Secular knowledge

“ An excellent and timely illustration of what occurs when secular knowledge has not yet replaced ecclesiastical ignorance and bigotry, particularly in the field of medicine, is furnished by an article from one of Philadelphia's leading newspapers, The Evening Bulletin, of December 23, 1932. ”

“ Many persons regard Secular teaching with distrust, thinking it to be the same as Secularism. Secular instruction is known by the sign of separateness. It means knowledge given apart from theology. Secular instruction comprises a set of rules for the guidance of industry, commerce, science, and art. Secular teaching is as distinct from theology as a poem from a sermon. A man may be a mathematician, an architect, a lawyer, a musician, or a surgeon, and be a
Christian all the same ”

“ By keeping each kind of knowledge apart, a man learns both, more easily and more effectually. Secular training is better for the scholar and safer for the State; and better for the priest if he has a faith that can stand by itself. ”

“ Secular instruction teaches the duties to man. Religious instruction the duties to God apart from man. Religious knowledge relates to celestial creeds. Secular knowr-ledge relates to human duties to be performed. The religious teacher instructs us how to please God by creeds. The Secular teacher how to serve man by sympathy and science. ”

“ We do not assert that they must remove their religious handicap as soon as they cast off their secular fetters. We do not transform secular questions into theological questions. We transform theological questions into secular questions. ”

“ ONE purpose of these chapters is to explain how unfounded are the objections of many excellent Christians to Secular instruction in State, public, or board schools. The Secular is distinct from theology, which it neither ignores, assails, nor denies. Things Secular are as separate from the Church as land from the ocean. ”

“ Secularism divides life into what is secular and what is religious, and would consign all matters of religion to the sphere of private interests. The Religion of Science would not divide life into a secular and a religious part, but would have both the secular and the religious united. ”

“ Nevertheless it is obviously an inquiry of the greatest importance, and one on which controversy can never entirely be set at rest; for the relation of the spiritual and the secular power is, like that of speculation and revelation, of religion and nature, one of those problems which remain perpetually open, to receive light from the meditations and experience of all ages, and the complete solution of which is among the objects, and would be the end, of all history. ”

“ Many of us are content to do without religious education altogether, and are satisfied with what we not only call secular but make secular, in the sense in which we understand the word, i.e., entirely limited to the uses of this visible world. ”

“ No one had heard or taught, nor did anyone know anything concerning the secular authority, whence it came, what its office or work was, or how it should serve God. The most learned men—I will not name them—looked upon the secular power as a heathen, human and ungodly thing, as a state dangerous to salvation.... ”

“ IV. Does Secularism, which admits the authority of nature alone, and which appeals to reason as the best means of arriving at truth, offer a surer basis for human conduct than Christianity, which rests its claims on a presumed Divine revelation? ”

“ In the practical teachings of the wise no question that vitally concerned the individual man was considered beneath their attention. Like the wise modern teacher they made no distinction between the religious and the secular. Everything that influenced man's acts and ideals possessed for them profound religious import. ”

“ Of course it is absolutely impossible to draw a hard and fast line between sacred and secular. All secular affairs, rightly conducted, have their sacred side; and conversely all sacred matters have their secular side, for they form part of the life the man is living "in the age." ”

“ Not only is the faith the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of all worldly confusion. The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. ”

“ To him the teaching of Nature is as clear as the teaching of the Bible: and since, if God exists, Nature is certainly His work, While it is not so clear that the Bible is—the teaching of Nature will be preferred and followed where the teaching of the Bible appears to conflict with it. A Secular Society, contemplating intellectual and moral progress, must provide for the freest expression of opinion on all subjects which its members may deem conducive to their common objects. ”

“ With the onset of Religious Studies and the creation of religion as a practical and conceptual object, categories were also established that separated (perhaps artificially so) the world into two spheres: the religious and the secular; the sacred and the profane. The political issue at stake involves these very classifications: Who determines where the sacred ends and the profane begins? What gets classified where? Who has the power to relegate one practice into this or that domain? ”

“ If disbeliefs can be said to constitute a theology, then the prejudices, instincts, and common sense which I chose as our guides make theological partisans of us whenever they make certain beliefs abhorrent.
But such common-sense prejudices and instincts are themselves the fruit of an empirical evolution. Nothing is more striking than the secular alteration that goes on in the moral and religious tone of men, as their insight into nature and their social arrangements progressively develop. ”

“ The promoters of Secularism alluded to, have not ceased in the Reasoner and other publications, by lectures, by statements, by articles, by pamphlets to urge a definite and consistent representation of Secular and Freethought principles: as many mistake merely mechanical association for the organization of ideas. ”

“ Humanism, the physical perfection of this life—Moralism, founded on the laws of Nature, as the guidance of this life—Materialism, as the means of Nature for the Secular improvement of this life—Unity of thought and action upon these practical grounds. Secularism teaches that the good of the present life is the immediate concern of man, and that it should be his first endeavour to raise it. Secularism inculcates a Morality founded independently upon the laws of Nature. ”

“ If children are taught to regard evidence as a proper test of truth in matters of secular interest, and to disregard that principle in connection with their religious instruction, it follows as a matter of course that a line of distinction must be drawn between secular and religious education. ”

“ If we have been somewhat explicit in pointing out the shortcomings of this work, it is because we agree with the author, "that the popular taste for the condensed treatment of the secular sciences can be safely applied to the domain of Theological Science, and to no department with greater hope of success than to Historical Theology." ”

