What's the difference between holy and secular?

Holy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Set apart to the service or worship of God; hallowed; sacred; reserved from profane or common use; holy vessels; a holy priesthood.
  • (superl.) Spiritually whole or sound; of unimpaired innocence and virtue; free from sinful affections; pure in heart; godly; pious; irreproachable; guiltless; acceptable to God.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The next day on his blog he called the job "the Holy Grail of animation gigs".
  • (2) The Kalachakra Puja takes place in the eastern state of Bihar at the holy Bodhgaya site, where the Buddha gained enlightenment.
  • (3) Most of these troops are being sent to Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar where a big push against the Taliban is expected in September, after the holy month of Ramadan.
  • (4) There's apparently a 30-seat cinema in Paris that's played The Holy Grail for three decades.
  • (5) Islamist militants have attacked Iraq's largest oil refinery in the city of Baiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, as Iran raised the prospect of direct military intervention to protect Shia holy sites.
  • (6) The Holy Father has now decided that my resignation will take effect today, 25 February 2013, and that he will appoint an apostolic administrator to govern the archdiocese in my place until my successor as archbishop is appointed.
  • (7) Speaking in 2001 at the launch of Death in Holy Orders , her 11th Dalgliesh novel, James explained that her success was founded on the belief that plot could never make up for poor writing and that authors should always focus on the reader.
  • (8) The staggering figure – one of the worst bombings in 13 years of war in Iraq – has cast a pall on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and which begins on Wednesday in Iraq .
  • (9) And not just the Muslim holy sites, he adds; Palestinians are more visible in the west of the city than previously.
  • (10) Boys from King Edward VI grammar school will lay oblations inside Holy Trinity church, while the Coventry Corps of Drums prepares to lead a "people's parade" towards Bancroft Gardens, where the River Avon widens, and where – if you're lucky – you might see a swan or two cruise by.
  • (11) O’Brien’s successor as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Leo Cushley, said: “I am confident that the decision of the Holy Father is fair, equitable and proportionate.
  • (12) Has Net-a-Porter found the holy grail of 21st-century fashion?
  • (13) Hitler chose to stage Nazi party rallies in the city due to its connections to the Holy Roman Empire and the Nuremberg laws, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, were passed here.
  • (14) It is the England that then prime minister John Major vowed would never vanish in a famous 1993 speech: “Long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’.” Major was mining Orwell’s wartime essay The Lion and the Unicorn, whose tone was one of reassurance – the national culture will survive, despite everything: “The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies.” Orwell and Major were both asserting the strength of a national culture at times when Britishness – for both men basically Englishness – was felt to be under threat from outside dangers (war, integration into Europe).
  • (15) Quite a number of people brought up in the emotional straitjackets of the English upper classes found blessed relief in the permission the Holy Spirit gave them to weep or laugh and gibber and faint in public.
  • (16) In the mid-1990s, when the movement's influence on HTB was at its height, I visited a Chelsea church run by Nicky Lee, one of the men who converted Welby at Cambridge, and when the Holy Spirit started knocking people down, I'd hear the distinct rattle of pearls when the young women fainted to the floor.
  • (17) The narrative drivers are pretty slack – improbable dialogue ("I'm a very wealthy man, Miss Steele, and I have expensive and absorbing hobbies"); lame characterisation; irritating tics (a constant war between Steele's "subconscious", which is always fainting or putting on half-moon glasses, and her "inner goddess", who is forever pouting and stamping); and an internal monologue that goes like this … "Holy hell, he's hot!
  • (18) The fear that Israel was planning to alter the status of the holy place Arabs call Al-Haram Al-Sharif and the Jews the Temple Mount set off the violence.
  • (19) Recipes for " tomato burgers " (bestowing this fruit sandwich with the holy title of "burger" is an affront to cows everywhere), help on undergoing a " friendship divorce ", extortionate travel guides … Goop covers a lot of ground.
  • (20) The IAEA team is likely to visit an underground enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, 80 miles south of Tehran, which is carved into a mountain as protection from possible airstrikes.

Secular


Definition:

  • (a.) Coming or observed once in an age or a century.
  • (a.) Pertaining to an age, or the progress of ages, or to a long period of time; accomplished in a long progress of time; as, secular inequality; the secular refrigeration of the globe.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to this present world, or to things not spiritual or holy; relating to temporal as distinguished from eternal interests; not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly.
  • (a.) Not regular; not bound by monastic vows or rules; not confined to a monastery, or subject to the rules of a religious community; as, a secular priest.
  • (a.) Belonging to the laity; lay; not clerical.
  • (n.) A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
  • (n.) A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
  • (n.) A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Broad-based secular comprehensives that draw in families across the class, faith and ethnic spectrum, entirely free of private control, could hold a new appeal.
  • (2) In women, the secular increase occurred throughout the distribution of body weights but the change in the upper end was two to three times greater than that in the other parts of the distribution.
  • (3) Secularism is the only way to stop collapse and chaos and to foster bonds of citizenship in our complex democracy.
  • (4) These secular changes may explain why some studies have found that oral contraceptives have a protective effect, while others have been unable to show such an effect.
  • (5) Secular growth changes of Stockholm schoolchildren born in 1933, 1943, 1953 and 1963 were studied through samples of about 2500 children in each year.
  • (6) We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse.
  • (7) Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya said the “truth [of the Gospel] continues to be called into question in the Anglican communion” and warned against “the global ambitions of a secular culture”.
  • (8) The previous history of PID, especially in the older age groups, reflects the combined effect of secular trends in PID incidence and temporal changes in diagnostic and treatment practices.
  • (9) 'If you meet, you drink …' Thus introduced to intoxicating liquors under auspices both secular and sacred, the offering of alms for oblivion I took to be the custom of the country in which I had been born.
  • (10) Memories of the conflict – in which up to 3 million people may have died – remain very much alive in the country of 160 million, the world's third largest Muslim state, albeit one with a broadly secular political culture.
  • (11) Causes of the marked secular trends in the cancer mortality and incidence are not clear, but the major causes are suspected to be changes in dietary habits, smoking and drinking habits, and other socio-environmental factors such as marital and reproductive factors.
  • (12) The results indicate an end to the positive secular trend for height and weight at about the same time as the previously reported end to a decreasing age of menarch in London girls.
  • (13) Ahead of disputed parliamentary elections, the secular forces that featured so prominently during the first months of the revolution are struggling.
  • (14) This secular trend was due to both "laboratory drift" and increasing use of diuretics.
  • (15) Thus, effects of secular change in age at menarche may not be wholly benign.
  • (16) A broad coalition of Egyptian organisations – some Islamist, some secular – plan to join with British NGOs and trade unions in protest at Sisi’s arrival ; letters denouncing Cameron’s invitation have been issued by political figures and academics , and an early-day motion in parliament condemning the visit has been signed by 51 MPs, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
  • (17) Their differences highlight Northern Ireland’s often stark dichotomy between religious-based social conservatism and secular progressive liberalism.
  • (18) It follows that the explanation of the secular trend as being an ecosensitive response of individuals to changing levels of well-being is insufficient.
  • (19) Hitchens responded to counter-examples of secular tyranny in the Soviet Union and China by saying: It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.
  • (20) In conclusion it is suggested that medicalization may be conductive to sect development, and that secularization and medicalization are compatible models of social change.