I found Dr. Boland’s assessment of “A Secular Age” to be very informative. He first catches Taylor out using the word “secular” in an equivocal manner; assigning to it four significations, including one of his own invention. It is anyone’s guess as to which meaning the title of the book is meant to convey. Dr. Boland points out the specific meaning of the word as used in the Church. Taylor, a Catholic academic of high standing, seems oblivious to the simple and common sense meaning of the word “secular”, so frequently used in Church Teaching documents. 

   Taylor, as Dr. Boland emphasises, seems not to have grasped the first principle of Sociology: it is a practical science and not a theoretical one like mathematics. Taylor falls in with the modern and common academic misconception of Sociology and its resulting methodology. He fails to stand out from the crowd. What a pity. With guidance from St Thomas and Aristotle he would see why at bottom sociology is a practical science: because first and foremost it is an ethical science. Without this necessary insight and the assessment and commentary on Social questions that could and should go with it, an 800 page book on which ever of the four meanings Taylor associates in a particular “Age” with “Secular” can only be an attempt to fill a void with side issues and irrelevancies.

   Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been particularly strong in their addresses to Modern Secular Society (see e.g. their Addresses to the United Nations), on the need for the natural moral law to be a guiding legislative principle for all Nations and Societies. (For confirmation see my Assertions and Refutations “An Assessment of Dr. Tracey Rowland’s ‘Natural Law: From Neo-Thomism to Nuptial Mysticism’.”)

   Another feature, or should I say debility, of “A Secular Age” Dr. Boland points up is Taylor’s lexical inventiveness.  He uses words such as “porous” and “buffer”: words that seem to me to have been borrowed from the construction or building industry (Dr. Rowland is another Catholic trail blazer in this respect); words that one would expect to find on blue-prints for the Hoover Dam.

   Dr. Boland has shown remarkable stamina with Taylor’s bloated book and much patience in commenting upon it. I highly recommend his assessment for the true Thomistic perspective it shines on “A Secular Age” (which ever of Taylor’s meanings you want to choose for “Secular” – he fiddles with “Age” as well) and the clear refutations of Taylor’s thesis it offers.

–Frank Calneggia, author of Assertions and Refutations: An Assessment of Dr Tracey Rowland’s Natural Law: From Neo Thomism to Nuptial Mysticism and editor of Analysing the Errors and Exposing the Real Agenda of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.: The Selected Works of Frits Albers, Vol. 1