“ Since the principles of Secularism rest on grounds apart from Theism, Atheism, or Chris-tianism, it is not logically necessary for Secularists to debate the truth of these subjects. In controversy, Secularism concerns itself with the assertion and maintenance of its own affirmative propositions, combating only views of Theology and Christianity so far as they interfere with, discourage, or disparage Secular action, which may be done without digressing into the discussion of the truth of Theism or divine origin of the Bible. ”

“ Many names dear to science and religion occur to us in illustration of these remarks--names of men who, in the two last and in the present century, have devoted their lives to secular learning without losing their allegiance to the Catholic faith, or confounding it with other sciences which lie within human control for their extension and modification. ”

“ On the other hand, the recoil from secularism, or the overwhelming sense of the power and destructiveness of sin in the lives of men and of societies, leads others to draw sharp the distinction between things sacred and things secular. The order of things, it is said, of which the Incarnation is the starting-point, is admittedly higher than that secular order which existed before it, and which even now surrounds it as darkness encompasses light. ”

“ So also the teachings of Christ, which were at first practised and developed by a small coterie of religious-minded men, acquired, under the conditions of the world, such secular and political influence, that about the time of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the Church organisations of the Christian society alone were the real political authorities, and discharged all the important functions of the secular states. ”

“ The Secular is sacred in its influence on life, for by purity of material conditions the loftiest natures are best sustained, and the lower the most surely elevated. Secularism is a series of principles intended for the guidance of those who find Theology indefinite, or inadequate, or deem it unreliable. It replaces theology, which mainly regards life as a sinful necessity, as a scene of tribulation through which we pass to a better world. ”

“ If some true knowledge were thus everywhere to be found, why should truth be confined to one religion, or to a creed like Islam, which was comparatively new, and scarcely a thousand years old; why should one sect assert what another denies, and why should one claim a preference without having superiority conferred upon itself? ”

“ The Jewish religion was as full of ceremonials as the pagan, and the intellectual part of it was confined to the lawyers, to the rabbinical hierarchy. But the preaching of the great doctrines of Christianity was made a peculiarly sacred office, and given to a class of men who avoided all secular pursuits. ”

“ Others better acquainted with the Middle Ages have argued, that, though the olden theologians expressed themselves correctly on the importance of secular callings, yet theirs was not the view of the people.—But the above passages, like those previously quoted elsewhere, do not hail from theologians quite ignorant of the world, but from sermons and popular writings. ”

“ If we are told to "fear God and keep His commandments," lest His judgments overtake us, the indirect action of this doctrine on human character may make a vicious timid man better in this life, supposing the interpretation of the will of God, and the commandments selected to be enforced, are moral; but such teaching is not Secular, because its main object is to fit men for eternity. ”

“ Secularism declares that theology is condemned by reason as superstitious, and by experience as mischievous, and assails it as the historic enemy of Progress.
Secularism accordingly seeks to dispel superstition; to spread education; to disestablish religion; to rationalize morality; to promote peace; to dignify labour; to extend material well-being; and to realize the self-government of the people. ”

“ Pure Secular principles have for their object to fit men for time, making the fulfilment of human duty here the standard of fitness for any accruing future. Secularism purposes to regulate human affairs by considerations purely human. Its principles are founded upon Nature, and its object is to render man as perfect as possible in this life. ”

“ With the emancipation of Man's higher activities from ecclesiastical control, the distinction between the religious and the secular life has gradually established itself. That this should happen was inevitable. ”

“ It regards work as worship, labor as prayer, and wisdom as the savior of mankind. It says to every human being, Take care of yourself so that you may be able to help others; adorn your life with the gems called good deeds; illumine your path with the sunlight called friendship and love.
Secularism is a religion, a religion that is understood. It has no mysteries, no mummeries, no priests, no ceremonies, no falsehoods, no miracles, and no persecutions. ”

“ Shall we give a liberty to a man's library which we refuse to his belief? Must he—and his church—have only his grandfather's ideas, standards, and decrees?
The tenets of a sect are the theological arrangement of belief which for the present seems best; it is the systematic arrangement of facts so far examined, determined, and classified. But no system of theology can be final. Thought is moving on. Experience is progressive. Providence is continually revealing. The race is a creed-builder, as well as a builder of pyramids, cathedrals, and triumphal arches. ”

“ In every act he will put his conscience and character with a view so to discharge the duties of this life as to merit another, if there be one. Just as a Christian seeks to serve God, a Secularist seeks to serve man. This it is to be a Secularist. The idea of this service is what Secularism puts into his mind. ”

“ For Catholics there are two orders, the secular and the spiritual. The secular is bound by the limitations and conditions of time and place; the spiritual is above and independent of all such conditions and limitations, and is universal, always and everywhere the same. ”

“ These qualities, joined with an ardour of conviction and an insistence of advocacy that lent their possessor something of the character of the prophet and the apostle, earned for the new cause an attention sufificient not only to found a new sect, intense in cohesion, if limited in numbers, but to spread the contagion of its general empirical view wide through a world interested in the theory of knowledge, however indifferent to the religious powers claimed for the new doctrine. ”

“ No distinction was drawn between secular and religious duties, between ceremonial, ethical or spiritual requirements. Modern distinctions of moral and ceremonial being unknown, ancient systems must be judged in the light of those modes of thought which could not view religion apart from life. ”