Secular is understood to be all those people who are related in one way or another to a certain type of religion but who are not part of the ecclesiastical institution that directs it. The condition of secular can also be nominated as secular or secular, all three meaning the same and establishing that the person is linked in some way to religion (for example, he practices it or is a believer) but does not direct or organize it. The role of the laity is particularly important in educational settings in which we find a type of religious teaching since they are a person who is not part of the church but is nevertheless enabled to transmit teachings and knowledge about that particular religion.
When we speak of lay or lay we are not referring to a person who has no connection with a certain religion. Quite the contrary, the laity maintains a deep and direct link with religion, but without participating in the institutional spaces that it entails. This is so for all known religions and not only for Catholicism, although these terms are usually associated with it.
The figure of the lay person began to be redefined at the time of the Second Vatican Council, the one that took place in 1959. From this moment on, the Catholic Church began to accept in a more evident way the figure of the lay person or the lay person as a very important of the community of the faithful. In this sense, this Council supposed a certain aggiornamiento or modernization of certain religious conceptions that prevented the recognition of a significant role in religious performance by the laity because they were not part of the Church as an institution.
For this Council, the lay person is someone who is dedicated to transmitting and transferring the teachings of religion more directly to those faithful or believers who are not engaged in religious tasks. Thus, the secular can be understood as an intermediary between the different levels of the ecclesiastical institution and the believing people. Many lay people therefore dedicate themselves to teaching and education using this important medium as a way of transmitting the most important Christian values.
