The Secular Clergy (again): A Brief Rejoinder to Mí?eál Vaughan’s Response.

Lawler answers Vaughan’s criticisms (YLS 16 [2002]: 118–29, for which see “Annual Bibliography, 2002,” YLS 17 [2003]: 239) that he did not honor the integrity of the various versions of PPl, that he “particulariz[ed] without warrant,” and “that he has conflated terms from different versions” (204, 205–6). Lawler accepts Vaughan’s refutation of his reading of C.Prol.62, and ends by asserting that, like Vaughan, he too feels “comprehensive, catholic ideals” beating at the heart of PPl. Lawler disagrees that his readings have narrowed the poem for he suggests that L is particularly concerned with the secular clergy as being the group that is “specially charged to preserve the faith.”