laity
IPA: ɫˈeɪʌti
noun
- People of a church who are not ordained clergy or clerics.
- The common man or woman.
- The unlearned, untrained or ignorant.
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Examples of "laity" in Sentences
- And now, after the abuse crisis, the laity is wary of the bishops.
- The term laity signifies the aggregation of those Christians who do not form part of the clergy.
- The laity is a tremendously heterogeneous group from which an arbitrary sample cannot be assumed to be representative.
- Nevertheless, the general word for the priesthood, as distinguished from the laity, is Latin (_ordo_); hence "ordination" and holy "orders."
- The distinct specification of the bread and the wine disproves the Romish doctrine of concomitancy, and exclusion of the laity from the cup.
- The Church universal in all ages has always divided its membership into two great classes, and two only, the clergy and the laymen, using the terms laity and laymen synonymously and interchangeably.
- Vatican 2 in Lumen Gentium said ‘the apostolate of the laity is a sharing in the salvific mission of the church’ and ‘the laity have the exalted duty of working for the ever greater spread of the divine plan of salvation to all people of every epoch and all over the earth.’
- The French fought off religious conservatives before, previously represented by the Catholic Church; as one of the people I reached out to on the subject living in France reminded me (via email), jogging my memory of laicite as it is labeled (coming from the word laity, those not Catholic).
- Another great evil, arising from the peculiarity of the voluntary system is, that in any of the principal sects the power has been wrested from the clergy and assumed by the laity, who exercise an inquisition most injurious to the cause of religion: and to such an excess of tyranny is this power exercised, that it depends upon the _laity_, and not upon the
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