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Chapter XXI - Personal Polemics and Liberalism
- Liberals and those tainted with Liberalism have hurled it at our heads, they imagine that we are overwhelmed by the charge. But they deceive themselves. We are not so easily thrust into the background. We have reason—and substantial reason—on our side.
- The authors and propagators of heretical doctrines are soldiers with poisoned weapons in their bands. Their arms are the book, the journal, the lecture, their personal influence. Is it sufficient to dodge their blows? Not at all; the first thing necessary is to demolish the combatant himself.
- It is thus lawful, in certain cases, to expose the infamy of a Liberal opponent, to bring his habits into contempt and to drag his name in the mire...The only restriction is not to employ a lie in the service of justice. This never.
- The Fathers of the Church support this thesis. The very titles of their works clearly show that, in their contests with heresy, their first blows were at the heresiarchs.
- Whence do the Liberals derive their power to impose upon us the new obligation of fighting error only in the abstract and of lavishing smiles and flattery upon them? We, the Ultramontanes, will fight our battles according to Christian tradition and defend the Faith as it has always been defended in the Church of God...This is the only real and efficacious means of waging war.
Chapter XXII - A Liberal Objection to Ultramontane Methods
- The Liberals tell us that our violent methods of warfare against them are not in conformity with the Pope's counsels to moderation and charity. Has he not exhorted Catholic writers to a love of peace and union, to avoid harsh, aggressive and personal polemics?
- There is no doubt that the Pope here makes no allusion to the incessant battles between Catholics and Liberals, for the simple reason that Catholicity is truth and Liberalism heresy, between which there can be no peace, but only war to the death. By consequence, therefore, it is certain that the Pope intends his counsels to apply to our "family quarrels" unhappily much too frequent, and that by no means does he seek to forbid us from waging an unrelenting strife with the eternal enemies of the Church...
- Therefore, there can be no contradiction between the doctrine we expound and that of the briefs and allocutions of the Holy Father on the subject...how can we interpret the words of the Holy Father in any other way?
- How could we suppose the Pope to be in contradiction with all Catholic tradition from Jesus Christ to our own times? Is it for a moment admissible that the style and method of most of the celebrated Catholic polemists and apologists from St. Paul to St. Francis de Sales should be condemned by a stroke of the pen? Clearly not...
- Common sense itself shows this. Imagine a general in the midst of a raging battle, issuing an order to his soldiers not to injure the enemy too severely!
- Pius IX has given us an explanation of the proper meaning of his words. On a memorable occasion he calls the sectaries of the Commune demons; and worse than demons the sectaries of Liberalism.
- the Pope recommends moderation and charity to Catholic writers as a means of preserving peace and mutual union. Clearly, this peace and union is between Catholics and not between Catholics and their enemies...Would it not be absurd to imagine that there could be any union between truth and error, therefore between the advocates of truth on the one side and error on the other? Irreconcilable opposites never unite. One or the other must disappear.
(Freemasons vs. Catholics)
Chapter XXIII - The "Civilta Cattolica's" Charity to Liberals
- Lest our competence to judge in so important a matter be called into question, we will cite as authority on this subject the foremost religious journal of the world, the Civilta Cattolica, founded by Pius IX...
- "The Church and the Pope have never asked anything but truth and justice for their cause. On the other hand, the Liberals, no doubt on account of the horror they naturally entertain for truth, and above all, for justice, are always demanding charity...They beseech us not to give them over to the ridicule of their neighbors, not to expose to an inspection so detailed, so minute, their sublime writings, not to be so obstinate in subjecting their glorious exploits to such a strong search-light, to close our eyes and our ears to their blunders, their solecisms [inconsistencies], their lies, their calumnies, their obscurities, in a word, to let them live in peace."
- "After having shown (according to the measure of their means) by their acts and their writings that they have a love for charity equal to the devil's for holy water, when they hear it spoken of, they suddenly remember that there exists in the world a thing called charity, which might on certain occasions prove very profitable to them..."
- "'What obliges you to enter into these quarrels?" they confidentially say to us. 'Have you not enough enemies already? Be tolerant and your adversaries will be so with you. What do you gain by following this wretched occupation, like a dog spending his life barking at robbers?
- It will be in fact a great charity, not such indeed as the Liberals beg of us, but one truly very meritorious, the charity of listening to them with patience for the hundredth time.
Chapter XXIV - A Liberal Sophism and the Church's Diplomacy
- In the first place, we must remember that there are two ministrations in the Church of God: one which we may call apostolic, relative to the propagation of the Faith and the salvation of souls; the other, which we may very properly term diplomatic, having for its subject human relations with the powers of the world.
The first is the most noble...The second is inferior and subordinate to the first, of which it is only the auxiliary. In the first, the Church is intolerant and uncompromising...When it is a question of divine rights and divine duties, neither attenuation nor compromise is possible.
In the second ministration, the Church is condescending, benevolent and full of patience. She discusses, she solicits, she negotiates, she praises, that she may soften the hard; she is silent sometimes, that she may better succeed...
When it is a question of mere human relations, she comports herself with a certain flexibility and admits the usage of special resources. In this domain, everything that is not declared bad and prohibited by the law common to the ordinary relations of men is lawful and proper.
- The Church is the home of good people (or of those who ought to be and desire to be), but she is surrounded by governments more or less perverted, or even entirely perverted. She says to her children: "Detest the maxims of these governments; combat these maxims; their doctrine is error; their laws are iniquitous." At the same time, in questions when her own and sometimes their interests are involved, she finds herself under the necessity of treating with the heads or the representatives of these governments, and in fact she does treat with them, accepts their compliments, and employs in their regard the formula of the polished diplomacy in usage in all countries; she negotiates with them in relation to matters of common interest, seeking to make the best of the situation in the midst of such neighbors.
- Does the Church sanction the Koran when she enters into negotiations, power to power, with the sectaries of the Koran? (NO!)
- It is a sophism to pretend that the Church authorizes by such acts what she has always condemned by other acts. Her diplomatic can never frustrate her apostolic ministration, and it is in this latter that we must seek the seeming contradictions of her diplomatic career.
Chapter XXV - How Catholics Fall into Liberalism
- Very often corruption of heart is a consequence of errors of the intellect, but more frequently still, errors of the intellect follow the corruption of the heart. The history of heresies very clearly shows this fact.
