Listening
Volume 4, Issue 1, Winter 1969
Secular Faith
Interviewer: “Simone Signoret, do you believe in God?
S. Signoret: “No, I don’t. But it’s hard to answer such an important question so curtly.
“I lived my childhood far removed from any religious preoccupation, without any formal religious education. I think that the people who are believers—whether they simply call themselves believers or are actually practicing their beliefs—are such from childhood, from habits acquired in the family. If one raises a child in some faith, the child is conditioned for the rest of his life, even though the metaphysical problems religions deal with will arise only in adulthood.
“I lived in a family where no one ever spoke of God, where no religion was practiced. My father was Jewish. My mother was non-Jewish, raised in the Catholic faith. Yet no one ever conditioned me one way or another about God, or decided to give me a religious education.
Interviewer: “You have never wondered about God? God has never concerned you?
S. Signoret: “No. But, to be entirely honest, I was raised on principles which I would call Christian. When I was very young I was taught to share what I had, to love people, not to tattle, not to discriminate between people of different races. For me these are Christian principles. They are found in the Christian writings.
“I never attended catechism class, but after all ‘Love one another’ was not invented yesterday. I was brought up that way simply because it is good to be that way. I wasn’t raised that way ‘to make little Jesus happy.’”
