Emmanuel Macron calls on Freemasons to defend secularism against the "trap of identity-based interpretation"

A few months before the ^120th anniversary of the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, Emmanuel Macron called on Freemasons on Monday, May 5, to be the "watchdogs" of secularism in the face of the "trap of identity-based interpretation."

"I ask you to be ambassadors (...) of secularism," to demonstrate that "this is not a law of exclusion but of assembly," to "continually repeat that the only word that fits secularism is that of freedom," declared the Head of State during a speech to the Freemasons of the Grand Lodge of France. "Be the watchmen of this great law of 1905," against those who "want to erase it, betray it or divert it," he added.

"Secular France is the natural daughter of the Republic (...) Let us beware of the trap prepared by those who would like to make an identity-based reading of the 1905 law under the pretext of secularizing society, with the sole aim of attacking religions and beliefs, in particular in the name of their alleged incompatibility with the values ​​of the Republic," he insisted.

The head of state's speech comes as the right-wing Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, campaigning for the presidency of the Republicans (LR), is accused of overstating the issue of secularism in the face of Islam. The occupant of Place Beauvau is proposing, in particular, to extend the provisions of the 2004 law banning religious symbols to chaperones on school trips and sports competitions.

This was the first visit by a President of the Republic to the Grand Lodge of France, the second largest Masonic association in France after the Grand Orient of France. It has 32,000 members, compared to 55,000 for the Grand Orient.

On December 9, 1905, the Republic – excluding Alsace and Moselle, then German territories – emerged from the concordat regime and the dominant Catholicism by promulgating, after bitter debates, the "law concerning the separation of Church and State" . Two major principles are engraved in stone in the law. First, "freedom of conscience" , which "the Republic ensures" , just as it "guarantees the free exercise of religions" , subject to respect for public order (article 1). Then, the neutrality of the State with regard to all religions, assured by the statement that "the Republic does not recognize, pay salaries or subsidize any religion" (article 2).

As the ^120th anniversary of the law approaches, the Grand Orient de France has launched a petition calling for the constitutionalization of these first two articles. For the time being, the Constitution states in its first article that "France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic."

The head of state also mentioned the end of life during his speech, a week before the arrival in the National Assembly of the text creating a "right to assisted dying." "It is a vertigo that affects each and every one of us ," he declared. But the debate, resolutely, cannot be reduced to the question of whether we are for life or against life, or whether on the one hand, there would be a humanism that would be worth the treatment and on the other, abandonment to death simply." "I am afraid that sometimes, in our debates, things are rushed through that forget the depth and the great difficulty sometimes, also, of simply thinking about the lesser evil. Because in certain situations, there is no longer good on one side, evil on the other, but simply a choice in concrete situations, in the solitude of the one who has to die, of his family, of his doctor, the singular path which respects the dignity of each person at every moment," he added.