- Error nearly always has its origin, not in profound and laborious studies, but in the triple-headed monster which St. John describes and calls Concupiscentia carnis, concupiscentia oculorum, superbia vitae 'Concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, the pride of life."
- 1. Men become Liberal on account of a natural desire for independence and for an easy life.
Liberalism is emancipation from restraint; Catholicity the curb of the passions. Now, fallen man, by a very natural tendency, loves a system which legitimatizes and sanctifies his pride of intellect and the license of passion.
- 2. Men become Liberal by the desire for advancement in life. Liberalism is today the dominating idea; it reigns everywhere and especially in the sphere of public life. It is therefore a sure recommendation to public favor.
On starting out in life, the young man looks around upon the various paths that lead to fortune, to fame, to glory, and sees that an almost indispensable condition of reaching the desired goal is, at least in our times, to become Liberal.
- 3. Men become Liberal out of avarice, or the love of money. To get along in the world, to succeed in business, is always a standing temptation of Liberalism.
Let him relax a little in his faith, Join a forbidden secret society, and lo, the bolts and bars are drawn; he possesses the "open sesame" to success!...Be Liberal, admit that there is no great difference between men's creeds, that at the bottom they are really the same after all. Proclaim your breadth of mind by admitting that other religious beliefs are just as good for other people as your faith is for you; they are...You will be extensively patronized, for Liberalism is very generous to a convert. "Falling down adore me, and I will give you all these things' " says Satan yet to Jesus Christ in the desert.
Chapter XXVI - Permanent Causes of Liberalism
- What then are the permanent causes of Liberalism?
- 1. Corruption of morals: 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 generati .on. 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...Thus does Liberalism propagate immorality, and immorality Liberalism.
- 2. Journalism: Incalculable is the influence exercised without ceasing by the numerous publications which Liberalism spreads broadcast. In spite of themselves, by the ubiquity of the press, people are forced to live in a Liberal atmosphere.
UNLESS ONE IS ON HIS GUARD, HE FINDS HIMSELF THINKING, SPEAKING AND ACTING AS A LIBERAL...Poor people, by very reason of their simple good faith, absorb more easily the poison than anyone else.
- 3. General ignorance in matters of religion...For the past hundred years, Liberalism has striven to paralyze the action of the Church...The Liberals themselves have avowed this to be their aim: to destroy the religious life, to place every hindrance possible in the way of Catholic teaching, to ridicule the clergy and to deprive them of their prestige.
Freemasonry in Europe and South America are constantly seeking to bind her hand and foot, that she may be put at its satanic mercy. By open and secret means, this organization has sought to undermine her discipline in every country where it has obtained a footing. NATURALISM, THE DENIAL OF THE SUPERNATURAL, IT INCULCATES EVERYWHERE.
(United States founders [Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, etc.])
...civil marriage, by civil burial and divorce, by teaching the insidious doctrine that society as such has no religious relations or obligations and that man as a social and civil being is absolutely independent of God and His Church and that religion is a mere private opinion to be entertained or not entertained, as one pleases...
- 4. Secular education: To gain the child is to secure the man. To educate a generation apart from God and the Church is to feed the fires of Liberalism to repletion. When religion is divorced from the school, Liberalism becomes its paramour. Secularism is naturalism, the denial of the supernatural....Liberalism has realized the terrific power of education and with satanic energy is now striving, the world over, for the possession of the child. With what success we have only to look around us to realize...Snatch the soul of the child from the breast of its mother the Church," says Liberalism, "and I will conquer the world."
Chapter XXVII - How to Avoid Liberalism
- How may Catholics, who are perpetually surrounded by the snares of Liberalism, guard themselves securely against its dangers?
- 1. By the organization of all good Catholics, be their number great or small...have a nucleus of Catholic men of action. Such an organization will attract the undecided, give courage to the hesitating and counteract the influence of hostile or indifferent surroundings...Thus united, be your number ever so small, lift on high the banner of a sound, pure and uncompromising doctrine, without disguise, without attenuation, yielding not an inch to the enemy.
(Knights of Columbus, or what they should be/used to be)
Above all, give good example, give good example always. What you preach, do...Proselytes will be forthcoming.
- 2. Good journals...Read it; but not content with that, give it to others to read; explain it; comment on it, let it be your basis of operations...Encourage the reluctant to take it; The Holy Father has said that "a Catholic paper is a perpetual mission in every parish."
- 3. The Catholic school: The Catholic school has become in this age the only secure bridge of the Faith from generation to generation.While we protest against the wrong and never cease demanding our right, our clear and peremptory duty is to provide the best possible schools of our own, where our children may be educated in the full and only true sense of the word. Where Catholic schools are needed, build them, build them, build them! "The foundation of the parish church is the schoolhouse'"
The spiritual life of a parish without a school is tepid, neither hot nor cold. Let the school be the best possible...Speak out fearlessly on this matter of education. Say squarely and frankly that irreligious education leads to the devil. An irreligious school is the school of Satan.
Chapter XXVIII - How to Distinguish Catholic from Liberal Works
- [Liberalism] is usually very clever and cautious in concealing its real meaning in various disguises...There should therefore be some easy and popular criterion to distinguish, at every instant, the Catholic cry from the infernal birdcall of Liberalism.
- It often happens that some project or enterprise is put on foot, some sort of a work is undertaken, whose bearings Catholics cannot promptly or easily apprehend. It may appear indifferent or even innocent enough, and yet it may have its roots in error...It may speak the language of charity, appealing to us from the tenderest side, and ask us to associate ourselves with it in the name of a common humanity. "Sink all differences of creed and let us fraternize on the broader plane of brotherly love" is often its most insidious appeal.
(Religious Indifferentism)
- ...all this may be for God or the devil; or what is worse, it may be evil cloaked in the garb of holy things. How shall we guide ourselves in such a labyrinth?
1. Observe carefully what class of people are the projectors of the affair. Such is the first rule of prudence and common sense. It is based on that maxim of Our Lord: "A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit."
(Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, 1892, #15 - Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.)
