The Sin of Liberalism

"Love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal."  {Phil Ochs}

It has been said that a liberal is someone who will not take her/his own side in an argument. As a liberal in good standing, therefore, there’s very little I enjoy more than reading some good old-fashioned liberal-bashing. ¹ Recently I happened upon a 19^th-century polemic irresistibly titled LIBERALISM IS A SIN; it was authored by a Spanish priest, Dr. Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, and it was first published in 1886 in Barcelona. The following excerpts convey the flavor of Fr. Salvany’s diatribe, and should warm the heart of any self-flagellating liberal.

The book begins:

We find Liberalism laying down as the basis of its propaganda the following principles:

1. The absolute sovereignty of the individual in his entire independence of God and God's authority.
2. The absolute sovereignty of society in its entire independence of everything which does not proceed from itself.
3. Absolute civil sovereignty in the implied right of the people to make their own laws in entire independence and utter disregard of any other criterion than the popular will expressed at the polls and in parliamentary majorities.
4. Absolute freedom of thought in politics, morals, or in religion. The unrestrained liberty of the press.

Sovereign individuals, self-determined societies, laws based on majority ballot, and freedom of thought: such were the pernicious ideas that threatened the Old Order! Fr. Salvany saw where such ideas were leading:

Such are the radical principles of Liberalism. In the assumption of the absolute sovereignty of the individual…we find the common source of all the others. To express them all in one term, they are, in the order of ideas, RATIONALISM, or the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of human reason. Here human reason is made the measure and sum of truth. Hence we have individual, social, and political Rationalism, the corrupt fountainhead of liberalist principles [which are]: absolute freedom of worship, the supremacy of the State, secular education repudiating any connection with religion, marriage sanctioned and legitimatized by the State alone, etc.; in one word, which synthesizes all, we have SECULARIZATION, which denies religion any active intervention in the concerns of public and of private life, whatever they be. This is veritable social atheism.

Being Catholic, Fr. Salvany naturally traced the rot of secular liberalism to Martin Luther’s fiendish revolt; Protestantism’s insistence on the primacy of the individual conscience ² was “the source of liberalism in the order of ideas”. The good Father continued, at some length:

Such, in consequence of our Protestant and infidel surroundings, is the intellectual atmosphere which we are perpetually breathing into our souls. Nor do these principles remain simply in the speculative order, poised forever in the region of thought. Men are not mere contemplatives. Doctrines and beliefs inevitably precipitate themselves into action. The speculation of today becomes the deed of tomorrow, for men, by force of the law of their nature, are ever acting out what they think. Rationalism, therefore, takes concrete shape in the order of facts. It finds palpable expression and action in the press, in legislation, and in social life. The secular press reeks with it, proclaiming with almost unanimous vociferation, absolute division between public life and religion. It has become the shibboleth of journalism, and the editor who will not recognize it in his daily screed soon feels the dagger of popular disapproval. In secularized marriage and in our divorce laws, it cleaves the very roots of domestic society; in secularized education, the cardinal principle of our public school system, it propagates itself in the hearts of the future citizens and the future parents; in compulsory school laws, it forces in the entering wedge of socialism; in the speech and intercourse of social life, it is constantly asserting itself with growing reiteration; in secret societies, organized in a spirit destructive of religion, it menaces our institutions and places the country in the hands of conspirators, whose methods and designs, beyond the reach of the public eye, constitute a tyranny of darkness. In a thousand ways does the principle of Rationalism find its action and expression in social and civil life, and however diversified be its manifestation, there is in it always a unity...Whether concerted or not, it ever acts in the same direction, and whatever special school within the genus of Liberalism professes it or puts it into action—be it in society, in domestic life, or in politics—the same essential characteristics will be found in all its protean shapes…

Should that not be a sufficiently comprehensive condemnation of modernity, Fr. Salvany added:

Liberalism is a world complete in itself; it has its maxims, its fashions, its art, its literature, its diplomacy, its laws, its conspiracies, its ambuscades. It is the world of Lucifer, disguised in our times under the name of Liberalism…The theater, literature, public and private morals are all saturated with obscenity and impurity. The result is inevitable; a corrupt generation necessarily begets a revolutionary generation. Liberalism is the program of naturalism. Free-thought begets free morals, or immorality. Restraint is thrown off and a free rein given to the passions. Whoever thinks what he pleases will do what he pleases. Liberalism in the intellectual order is license in the moral order. Disorder in the intellect begets disorder in the heart, and vice-versa. Thus does Liberalism propagate immorality, and immorality Liberalism.

Such was the considered view of a fiercely anti-liberal Catholic priest back in 1886. Have things gotten any better in the liberal order since then? Alas, they have not, as my next post will detail.

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https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/liberalism-is-a-sin-10081

¹ I admit to enjoying beer more than I do liberal-bashing; also bacon, and cheese.

² Thomas Aquinas also promoted the individual conscience, but the Doctor Angelicus never had the temerity to suggest that individuals should read (and interpret) the Bible for themselves.

Comments

[Jack Shifflett]

That would have spoiled the fun. Besides, it wouldn't have been fair to Fr. Salvany, who put a lot of effort into his book.

[Ann Markle]

Wow. That’s all. You could have stopped with the definition of liberalism.😱