this motivation; as did the involvement of the English Province of the Dominican Order in the 1980s’ UK campaign for unilateral disarmament and some bishops’ criticisms of Margaret Thatcher’s social policy.

Each of those stands was “partisan”, that is to say associated with criticism of one set of politicians rather than another. The cogency of each stand can be questioned and indeed all were controversial. But each can be defended as not violating the Church-state boundary.

From the state’s point of view, each argument was couched in secular terms with reasoned arguments, so much so that in each case one finds allies of other faiths and none.

While I don’t think Mgr Mario Grech’s arguments about assisted fertility were well-considered, and have in the past used this space to say some other arguments of his were contradicted by the facts, there is no doubt that his public interventions have been secular in this sense. That is, first, he has made arguments that can in principle be expressed with no reference to God or faith, let alone Catholic doctrine. Second, he is motivated by a particular understanding of civic responsibility that, while inspired by his faith, has substantial overlap with that of non-Christians, including not only other “communitarians” but some surprising fellow-travellers, like mainstream Marxists (for them, as well, Aristotle is an important figure).

Of course, Europe has had, since the Enlightenment, a third notion of secularism, in which the realm of the sacred is jettisoned completely, where the “the secular” is all there (really) is, with faith as, at best, an inferior form of reasoning unsuited for public purposes and, at worst, corrosive of national unity.

This understanding of secularism, especially associated with France, endorses religious liberty and equality but also sees itself as a bulwark against religion. Not only does the state need to be separate from any particular religion; public space needs to be kept as far as possible clean of all religion. On this view, interventions like Mgr Grech’s are open to criticism as illegitimate, as disruptive of the institutional arrangements, although – as the Islamic veil controversy also shows – the arguments and laws play out differently depending on the country.

So which kind of secularism should we endorse?

The political theorist Charles Taylor suggests that the third kind of secularism is inadequate for our times. It obsesses with institutional arrangements and loses sight of the goals of secularism, which is to guarantee not just liberty and equality but also to engage civil society in the life of the state.

In an age of profound cultural change like ours, the state is in search of a cohesive nation, as much as the nation is in search of a representative state. According to Taylor, and I agree, a state that is religiously neutral but that encourages followers of all faiths and none to be heard, in discussions concerning society’s political development, stands a greater chance of cultivating the social cohesion necessary for democracy to flourish.

ranierfsadni@europe.com