If they are such that you cannot have entire confidence in their doctrines, be on your guard against their enterprises. Do not disapprove immediately, for it is an axiom of theology that not all the works of infidels are sinful, and this axiom can be applied to the works of Liberals. But be careful not to take them immediately for good; mistrust them, submit them to examination, await their results.
- 2. Observe the kind of people who praise the work in question. This is an even surer rule than the preceding...See if the Liberal current approves, recommends and accounts them its own. If yes, the book and the project are judged: they belong to Liberalism.
Repudiate, then, whatever Liberals praise or vaunt...Certain scruples of charity and the habit of thinking well of our neighbor sometimes blind good people to such an extent as to lead them to attribute good intentions where unhappily they do not exist.
- It seems to us that these two rules of common sense, which we can call rules of good Christian sense, suffice—if not to enable us to judge definitively every question—at least to keep us from perpetually stumbling over the roughness of the uneven soil which we daily tread and where the combat is always taking place...these secret societies are served even by those who detest their infernal work.
Chapter XXIX - Liberalism and Journalism
- The press has grown so omnipresent nowadays that there is no escape from it.
(This is extremely amplified today...almost infinitely so it would seem)
it is clear that such journals as boast of their Liberalism have no claim to our confidence in matters that Liberalism touches on...we have to wage perpetual war...against [these] enemies of the Church of God.
- But there is another class of journals less prompt to unmask and proclaim themselves, who love to live amidst ambiguities in an undefined and indefinite region of compromise. They declare themselves Catholic and aver their detestation and abhorrence of Liberalism, at least if we credit their words. These journals are generally known as Liberal Catholic. This is the class which we should especially mistrust, and we should not permit ourselves to be duped by its pretended piety...He who places himself in the vortex of a maelstrom is sure in the end to be engulfed in it. The logic of the situation brings the inevitable conclusion.
- There is no room, therefore, for confidence in the Liberal Catholic press, especially in cases where it is difficult to form a judgment. Moreover, in such cases, its policy of compromise and conciliation hampers it from forming any decisive or absolute judgment, for the simple reason that its judgment has nothing decisive or radical in it...Opportunism is its guiding star. The truly Catholic press is altogether Catholic, that is to say, it defends Catholic doctrine in all its principles and applications; it opposes all false teaching (known as such) always and entirely, opposite per diametrum ["diametrically opposed"], as St. Ignatius says in that golden book of his exercises. Arrayed with unceasing vigilance against error, it places itself on the frontier, always face-to face with the enemy.
- [The truly Catholic Press] watches, guards, and resists at every point.
- Bad journals sometimes contain something good. What are we to think of the good thus imbedded with the bad in them? We must think that the good in them does not prevent them from being bad, if their doctrine or their character is intrinsically bad. In most cases this good is a mere artifice to recommend, or at least disguise, what in itself is essentially bad. An assassin and a thief are not good because they sometimes say a prayer or give alms to a beggar.
- On the other hand, it sometimes happens that a good journal falls into such or such an error or into an excess of passion in a good cause and so says something which we cannot altogether approve. Must we for this reason call it bad? Not at all, and for a reverse although analogous reason.
- That alone is bad which is bad with full knowledge, habitually and persistently. Catholic journalists are not angels; far from it; they too are fragile men and sinners. To wish to condemn them for such or such a failing, for this or that excess, is to entertain a pharisaical or Jansenistic opinion of virtue, which is not in accord with sound morality!
To conclude, there are good and bad journals; among the latter are to be ranked those whose doctrine is ambiguous or ill-defined.
Chapter XXX - Can Catholics and Liberals Ever Unite?
- "Should Catholics combine with the more moderate Liberals for the common end of resisting the advance of the revolutionists or extreme Liberals?"
- What should we think of these would-be unionists, we who wish above all things the well-being of our Holy Religion? In general, we should think such unions are neither good nor commendable. Liberalism, let its form be as moderated or as wheedling as possible, is by its very essence in direct and radical opposition to Catholicity.
- It is possible, however, in very rare cases, that a union on the part of Catholics with a Liberal group against the Radicals may prove useful under given conditions. Where such a union is really opportune, it must be established on the following basis:
- 1. The bond of union should never be neutrality or the conciliation of interests and principles essentially opposed, such as are the interests and principles of Catholics and Liberals. This neutrality or conciliation has been condemned by the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX and is, consequently, a false basis. Such a union would be a betrayal, an abandonment of the Catholic camp by those who are bound to defend it. An instance would be to compromise Catholic education with Secularism by banishing religious instruction and influences from the school room.
It can never be said, "Let us abstract from our differences of doctrine, etc." It would be the same as to say, "In spite of the radical and essential opposition of principles between us, we can, after all, agree in the practical application of these principles." This is simply an intolerable contradiction.
- 2. Much less could we accord to the Liberal group, with whom a temporary and accidental alliance is formed, the honor of enrolling ourselves under its banner...We can never assume their emblem under any circumstances. In other words, let them unite themselves to us; we can never unite ourselves to them.
- 3. We must never consider this alliance constant and normal...Such radical incompatibility would simply expose the undertaking to lamentable failure and would build upon contradictory opinions, whose only accord is accidental.
(United States & Pluralism; a failed system of ethics and a broken foundation)
- Outside of these conditions, not only should we hold that such a union with any group, for any enterprise whatever, would be unfavorable to Catholics, we should also hold that it would be actually detrimental.
- Without doubt, as the proverb runs, "Unhappy the one who walks alone." But there is another proverb equally true which says, "Better seek solitude than bad company."..If we have to sacrifice true unity for the sake of an artificial and forced union, not only is nothing gained, but much is lost.
Chapter XXXI - An Illusion of Liberal Catholics
- Amongst the illusions entertained by a certain class of Catholics, there is none more pitiable than the notion that the truth requires a great number of defenders and friends. To these people, numbers seem a synonym for force.
- To be content with an increase without consideration of the value of the increment is not only to accumulate fictitious force, but to expose to paralysis the powers which one does possess by the congestion of an unwieldy mass.
- If the defender, under the pretext of better defending the truth, begins to mutilate it, to minimize it, to attenuate it, then he is no longer defending the truth. He is simply defending his own invention, a mere human creation, more or less beautiful in appearance, but having no relation to truth, which is the daughter of Heaven.
Such is the delusion of which many of our brethren are the unconscious victims, through a detestable contact with Liberalism.
