Cathinjoetown

Yes, Palenque, they could be but, "No burqas allowed". (Before the outrage starts, this is a reference to the current, ongoing pubic debate in France over the wearing of the burqa.)

lmhornet

The answer to the problem is simple: The Catholic Chuch should sell indulgences. One you've lifted up your skirt, there's no need to be shy.

lmhornet

"Amazing this separation of church & state malarkey isn't it? Americans have it - so you can't teach evolution for fear of upsetting the tetchy Christians. The French have it - and the taxpayer subsidises Catholic places of worship."

It's exactly the same in Ontario, Canada. Only the Catholic Schools supported paid by public tax money.

But, of course, all religions are state supported in all countries because they don't pay tax on their vast real estate and stock portfolios. And guess who makes up the revenue shortfall?

kerouac

Relgions are taxed in France and I think in quite a few other countries. Naturally, they use every trick in the book to get out of as many taxes as possible -- "non profit associations" for a lot of the activities, etc. In any case, in France all of the real estate is subject to property tax except the building where religious services are held, assuming they own it (which in most cases they do not).

flanneruk

"One can and does teach evolution in US public schools."

Have I gullibly fallen for an anti-American myth, or is Nikki misunderstanding me?

Do all US public schools teach evolution? Or is it not the case, as is frequently alleged here, that some local school boards can and do set curricula and direct the use of textbooks that don't teach evolution?

Not even the hardest anti-American believes no American school teaches evolution. We critics of America's fossilised political system merely point out that no country endlessly mouthing this "church and state" mantra while allowing religious prejudice to determine what's taught in some public schools can possibly believe the nonsense.

mpprh

Interesting.

My village (pop 866) church dating from 1140 AD has just had some work done on the roof. It is nationally protected (which dictates the colour of my shutters !).

A similar church nearby of the same age but isolated in the vines (the village became a ghost town after the religious wars) is used for concerts, art exhibitions, etc. Maybe that is the way forward ?

I agree that derelict churches from 1800 on often have little architectural value.

Pics :
http://saussines.blogs.midilibre.com.../476671784.JPG
http://www.route-romane.net/pic/fr/l...IMGP1832_l.jpg


Peter

TravelinGert

Last I checked, which I grant was about 2 years or so past, the teaching of evolution theory was required curriculum in public schools in every US state, and every state has some sort of mandated standardized testing wherein the students would be required to answer some questions relating to this. Private schools are not required to teach it, but there is very little if any public funding of private institutions, particularly of a religious nature. Additionally, in most states, for a private institution to have their school rated and in any state for their graduates easily accepted into Universities, the curriculum must meet state public school guidelines and standardized testing, including testing on evolution, must be done on the students. A few states will allow a sort of muddy middle ground to also be taught, I think it is termed "planned design" or some nonsense. Due to separation of church and state, there is a lot of fuss about whether creationist theory may be taught. Here in the south, some public schools allow it to be presented as an alternative theory.
All of this explains the rise in home schooling in the US. Quality of home schooling varies greatly, as you might guess. Some church groups, including Southern Baptists in my area, home school as a group and are often well organized and produce decent results as far as both education and socialization, but have also seen some pretty sad results. Usually the bad results happen when parents pull their kids whenever they disagree with the school with no real plan and no real backup such as the organized religious home school groups provide.
Requirements on entering public University following home school graduation varies. Over all, some form of standardized testing at student expense is generally required, wherein evolution theory would be among the questions. In many cases, certain remedial or study courses are required of home school graduates, also at additional charge to the student, in order to attend University. Many are unable to meet the testing requirements to enter at all.

While I do hate to hear of churches or other public buildings being torn down, since that is a part of history we will never get back, even if they aren't buildings of architectural value, having worked in public finance for some years I can fully sympathize with the small towns. They must weight the cost of the maintenance against the usefulness of the facilities. I'm guessing if they tear the structure down, they are then allowed to build a building they are free to use for whatever they see fit, whereas the use of the church structure is limited by the religious groups (mostly Catholic I gather) only to those uses the religious group approves.
I'm a little surprised the religious authorities aren't allowing the buildings to be used for more things. Here where I live, our local Catholic church's activity center is the rental of choice for class reunions, wedding showers, book clubs, ladies social organizations, and other uses because it is one of the few locations you can rent that allows bringing in your own food and alcoholic beverage consumption. None of the other local churches allow alcohol, but many give space freely or for nominal fee for community activities like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, piano lessons, baby showers, family reunions. I understand in some places Boy and Girl Scouts are allowed at the schools, but around here most of the schools refuse to allow it based on liability and expense basis. Since the groups are not school based and teacher led, the liability insurance covering public schools here won't cover Scout meetings. (Yes, teachers may be Scout leaders, but they are not leading as an extension of their job as a teacher, they just happen to be a teacher AND Scout leader.) Locally, the other issue is expense, obviously the scouts don't want to use their limited funding to pay for electricity, payroll of personnel to see them in and out of building, etc.

