That’s down to the church qua organisation, nothing to do with the state unless it’s a monument historique 
We aren’t ‘secular’ we are explicitly a secular republic and superstition of all sorts is for the private sphere. We have some public holidays which fall on religious high days but that’s just historical habit. We don’t eg have any mention of baby Jesus in state schools at Christmas, so mention of crucifixion at Easter etc etc.
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Have you tried the thread trick? Google it and you’ll get a video which will show much better than I can explain.
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Wow!
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They used that trick to get my wedding ring off, just before they removed my finger 20 years ago, because they didn’t want to get blood on it 
Our village has a huge convent that after a brief stint as glass making factory during the war was returned to the Church and houses a (very) few nuns and possibly a monk or two.
I’ve only met four if the nuns, they do ‘good works’ around the village. Soeur Marie-Josef is super friendly and thinks my Agnes is special. The monks may not even live there all the time because I see them so seldom.
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Beautiful building 
, is it used for anything else, seems a waste if it is for so few people.
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Hmmm. Just looked it up, not in detail, which will come later. I’ll definitely give it a go, and hope it works. I’ll let you know.
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No rudeness noticed!
In your view, is any faith (eg “There is a god” or “There is no god”) superstitious, or would you privilege one type of belief over another?
I was just struck by your contrasting secularism with (another sort of) faith.
Succinctly put and just the way it should be.
Well, I agree with that definition, but I also defend the right to….
A - Hold a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation
B - an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, , nature, or God resulting from superstition
C - a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
Once you do it in private and don’t try and shove these silly (IMHO) ideas down the throats of the rest of the population.
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When I started this topic I was aware that steering anywhere near religion is risky. In fact I half expected the admin to freeze or delete it. There has been a comment about the huge numbers of churches very visible all over France. It has been estimated that, at the time of the revolution, the church owned around a third of the land in France. It was incredibly wealthy. One of the ways it received land was by way of a gift. I remember seeing a document in the departmental archives created a in the mid 1700s. A landowner wished to send his daughter to a convent. As a sweetener he donated a big parcel of land to the church. A practice that had been followed for centuries.
In the Herault , around St Guilhem le Desert, there are a large number of villages named after saints. It may be a coincidence but this part of France has a huge number of late stone age monuments. Excavations have shewn that some were places of worship well into the iron age. I suspect that the local population still venerated these sites when Christianity arrived during the Roman era. The church could not tolerate this hence it renamed villages.
Gus
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You can do what you like in your own home as long as you aren’t breaking the law in other ways. You can go to whatever your place of worship is. You can’t proselytise and you can’t expect other people to agree with or even respect your views. ‘you’ = ‘one’.
Organised belief in supernatural beings, ostentatious demonstrations of belonging to organised hermeneutic groups, applying as rules texts other than those which make the law of the land (declaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen, code civil, constitution etc) are all for your private life. People whose job it is, eg priests nuns rabbis imams Buddhist monks vicars can dress in a way which identifies them in public - but I can’t wear a visible cross or other religious identifier at school.
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On the same note, my son said last night that there had been trouble at collège because some muslim girls had come in wearing their cultural religious clothes and it went against the rules. Why they suddenly started to do this he dosn’t know why because usually they are in jeans and sweatshirts etc.
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Politics is why they do it, and for collegiennes it’s a really easy way to rebel and get approval from the increasingly conservative element. Also Ramadan has just started so it ties in with not having lunch.
I remember the only hijab wearers 40 years ago in eg Egypt were old ladies coming into town to sell vegetables and eggs, now the Ikhwan Muslimin (edited because my tablet thinks its Arabic is better than mine) have got their mitts on politics everyone wears one. Nobody wore a hijab in Syria in those days. Just like the US conservatism is on the rise. Appalling.
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The birth rate is still higher in Islamic countries.
Roman Catholics in many countries take a much more relaxed view of birth control nowadays.
Strangely the evangelical Christians in the USA are now taking the high ground re abortion.
Perhaps because lifting the veil to view the forbidden, is exciting. 
Or not much else to do in the evening.
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