They imagine, with blinded good faith, that they are defending and propagating Catholicity. But by dint of accommodating it to their own narrow views and feeble courage, in order to make it, they say, more acceptable to the enemy whom they wish to overcome, they do not perceive that they are no longer defending Catholicity, but a thing of their own manufacture, which they naively call Catholicity, but which they ought to call by another name.
- The kind of soldiers we need [are ones who]...make no alliance, no compromise with a foe whose single aim, disguised or open, is the destruction of the truth.
- Catholic associations hampered in their onward march by such an alliance will find themselves so impeded that free action becomes impossible.
(HHS MANDATE! It has begun...)
- To bring an enemy into the camp is to betray the citadel.
(Non-Catholics have no place interjecting or proposing their thoughts at an ecumenical council)
This combination of the bad with the good cannot but end in evil results. It brings disorder, confusion, suspicion and uncertainty to distract and divide Catholics, and all this to the benefit of the enemy and to our own disaster.
Chapter XXXII - Liberalism and Authority in Particular Cases
- When a good Catholic accuses anyone of Liberalism or attacks and unmasks Liberal sophisms, the accused immediately seeks refuge in a challenge of the accuser's authority: "And pray, who are you to charge me and my journal with Liberalism? Who made you a master in Israel to declare who is or who is not a good Catholic?...How then are we to answer this opposition?
- That we may accuse any person or writing of Liberalism, is it necessary to have recourse to a special judgment of the Church upon this particular person or this particular writing? By no means.
- The Church alone possesses supreme doctrinal magistery in fact and in right, juris et facti; her sovereign authority is personified in the Pope. To him alone belongs the right of pronouncing the final, decisive and solemn sentence. But this does not exclude other judgments less authoritative but very weighty...
- Faith dominates reason, which ought to be subordinated to faith in everything. But it is altogether false to pretend that reason can do nothing, that it has no function at all in matters of faith...
- It is thus by use of their reason that the faithful are enabled to suspect and measure the orthodoxy of any new doctrine presented to them, by comparing it with a doctrine already defined. If it be not in accord, they can combat it as bad, and justly stigmatize as bad the book or journal which sustains it.
- The faithful layman can do all this, and has done it at all times with the applause of the Church. Nor in so doing does he make himself the pastor of the flock, nor even its humblest attendant; he simply serves it as a watchdog who gives the alarm. Opportet allatrare canes "It behooves watchdogs to bark..."
- Of what use would be the rule of faith and morals if in every particular case the faithful could not of themselves make the immediate application...?
- Liberalism would like to see such crusaders disarmed and would prefer above all to succeed in getting the Church herself to do the disarming.
Chapter XXXIII - Liberalism as it is in this Country
- Its chief manifestation in the United States is in the form of what is popularly called NON-SECTARIANISM (aka Theosophy). It is a current fallacy, laid down as a fundamental truth that one religion is as good as another, that everyone has the right to believe what be pleases, that differences in creed are after all but differences in forms of expression, that everyone may select his own creed or sect according to his taste—or even altogether repudiate religious beliefs—and finally, that religion is a thing entirely apart from civic and social life. All this of course is SECULARISM in its various degrees—the denial of the supernatural.
- Civil marriage and divorce, mixed marriages and the consequent degeneration of family life, business standards and morality in general pitched on a low key, a vicious literature, a materialistic journalism catering to lax thinking and lax living, religion publicly mocked, scoffed, denied or held indifferently; all these things are coldly regarded as a matter of course, a necessary expedience, things to be condoned and applauded, all on the ground that they are the fruit of liberty...
- Secularism, with the instinct of a foe, has here most positively and triumphantly asserted its claim and, under the disguise of strict impartiality and even patriotism, has banished religion from the schoolroom.
- THE NATURAL TENDENCY IN HUMAN NATURE TO ESCAPE FRICTION AND AVOID ANTAGONISM IS UNHAPPILY IN MOST INSTANCES A READY FACTOR IN THE DIRECTION OF CONCESSION.
- This is especially true where Liberalism eschews aggressive action and with a cunning, either satanic or worldly wise, bases its treacherous tolerance upon a supposed generosity of mind or breadth of view. When the supernatural is vaguely identified with the superstitious, faith with credulity, firmness with fanaticism, the uncompromising with the intolerant, consistency with narrowness (for such is the current attitude of secularism around us), in these adjuncts it requires courage, fortitude and the consolation of the assured possession of truth to resist the insidious pressure of a false public opinion.
- Unless supernaturally fortified and enlightened, human nature under this moral oppression soon gives way to "human respect."
(Pope St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, 1910 - [Modernists/enemies of the Church] have a particular conception of human dignity, freedom, justice and brotherhood; and, in an attempt to justify their social dreams, they put forward the Gospel, but interpreted in their own way...We know well that they flatter themselves with the idea of raising human dignity and the discredited condition of the working class.)
- But we are in duty bound to resist their fatal contagion with all the powers of our soul. If we hope to preserve our faith intact, to keep it pure and bright in our souls, to save ourselves from the malign influence of a deadly heresy which is daily leading thousands to perdition...
- We require to be on our guard in a twofold way: first, by means of a life lived in the state of grace, second, by means of an enlightened reason, which may shine out over our path as a guide to ourselves and a beacon to others.
- Liberalism pretends to be the champion and guardian of natural reason, laying its snares to entrap the unwary and the ignorant. Not in violence but in a treacherous friendliness on the part of Liberalism does the danger lie.
- Ultramontanism is the only conquering legion in this sort of warfare.
- His task is doubly difficult; be must conquer an enemy who appears his dearest friend.
Jesus grant me the grace to defend your faith with my whole being and every fiber and, if necessary, to give my life for it.
Mary, mother of God, pray for us.
Sts. Peter & St. Paul, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
St. John the Baptist, pray for us.
St. Athanasius defender of the faith, pray for us.
St. Pius X warrior of truth, pray for us.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
What Is Liberalism? - Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany (1899 - Imprimatur) - Chapters XV - XX
Chapter XV - Can a Liberal be in Good Faith?
- some individuals, even many, who, in spite of themselves, are dragged into the torrent of error for no other reason than their supreme ignorance.