Palenque

there is a difference between 'teaching' and giving lip service to Evolution, however - and teaching can also mean pointing out the failing points of Evolution. But on the whole public schools in my state at least all seem to teach Evolution in a proper way.

Nikki

When some renegade school board or other decides to make a point about the teaching of evolution it becomes news precisely because it is so very off-the-wall.

There are many thousands of school boards in the United States, and each state has its own method of providing for the running of schools. I can not speak to all of them, but every school with which everyone I have ever known has been associated has taught evolution.

When we hear the news about a school district here or there that is trying to change the curriculum to exclude evolution, or to make it only one of several "theories" to be taught, we shake our heads here in the US every bit as much as do people hearing the same news in other countries. And it is precisely because of the separation of church and state that those of us who find such things appalling have grounds to object to them.

The people who object to the teaching of evolution are the same people who object to the removal of prayer from the public schools, and who believe the separation of church and state are a bad thing. It may well be that there are school districts in the US which have eliminated the teaching of evolution, but I would hardly generalize from this to say that it is a characteristic of American public education.

Education is much, much less centralized in the US than in countries with a single authority governing it. These battles are carried out on a very small field, and I do not claim to know how they are all resolved. But it amazes me that people who hear this news from abroad seem to base their understanding of the US on the most sensational and least representative stories that make it into the press.

flanneruk

"people...base their understanding of the US on the...least representative stories"

...would be a reasonable complaint if I were claiming widespread unscientific teaching about evolution. I'm not.

What I AM claiming - and I'm not sure either Nikki or TravellinGert have disputed this - is that there are US public authorities who flout the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Firtst Amendment and apparently get away with it.

The frequency of murder in the US tells us nothing about American official respect for the law: if there are parts of the US with high murder rates, that just tells us there are parts of the US with a high incidence of people prepared to kill.

But ANY policy by local police or DAs not to investigate or prosecute murders would undermine all this " government of laws and not of men" which is really America's meta-Constitution if the policy weren't challenged. Or if the only device for challenging it were endless, expensive, court cases brought by well-heeled citizens or advocacy groups

Now stories we get here about constitutional fundamentalists challenging displays of the Ten Commandments in law courts might well be "least representative stories". But they do rather imply greater interest among some advocacy groups in nit-picking trivia than in extremists poking their heads where their heads didn't oughta be.

Which in turn rather feeds our suspicion that America's fetishisation of its constitution (like France's similar obsession with its Revolution) really means a "government of lawyers, and not of representatives accountable to an electorate"

PalQ's original question typifies the problem. France claims to be based on laicite: but the Catholic monoculture in most of rural France is as different as you can conceive from the biodiversity of religion in its next door neighbour, which regards legally mandated church/state separation as a pointless fad inherited from 18th century pointy heads. Since Catholicism requires its churches to be used almost uniquely for services, unless they're deconsecrated and cease to be churches, they can't be shared with other denominations or with the other uses that make village churches in England so much more vibrant a part of their community. So, because France's 18th century mantra has done nothing to eliminate Catholicism's stranglehold on much of France's rural culture, the Etat must fork out to preserve buildings that are in financial trouble because of the Catholic Church's inflexibility.

Let yourselves be governed by ideas fashionable in 18th century drawing rooms, and you get laws modern lawyers think those salonistes would approve of. Whether they meet today's needs or not.

Pvoyageuse

"the Etat must fork out to preserve buildings that are in financial trouble because of the Catholic Church's inflexibility".

I think the problem is much simpler. In 1905 the State "dispossessed" the Church of its properties and became their rightful owner. With ownership came the responsibility of maintaining the buildings in good condition. After years of neglect (in my home town barracks were built on the ground of a medieval cemetary and cloister) town halls have to face enormous expenses to rehabilitate them. It is not necessarily on top of their list of priorities, especially for those churches without any architectural interest.

kerouac

If the Catholic church had a stranglehold on rural culture in France, wouldn't there be priests and churchgoers? If anything has a stranglehold on rural France, it is satellite television.

