[Question]{.underline}: Are there two different kinds of secularism?
[Answer]{.underline}: The idea that there might be two different kinds of Secularism is one promoted by Pope Benedict XVI himself. It was, in fact, on the airplane on the way to the U.S. on April 15, 2008, that he presented the long-standing US practice of secularism as “a positive concept,” a great improvement on the European practice of union of Church and state, to be contrasted with “a new, completely different, Secularism” that undermines the rights of the human person, and in particular religious liberty.
The Pope had this to say about the American experience: “What I find fascinating in the USA is that it began with a [positive concept of Secularism]{.underline}. Because this new people was made up of communities and persons who had escaped the State religions and wished to have a lay, secular State, which opens the doors to all confessions, to all forms of religious exercise. It was thus a willingly secular State, but secular truly for love of religion, of its authenticity, which can be lived only freely. And thus we find this fusion of a willingly and honestly secular State, but really for a religious will, to grant authenticity to religion…This seems to me a fundamental and positive model to be considered also in Europe…Now there is even in the US an attack of a new Secularism, a new completely different Secularism, and therefore, new problems” (emphasis added).
To see whether or not such a distinction is justifiable, we need to have a precise idea of what Secularism really is. This is clearly given in the 1925 encyclical of Pope Pius XI instituting the feast of Christ the King as “an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society” (Quas primas). This “plague,” which he also calls an “evil spirit,” is precisely Secularism. “We refer to the plague of Secularism, its errors and impious activities.” The Pope then goes on to explain in what is consists: “It has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ Himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions, and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the State and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers…There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God.”
It follows from this text that the essential element in all Secularism is the refusal of the State to acknowledge the rights of Christ and the Church to teach and govern on moral and religious matters. It also indicates that there are degrees in the application of this same error. A first degree is the separation of Church and State, the refusal of the State to acknowledge Christ and the Church’s authority in all that pertains to eternal salvation. A second degree is the equality of all religions before the State ( = Religious Liberty as promoted by Vatican II and the First Amendment to the US Constitution). A third degree is the radically anti-religious regime of atheistic Communism or of radical modern Liberalism that reduces religion to an interior, psychological experience, and that consequently denies all morality, all duties before Almighty God, and hence all rights.
However, whatever the degree of Secularism, the error is the same, and it falls under the same condemnation of Pope Pius XI: “The rebellion of individuals and of nations against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable effects. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano*. We lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed…a blind and immoderate selfishness…society, in a word shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin”* (ibid.)
If Pope Benedict XVI rightly deplores and fears the attack of the new Secularism, the third degree of Secularism, it is nevertheless a great error to consider the first and second degrees as in some way positive. The principle of removing God from public life is the same, and it is the very principle that ultimately produces the third degree of Secularism. There are not two Secularisms. There is one Secularism that is evil and destructive, that is anti-God because opposed to Catholic teaching; and it proceeds, advancing in different degrees. Even if the Church is freer with the first two degrees of Secularism than with the third, they manifestly cannot be treated as a good thing. There is only one answer, and it is the “remedy for this great evil” that Saint Pius X gave in his inaugural encyclical, defining so well the goal of his Papacy: “To restore all things in Christ”(§4). These are his words: “Who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is---apostasy from God.”
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.