- Most heresies which have rent the bosom of the Church have attempted to disguise their errors under an exterior of affected piety. Jansenism, perhaps the most subtle of all heresies, won over a great number of adherents by its cunning simulation of sanctity. Its morals were rigid to the extreme; its dogmas formidable; the exterior conduct of its promoters ascetic and apparently enlightened. It wore the visage of a Saint, while at heart it reeked with the corruption of pride. The majority of ancient heresies turned upon very subtle points of doctrine, which only the skilled theologian could discern, and upon which the ignorant multitude could give no judgment, save such as they received in confidence from their leaders. By a very natural consequence, when the hierarch of a diocese fell into error, most of his subordinates—clerics and laity full of confidence in their pastor—fell with him.
- The diffusion of many ancient heresies, which were mostly purely theological, was nearly always due to this cause. Hence we find St. Jerome crying out in the fourth century: Ingemuit universus orbis se esse Arianum: "The whole world groaned to find itself Arian."
- The halo in which [Liberalism] was first depicted has shown itself to be, not the soft light of Heaven, but the lurid glare of Hell.
(By their fruits you shall know them)
- The new doctrines which it preached—and which it wished to substitute for ancient truth—had nothing abstract nor metaphysical; it rejected everything but brutal facts, which betrayed it as the offspring of Satan and the enemy of mankind. The terrors of the French Revolution were the evidence of its origin, as sprung from the corruptions of a society that had abandoned God and battened on the bestial results of Voltarian skepticism
- Liberalism a living lion going about seeking whom he may devour. Its dreadful doctrine is permeating society to the core; it has become the modern political creed and threatens us with a second revolution, to turn the world over once again to paganism. Are there any good Catholics who do not believe this? Let them but read the signs of the times, not with the eyes of the world, but by the light of the Faith, which Jesus Christ gave to them.
- Insubordination, illegitimate interests and the desire to take and make things easy are abundantly at hand to prejudice and to blind.
Chapter XVI - The Symptoms of Liberalism
- We are surrounded by Liberalism in all its shapes and varieties, and it behooves us to be on our guard against its subtle dangers.
- To facilitate the matter, we will divide Liberals, whether persons or writings, into three classes:
1) Extreme Liberals; 2) Moderate Liberals; 3) Quasi Liberals, or those only tainted with Liberalism.
- The Extreme Liberal is easily recognized; he does not attempt to deny or conceal his perversity. He is the declared enemy of the Pope, of priests, of everything ecclesiastical...He is a revolutionist, socialist, anarchist...He belongs to secret societies, dies in their embrace and is buried by their ritual.
- The moderate Liberal is just as bad as his extreme confrere, but he takes good care not to appear so. Social conventionalities and good manners are everything to him.
- At the mere mention of the name of a nihilistic or socialistic club, he is thrown into a cold sweat, for there, he declares, the masses are seduced into principles which lead to the destruction of the foundations of society; yet, according to him, there is no danger, no inconvenience in a free lyceum where the same principles are elegantly debated and sympathetically applauded; for who could dare to condemn the scientific discussion of social problems? The moderate Liberal does not detest the Pope; he may even express admiration for his sagacity; he only blames certain pretensions of the Roman Curia and certain exaggerations of Ultramontanism, which do not fall in with the trend of modern thought.
- He may even go to Church and, stranger still, sometimes approach the Sacraments; but his maxim is, in the Church to live as a Christian, outside of the Church to live as the world lives, according to the times in which one is born and not obstinately to swim against the stream.
- The Catholic simply tainted with Liberalism is generally a good man and sincerely pious; he exhales nevertheless an odor of Liberalism in everything he says, writes, or takes up...His strong point is charity; he is charity itself. What horror fills his soul at the exaggerations of the Ultramontane press! To treat as a liar the man who propagates false ideas is, in the eyes of this singular theologian, to sin against the Holy Spirit. To him the falsifier is simply misguided; it is not the poor fellow's fault; he has, simple soul, been misled. We ought neither to resist nor combat him; we must strive to attract him by soft words and pretty compliments. How the devil must chuckle over the mushy charity held out as a bait to abet his own cause!
- From the Gospel he is careful to cite only those texts flavored with milk and honey. The terrible invectives of Our Lord against Pharisaism astonish and confound him; they seem to be an excess of language on the part of our Divine Saviour!
- He saves the treasures of his tolerance and his charity for the sworn enemies of the Faith! What is more natural? Does not the poor man want to attract them? On the other hand, for the most heroic defenders of the Faith, he has only sarcasm and invective.
- The extreme Liberal roars his Liberalism; the moderate Liberal mouths it; the tainted Catholic whispers and sighs it. All are bad enough and serve the devil well.
Chapter XVII - Christian Prudence and Liberalism
- It will be well first to distinguish, in a general way, three possible relations between a Catholic and Liberalism, or rather between a Catholic and Liberals: 1) Necessary relations; 2) Useful relations; 3) Relations of pure affection or pleasure.
- Necessary relations are imposed upon everyone by his station in life and his particular position; they cannot be avoided. Such are the family relations, the relations of inferior and superior, etc.
- It is evident that a son who has the misfortune to have a Liberal father cannot on this account abandon him, nor the wife the husband, the brother the sister, nor the parent the child, except in the case where their Liberalism exacts from any of their respective inferiors acts essentially opposed to religion, so as to conduce to a formal apostacy.
- Prayer should be his chief recourse, prayer for himself and the victims of error. He should avoid, as far as possible, all conversations on this topic, but when he finds that a controversy is thrust upon him, let him accept it in the full confidence of the truth, and armed with effective weapons of defense and offense. A prudent spiritual director should be consulted in the selection of his arsenal.
- Obedience to a superior in all that is not directly or indirectly against faith and morals is his bounden duty, but it is equally his duty to refuse obedience to anything directly or indirectly in opposition to the integrity of his faith. Courage he can draw only from supernatural sources; God, who sees the struggle, will not refuse all the assistance needed
- There are other relations which we have with Liberals, which are not absolutely, but which are morally indispensable, and without which social life, which consists in a mutual exchange of services, is impossible. Such are the relations of commerce, trade, labor, the professions, etc...The fundamental rule in these cases is not to enter into unnecessary intercourse; what the gearing of the social machine demands, and no more, is sufficient...Guided by these rules, one could live without injury to his faith amidst a population of Jews...when the Faith is in question, despicable in all men's eyes does he become who would sell his birthright for a mess of pottage.
