IRRELIGIOSITY. - The term is to be understood not only in a privative sense (areligiosity), as the attitude of one who habitually does not practice any religion, but chiefly in a negative sense, inasmuch as it denotes opposition to religion, whether as a body of truths to be believed and laws to be observed, or as a moral virtue.
Scholastic theology has preferred the term irreligiosity to the Latin irreverentia, because the latter has a broader meaning, denoting irreverence toward God, men, the law, etc. Irreligiosity, on the other hand, properly signifies irreverence toward God and religion.
Therefore, in a strict and specific sense, irreligiosity embraces irreligious vices and sins that contain contempt or irreverence against God directly, or against sacred things. To the first class belong tempting God and false swearing; after Suárez (cf. De Religione, Lyons 1630, tr. III, I, cap. 1, n. 8) theologians add blasphemy; to the second class belong sacrilege, simony, superstition and its various forms, namely idolatry, divination, and magic.