On Christian secularism, in conversation with Jeff Ventrila, June 24th,

2024. Introduction. I am grateful that Jeffrey Ventrula took my response to him as friendly

pushback. He has now responded to me and because these issues are really important, I would

really like to continue the discussion. I would also like to keep it friendly because the armies of the Lord do not need to be conducting live fire exercises in the mess hall. But I do need to set the stage first. That word secular. The word secular has come to mean something in modern times that it did not mean centuries ago.

Today it means godless or without religion and it makes folks think of an agnostic or

atheistic humanism but he used to refer to priests who are out in the world

serving the parishioners of a particular diocese to be distinguished from

the regular clergy those who were set apart to a monastic life,

one bound by rule, the Latin for which was regulars.

Thus regular clergy, but rather were bound to the rule lay down by Benedict or Francis or some other worthy.

And the secular clergy were not the atheistic ones, although if we look closely at the behavior of some of the Renaissance popes,

we may discover that it was possible for

atheism to appear in their ranks from time to time.

Our word secular comes from the Latin secular and is the basis for the word for century

in romance languages like French or Italian.

It referred to a period that was roughly a hundred years in length,

and over time it came to refer to earthly or temporal concerns. Thus a secular priest was out in the village helping people sort out the mundane pastoral

implications surrounding a stolen mule while the monks in their prayer cells had their

minds fixed on things above. This is not to say that the secular clergy never prayed or that the

monks never brewed beer, but their job descriptions did differ enough to affect the language

and thus secular concerns became ordinary day-to-day concerns.

A bunch of this goes back to the 12th century and earlier.

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