- Relations of pure friendship, pleasure or affectation, which we enter into as mere matters of taste or inclination, should be eschewed and, if once contracted, ought to be voluntarily broken off. Such relations are a certain danger to our faith. Our Lord says that he who loves danger shall perish in it. Is it difficult to sever such connections? What if it is; we must burst the bonds that place us in peril. Reflect for a moment. If your Liberal companion with whom you are constantly associating were subject to some contagious disease, would you then court him?
- There is but one condition upon which intimacy with a Liberal is justifiable at all, and that is for the purpose of converting him. For this, two dispositions are necessary: your Liberal friend's willingness and your capacity to lead him to the light. Even here danger is not lacking. One must be very sure of his ground before he attempts the task.
Chapter XVIII - Liberalism and Literature
- Our modern literature is saturated with its sentiments, and for this reason should we take every precaution to guard against its infections, of which so many are the miserable victims...Spare your praises of Liberal books, whatever be their scientific or literary merit, or at least praise with great reserve, never forgetting the reprobation rightly due to a book of Liberal spirit or tendency.
- They are not apt to seek us out, and if they are thrust upon us, our consent to their perusal is practically all our own doing. We have none but ourselves to blame if they prove to be our own undoing.
(Internet, TV, radio today)
- Many Catholics, by far too naive (even some engaged in Catholic journalism), are perpetually seeking to pose as impartial and are perpetually daubing themselves with a veneer of flattery. They are fearful of being considered narrow-minded and partial if they do not give the devil his due... they imagine this to be a powerful means of attracting the enemy. Alas, the folly of the weaklings; they play a losing game; it is they who are insensibly attracted, not the enemy! They simply fly at the bait held out by the cunning fisher who satanically guides the destinies of Liberalism.
- How charming, how beautiful, how tender, how pathetic, how humane; what lofty morality, what exquisite sentiment! Now what was the real purport of the book and what was its essence? To lift up Guatama, the founder of Buddhism, at the expense of Jesus Christ, the Founder of Christianity! Gautama, whom he intended to stand out as at least the divine equal of the Founder of Christianity, became in his hands in reality a mere echo of Christ, the image of Christ, made to rival the Word made flesh! Buddhism, in the borrowed garments of Christianity, was thus made to appeal to the ideals of Christian peoples, and gaining a footing in their admiration and affections, to usurp the throne in the Christian sanctuary.
(So-called Ecumenism/Interfaith Dialogue)
- What difference does it make whether a book be excellent in a literary sense or not, if its effect be the loss of souls and not their salvation?
- Heresy under a charming disguise is a thousand times more dangerous than heresy exposed in the harsh and arid garb of the scholastic syllogism— through which the death's skull grins in unadorned hideousness...Arianism had its poets to propagate its errors in popular verse. Lutheranism had its humanists, amongst whom the elegant Erasmus shone as a brilliant writer...
- Shall we crown these condemners of our faith with the laurels of our praises and laud them for the very qualities which alone make them dangerous! And for what purpose? That we may appear impartial? No. Impartiality is not permissible when it is distorted to the offense of truth...
Chapter XIX - Charity and Liberalism
- Narrow! Intolerant! Uncompromising! These are the epithets of odium hurled by Liberal votaries of all degrees at us Ultramontanes. Are not Liberals our neighbors like other men? Do we not owe to them the same charity we apply to others? Are not your vigorous denunciations, it is urged against us, harsh and uncharitable and in the very teeth of the teaching of Christianity, which is essentially a religion of love? Such is the accusation continually flung in our face. Let us see what its value is. Let us see all that the word "Charity" signifies.
- The Catechism [of the Council of Trent], that popular and most authoritative epitome of Catholic theology, gives us the most complete and succinct definition of charity; it is full of wisdom and philosophy. Charity is a supernatural virtue which induces us to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves for the love of God...Amare est velle bonum, replies the philosopher. "To love is to wish good to him whom we love."...What is that good which true love wishes? First of all supernatural good.
- It follows, therefore, that we can love our neighbor when displeasing him, when opposing him, when causing him some material injury...
- When we correct the wicked by restraining or by punishing them, we do nonetheless love them. This is charity—and perfect charity.
- Therefore, to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a true act of charity. Not to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a sin.
- Modern Liberalism reverses this order; it imposes a false notion of charity: our neighbor first, and, if at all, God afterwards.
(I said the same thing in my blog post here.)
- Sovereign Catholic inflexibility is sovereign Catholic charity...The Saints are the types of this unswerving and sovereign fidelity to God, the heroes of charity and religion...Liberal charity is condescending, affectionate, even tender in appearance, but at bottom it is an essential contempt for the true good of men, of the supreme interests of truth and [ultimately] of God.
Chapter XX - Polemical Charity and Liberalism
- Liberalism...accuses Catholics of lack of charity in their polemics...Si palam res est, repetitio injuria non est: "To say what everybody knows is no injury."
- As the Church has always considered heresy a very grave evil, so has she always called its adherents bad and pervert...There is then no sin against charity in calling evil; its authors abettors and its disciples bad; all its acts, words, and writings iniquitous, wicked, malicious. In short, the wolf has always been called the wolf; and in so calling it, no one ever has believed that wrong was done to the flock and the shepherd.
- St. John the Baptist calls the Pharisees a "race of vipers"; Jesus Christ, Our Divine Saviour, hurls at them the epithets "hypocrites, whitened sepulchres, a perverse and adulterous generation," without thinking for this reason that He sullies the sanctity of His benevolent speech. St. Paul criticizes the schismatic Cretians as "always liars, evil beasts, slothful bellies." The same Apostle calls Elymas the magician a "Seducer, full of guile and deceit, a child of the devil, an enemy of all justice."
- The pacific St. Thomas of Acquin [Aquinas] forgets the calm of his cold syllogisms when he hurls his violent apostrophe against William of St. Amour and his disciples: "Enemies of God" he cries out, "ministers of the devil, members of antichrist, ignorami, perverts, reprobates!"...The seraphic St. Bonaventure, so full of sweetness, overwhelms his adversary Gerard with such epithets as "impudent, calumniator, spirit of malice, impious, shameless, ignorant, impostor, malefactor, perfidious, ingrate!"