I think we just need to get used to replacing our idea of rural skylines speckled with old church steeples with elegant electric turbines outlining the hilly ridges.

Cowboy1968

Is it so hard for some to understand the simple fact that not the church but the state is the owner of those old churches?
Both kerouac as well as pvoyageuse stated that fact several times now, and still some are either unwilling or unable to comprehend.
I also find it absurd to rank countries or regions by "religious diversity", as if that was a virtue in itself and made rural England a happy teletubby country and rural France the hotbed of inquisition.
And what France and the French do with their buildings is their business. They pay the taxes and decide on what to spend it. You can't expect them to live in an open-air museum if that is not something they wish for themselves.

Pvoyageuse

"but the Catholic monoculture in most of rural France"

LOL ..... France is becoming more and more dechristianized every day !

kerouac

I do like the fact that the cemetery of my grandparents' village has Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim tombs all mixed together without separate areas for different faiths, unlike the big urban cemeteries. My father's ashes are there with my grandparents as well, and he was born a Baptist or something. And there are also some super flamboyant gypsy tombs with plastic flowers, solar powered eternal lamps, engraved photographs and everything but the kitchen sink.

Palenque

is that there are US public authorities who flout the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Firtst Amendment and apparently get away with it.>

Well i am a card carrying member of the ACLU and this Constitutional Watchdog of things like the Bill of Rights and separation of church and state is constantly, even in backwater hick places out in the sticks, monitoring public schools and endorsement of religion and attacks on teaching Evolution

Flanner keeps carping about how the British town churches are not crumbling, etc- and attributing it in part to their being used by other interests and IME also by many volunteers who help keep the churches open and man gift shops, etc.

And i think Flanner failed to note the sheer preponderance of French parish churches - 90,000 - the most in any European country - over the number of British local churches - 17,000 churches in France do get State support as they are deemed worthy - maybe there are only 17,000 parish or local churches in all of Britain? Anyway the number of British churches that Flanner chortles as being well kept up is important to any comparison with France and its perhaps many many more such churches.

And since the State in France does actually own the churches - as Cowboy and kerouac and Pvoyageuse aptly pointed out - then why can't these churches be put to other uses besides a weekly Mass and occasional funeral or wedding?

Well in Orleans at least several old churches have been put to other uses - one is home to a theatre and another large old church as an arts center

A trip to Meung-sur-Loire a month ago pointed out further a problem that French small-town churches are facing - this really substantial church, built next to the town's castle, was closed and a note on the door said this 'was due to excessive vandalism'

Not long ago it seemed just about every little church in France was open during the day at least - indeed on many car trips with my then really young son it was an adventure to stop at each church, it seemed anyway, and let him find the "Petite Porte de Clocher" (sp?) - he would look for the little door that led to steps up to where the bells were - and we often could even climb to the belfry - no more - churches, except the blockbuster tourist attractions - now seem shuttered.

vandals

Pvoyageuse

"then why can't these churches be put to other uses besides a weekly Mass and occasional funeral or wedding?"

What other uses do you suggest in small villages of less than 100 inhabitants most of whom are old people? daily concerts? senior citizens clubs? chess games or bingo? Judo practice? Who is going to pay for the heating?

Palenque

well i guess Pvoyageuse has answered that - so why are, according to Flanneur.uk, British small town churches put to other uses?

I think again that France just has zillions of parish churches in villages that are becoming de-populated and Britain just don't have those zillions of churches in the first place - and only those in towns sizeable enough that boot sales,concerts or whatever can be staged in them

kerouac

France has 36,682 municipalities and most of them have churches. Alsace, the smallest region in France, has 904 municipalities, compared to 290 in all of Sweden and double the number of the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands (which has 441 municipalities and 9 times the population).

The fact that each municipality has an independent budget pretty much precludes most of the little ones from having enough money to keep up the church. Maybe Catholics around the world should be encouraged to open their purse strings and pay for all of the upkeep if they are upset.

Cathinjoetown

Possibly another reason why French village churches aren't put to other uses (in addition to being for the most part unheated, damp and dark) is that even the smallest village has a Salle de Fetes which is used frequently for community meetings, dinners, receptions, rummage sales and well, fetes.