What's this that happened in Paris? I heard nothing about this... please tell me you're joking...
Nevertheless, the whirlwind was yet far having reached the acme of its fury. A number of laws now appeared, purporting to dissolve connection between Christianity and civil life. A law of Sept. 20, 1792, defined marriage as a merely civil contract, dissolvable by common consent, and transferred the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, from the ecclesiastical to the civil authorities. A law of Sept. 22 inaugurated the complete re-arrangement of the calendar,-- the year should be reckoned from establishment of the republic; the month be divided into three decades, each of ten days, the first of which should be kept a holiday; the five surplus days of the new year should be feast days, in honor of Genius, Labor, etc.; the celebration of the Christian Sunday was positively prohibited. On the whole, the convention much more hostile to Christianity than any of its predecessors. Public avowals of atheism became quite common. On Aug. 25, 1793, a deputation of teachers and pupils presented itself before the convention; and the pupils begged that they should not any longer be trained "to pray in the name of a so-called god," but be well in the maxims of liberty and equality; Nov. 1 another deputation, from Nantes, demanded the abolition of the Roman Catholic service. The granting of the demand was not far off. On Nov. 7 a letter from a priest was read aloud in the convention, beginning thus: "I am a priest; that is, I am a charlatan." Immediately after, the Archbishop of Paris, an old man, Gobel by name, entered the hall, laid down his staff and his ring on the president's table, renounced his office in the Roman Catholic Church, and declared, amidst immense applause, that he recognized no other national worship than that of liberty and equality. On Nov. 10 the municipal council of Paris celebrated a grand festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in honor of Reason. Mademoiselle Maillard of the Grand Opera, in white robe and blue cap, represented the goddess of Reason. On men's shoulders she was carried from the church to the convention. The president embraced her; and the whole convention accompanied her back to the church, and participated in the festival thus sanctioning the abolition of Christianity, and the introduction of the worship of Reason.
You can read the whole link. Maybe things today won't seem so bad! Then again, maybe it'll sound like a taste of things to come . . .