- Did St. Francis de Sales, so delicately exquisite and tender, ever purr softly over the heretics of his age and country?...In his Introduction to the Devout Life, that precious and popular work, he expresses himself again: "If the declared enemies of God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry wolf when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock and in every way and place we may meet him."
NEXT SECTION...
- some individuals, even many, who, in spite of themselves, are dragged into the torrent of error for no other reason than their supreme ignorance.
- Most heresies which have rent the bosom of the Church have attempted to disguise their errors under an exterior of affected piety. Jansenism, perhaps the most subtle of all heresies, won over a great number of adherents by its cunning simulation of sanctity. Its morals were rigid to the extreme; its dogmas formidable; the exterior conduct of its promoters ascetic and apparently enlightened. It wore the visage of a Saint, while at heart it reeked with the corruption of pride. The majority of ancient heresies turned upon very subtle points of doctrine, which only the skilled theologian could discern, and upon which the ignorant multitude could give no judgment, save such as they received in confidence from their leaders. By a very natural consequence, when the hierarch of a diocese fell into error, most of his subordinates—clerics and laity full of confidence in their pastor—fell with him.
- The diffusion of many ancient heresies, which were mostly purely theological, was nearly always due to this cause. Hence we find St. Jerome crying out in the fourth century: Ingemuit universus orbis se esse Arianum: "The whole world groaned to find itself Arian."
- The halo in which [Liberalism] was first depicted has shown itself to be, not the soft light of Heaven, but the lurid glare of Hell.
(By their fruits you shall know them)
- The new doctrines which it preached—and which it wished to substitute for ancient truth—had nothing abstract nor metaphysical; it rejected everything but brutal facts, which betrayed it as the offspring of Satan and the enemy of mankind. The terrors of the French Revolution were the evidence of its origin, as sprung from the corruptions of a society that had abandoned God and battened on the bestial results of Voltarian skepticism
- Liberalism a living lion going about seeking whom he may devour. Its dreadful doctrine is permeating society to the core; it has become the modern political creed and threatens us with a second revolution, to turn the world over once again to paganism. Are there any good Catholics who do not believe this? Let them but read the signs of the times, not with the eyes of the world, but by the light of the Faith, which Jesus Christ gave to them.
- Insubordination, illegitimate interests and the desire to take and make things easy are abundantly at hand to prejudice and to blind.
Chapter XVI - The Symptoms of Liberalism
- We are surrounded by Liberalism in all its shapes and varieties, and it behooves us to be on our guard against its subtle dangers.
- To facilitate the matter, we will divide Liberals, whether persons or writings, into three classes:
1) Extreme Liberals; 2) Moderate Liberals; 3) Quasi Liberals, or those only tainted with Liberalism.
- The Extreme Liberal is easily recognized; he does not attempt to deny or conceal his perversity. He is the declared enemy of the Pope, of priests, of everything ecclesiastical...He is a revolutionist, socialist, anarchist...He belongs to secret societies, dies in their embrace and is buried by their ritual.
- The moderate Liberal is just as bad as his extreme confrere, but he takes good care not to appear so. Social conventionalities and good manners are everything to him.
- At the mere mention of the name of a nihilistic or socialistic club, he is thrown into a cold sweat, for there, he declares, the masses are seduced into principles which lead to the destruction of the foundations of society; yet, according to him, there is no danger, no inconvenience in a free lyceum where the same principles are elegantly debated and sympathetically applauded; for who could dare to condemn the scientific discussion of social problems? The moderate Liberal does not detest the Pope; he may even express admiration for his sagacity; he only blames certain pretensions of the Roman Curia and certain exaggerations of Ultramontanism, which do not fall in with the trend of modern thought.
- He may even go to Church and, stranger still, sometimes approach the Sacraments; but his maxim is, in the Church to live as a Christian, outside of the Church to live as the world lives, according to the times in which one is born and not obstinately to swim against the stream.
- The Catholic simply tainted with Liberalism is generally a good man and sincerely pious; he exhales nevertheless an odor of Liberalism in everything he says, writes, or takes up...His strong point is charity; he is charity itself. What horror fills his soul at the exaggerations of the Ultramontane press! To treat as a liar the man who propagates false ideas is, in the eyes of this singular theologian, to sin against the Holy Spirit. To him the falsifier is simply misguided; it is not the poor fellow's fault; he has, simple soul, been misled. We ought neither to resist nor combat him; we must strive to attract him by soft words and pretty compliments. How the devil must chuckle over the mushy charity held out as a bait to abet his own cause!
- From the Gospel he is careful to cite only those texts flavored with milk and honey. The terrible invectives of Our Lord against Pharisaism astonish and confound him; they seem to be an excess of language on the part of our Divine Saviour!
- He saves the treasures of his tolerance and his charity for the sworn enemies of the Faith! What is more natural? Does not the poor man want to attract them? On the other hand, for the most heroic defenders of the Faith, he has only sarcasm and invective.
- The extreme Liberal roars his Liberalism; the moderate Liberal mouths it; the tainted Catholic whispers and sighs it. All are bad enough and serve the devil well.
Chapter XVII - Christian Prudence and Liberalism
- It will be well first to distinguish, in a general way, three possible relations between a Catholic and Liberalism, or rather between a Catholic and Liberals: 1) Necessary relations; 2) Useful relations; 3) Relations of pure affection or pleasure.
- Necessary relations are imposed upon everyone by his station in life and his particular position; they cannot be avoided. Such are the family relations, the relations of inferior and superior, etc.
- It is evident that a son who has the misfortune to have a Liberal father cannot on this account abandon him, nor the wife the husband, the brother the sister, nor the parent the child, except in the case where their Liberalism exacts from any of their respective inferiors acts essentially opposed to religion, so as to conduce to a formal apostacy.
- Prayer should be his chief recourse, prayer for himself and the victims of error. He should avoid, as far as possible, all conversations on this topic, but when he finds that a controversy is thrust upon him, let him accept it in the full confidence of the truth, and armed with effective weapons of defense and offense. A prudent spiritual director should be consulted in the selection of his arsenal.
