Some background to our earlier post.

FEUD OVER STEM CELL RESEARCH TARNISHES
POPULAR CHARITY EVENT IN FRANCE

PARIS December 7, 2006 (IHT) - For two decades, the country's Muscular Dystrophy Foundation has run a wildly popular annual telethon to raise money for medical research.

... But this year, the French Catholic Church has sullied the reputation of the initiative, calling its funding of research on embryonic stem cells immoral.

Pierre-Olivier Arduin, a member of the Fréjus-Toulon diocese's commission for bioethics and human life, triggered the controversy in October when he posted a statement on the diocese Web site, saying, "It is no longer possible to participate in the telethon." He added, "Christians cannot cooperate with evil." The statement has since been removed.

... Both government officials and the leaders of the French medical establishment made clear that the church has no business interfering in matters of state, especially when they involve a practice that is legal.

"It's not up to the church to put any pressure on families who have recourse to genetic diagnoses, and even less to make the totality of donors feel guilty," said Manuel Valls, a deputy in Parliament and mayor of Evry, the suburb of Paris where the Muscular Dystrophy Association is located.

On Thursday, the Conference of French Bishops made clear it was not calling for a boycott. Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon:

"Kids must continue to break their piggy banks for the disabled."

So you see, in secular France -- where over half the national holidays originate in a religious observance -- in secular France the state is not simply separated from the church, it is beyond the church. In France, in theory, any state-sanctioned opinion can be entertained but it must not be said to have been arrived at by means of religion and it must not be advocated with recourse to the institutions or instruments of religion.

We are always amused by folk who get modern church-state separation ass-backwards. Its intent is to keep the state out of your religion not render you a religious cipher in public life. Those who make loud complaint when religion challenges their plans do not do so on some lofty principle of separation. They do so because they don't want the bother -- or embarrassment -- of answering a moral challenge. When religion shares their view, when it serves their purposes, the word "separation" is swapped out for "solidarity". So when the church opposes war in Iraq, there is no breach of separation. But pet state projects like abortion and its side businesses opposed by the church, well, separation demands the church keep its morals and religiously tainted dubieties to itself, thank you.

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