President Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to quell controversy over remarks in which he appeared to question France’s fiercely defended secularism, by suggesting that a schoolteacher could never match a priest in separating Good from Evil. Mr Sarkozy told France’s Jewish council on Wednesday night that the comments he made in a speech before the Pope late last year had been misconstrued.
At Saint-Jean de Latran in Rome in December, he had said: “In transmitting and learning the difference between Good and Evil, the schoolteacher can never replace the priest or the pastor".
He called for France to adopt a “positive secularism” - one that promotes freedom of thought but “does not consider religions as a danger, but as an asset".
Describing France as having Christian roots, he said “the tragedy of the 20th century was not born from an excess of the idea of God, but from his...absence".
Guardians of French secularism - enshrined in a 1905 law separating the Church from the State - were outraged, accusing the President, a Catholic, of bringing his private beliefs into the public domain.On Tuesday night Mr Sarkozy sought to appease them: “I never said that secular morals were inferior to religious morals...they are complementary", he said.
"I never said the teacher was inferior to the priest, the rabbi or the imam to transmit values. But what they speak of is simply not the same", he went on.
However, he said he did not see why “a president cannot simply say that religious hope remains an important question for humanity".
Leading French secularist and freemason, Jean-Michel Quillardet, said Mr Sarkozy had “toned down” his discourse, but that there was still “concern" that the President intended to tamper with the 1905 law.
The President, he said “has a vision (of secularism) deeply steeped in religiousness", which was “not the right one".
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