The Christian doctrine that God exists outside of time led medieval Western culture to fix the meaning of "secular", in contexts related to religion, as indicating the direction away from religious affairs and toward "worldly" (or "temporal", time-related) ones, and this has been extended to apply relative to all religious or spritual beliefs, whether or not they include a similar doctrine. One example is "clerical authority" (referring to matters the church controls) as opposed to "secular authority" (referring to feudal power). Nevertheless, "secular clergy", for instance, is no contradiction, but rather describes a parish priest, who is secular in comparison to a "religious", a noun referring to a person subject to monastic vows.