Pope Contrasts Healthy and Unhealthy Secularism

From Catholic World News:

Rome, Dec. 11, 2006 (CWNews.com) - In a December 9 address to the Italian Union of Catholic Lawyers, Pope Benedict XVI rejected the vision of secular government that calls for “an exclusion of religion from various society environments and as its exile in the framework of the individual conscience."

The Holy Father, who has spoken frequently about false understandings of secularity, elaborated on that theme in his talk to the Italian lawyers’ group. Originally, he observed, secularity referred simply to “the condition of a simple faithful Christian, not belonging to the clergy or the religious state.” Later the term acquired a connotation that suggested tension with the Church, he said. And today, “it has assumed the significance of the exclusion of religion and its symbols from public life by confining them to the private sphere and the individual conscience.” Thus, the Pope said, the concept of secularity has become invested with “an ideological meaning quite opposite to the one it originally held."

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