- Obedience to a superior in all that is not directly or indirectly against faith and morals is his bounden duty, but it is equally his duty to refuse obedience to anything directly or indirectly in opposition to the integrity of his faith. Courage he can draw only from supernatural sources; God, who sees the struggle, will not refuse all the assistance needed
- There are other relations which we have with Liberals, which are not absolutely, but which are morally indispensable, and without which social life, which consists in a mutual exchange of services, is impossible. Such are the relations of commerce, trade, labor, the professions, etc...The fundamental rule in these cases is not to enter into unnecessary intercourse; what the gearing of the social machine demands, and no more, is sufficient...Guided by these rules, one could live without injury to his faith amidst a population of Jews...when the Faith is in question, despicable in all men's eyes does he become who would sell his birthright for a mess of pottage.
- Relations of pure friendship, pleasure or affectation, which we enter into as mere matters of taste or inclination, should be eschewed and, if once contracted, ought to be voluntarily broken off. Such relations are a certain danger to our faith. Our Lord says that he who loves danger shall perish in it. Is it difficult to sever such connections? What if it is; we must burst the bonds that place us in peril. Reflect for a moment. If your Liberal companion with whom you are constantly associating were subject to some contagious disease, would you then court him?
- There is but one condition upon which intimacy with a Liberal is justifiable at all, and that is for the purpose of converting him. For this, two dispositions are necessary: your Liberal friend's willingness and your capacity to lead him to the light. Even here danger is not lacking. One must be very sure of his ground before he attempts the task.
Chapter XVIII - Liberalism and Literature
- Our modern literature is saturated with its sentiments, and for this reason should we take every precaution to guard against its infections, of which so many are the miserable victims...Spare your praises of Liberal books, whatever be their scientific or literary merit, or at least praise with great reserve, never forgetting the reprobation rightly due to a book of Liberal spirit or tendency.
- They are not apt to seek us out, and if they are thrust upon us, our consent to their perusal is practically all our own doing. We have none but ourselves to blame if they prove to be our own undoing.
(Internet, TV, radio today)
- Many Catholics, by far too naive (even some engaged in Catholic journalism), are perpetually seeking to pose as impartial and are perpetually daubing themselves with a veneer of flattery. They are fearful of being considered narrow-minded and partial if they do not give the devil his due... they imagine this to be a powerful means of attracting the enemy. Alas, the folly of the weaklings; they play a losing game; it is they who are insensibly attracted, not the enemy! They simply fly at the bait held out by the cunning fisher who satanically guides the destinies of Liberalism.
- How charming, how beautiful, how tender, how pathetic, how humane; what lofty morality, what exquisite sentiment! Now what was the real purport of the book and what was its essence? To lift up Guatama, the founder of Buddhism, at the expense of Jesus Christ, the Founder of Christianity! Gautama, whom he intended to stand out as at least the divine equal of the Founder of Christianity, became in his hands in reality a mere echo of Christ, the image of Christ, made to rival the Word made flesh! Buddhism, in the borrowed garments of Christianity, was thus made to appeal to the ideals of Christian peoples, and gaining a footing in their admiration and affections, to usurp the throne in the Christian sanctuary.
(So-called Ecumenism/Interfaith Dialogue)
- What difference does it make whether a book be excellent in a literary sense or not, if its effect be the loss of souls and not their salvation?
- Heresy under a charming disguise is a thousand times more dangerous than heresy exposed in the harsh and arid garb of the scholastic syllogism— through which the death's skull grins in unadorned hideousness...Arianism had its poets to propagate its errors in popular verse. Lutheranism had its humanists, amongst whom the elegant Erasmus shone as a brilliant writer...
- Shall we crown these condemners of our faith with the laurels of our praises and laud them for the very qualities which alone make them dangerous! And for what purpose? That we may appear impartial? No. Impartiality is not permissible when it is distorted to the offense of truth...
Chapter XIX - Charity and Liberalism
- Narrow! Intolerant! Uncompromising! These are the epithets of odium hurled by Liberal votaries of all degrees at us Ultramontanes. Are not Liberals our neighbors like other men? Do we not owe to them the same charity we apply to others? Are not your vigorous denunciations, it is urged against us, harsh and uncharitable and in the very teeth of the teaching of Christianity, which is essentially a religion of love? Such is the accusation continually flung in our face. Let us see what its value is. Let us see all that the word "Charity" signifies.
- The Catechism [of the Council of Trent], that popular and most authoritative epitome of Catholic theology, gives us the most complete and succinct definition of charity; it is full of wisdom and philosophy. Charity is a supernatural virtue which induces us to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves for the love of God...Amare est velle bonum, replies the philosopher. "To love is to wish good to him whom we love."...What is that good which true love wishes? First of all supernatural good.
- It follows, therefore, that we can love our neighbor when displeasing him, when opposing him, when causing him some material injury...
- When we correct the wicked by restraining or by punishing them, we do nonetheless love them. This is charity—and perfect charity.
- Therefore, to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a true act of charity. Not to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a sin.
- Modern Liberalism reverses this order; it imposes a false notion of charity: our neighbor first, and, if at all, God afterwards.
(I said the same thing in my blog post here.)
- Sovereign Catholic inflexibility is sovereign Catholic charity...The Saints are the types of this unswerving and sovereign fidelity to God, the heroes of charity and religion...Liberal charity is condescending, affectionate, even tender in appearance, but at bottom it is an essential contempt for the true good of men, of the supreme interests of truth and [ultimately] of God.
Chapter XX - Polemical Charity and Liberalism
- Liberalism...accuses Catholics of lack of charity in their polemics...Si palam res est, repetitio injuria non est: "To say what everybody knows is no injury."
- As the Church has always considered heresy a very grave evil, so has she always called its adherents bad and pervert...There is then no sin against charity in calling evil; its authors abettors and its disciples bad; all its acts, words, and writings iniquitous, wicked, malicious. In short, the wolf has always been called the wolf; and in so calling it, no one ever has believed that wrong was done to the flock and the shepherd.
- St. John the Baptist calls the Pharisees a "race of vipers"; Jesus Christ, Our Divine Saviour, hurls at them the epithets "hypocrites, whitened sepulchres, a perverse and adulterous generation," without thinking for this reason that He sullies the sanctity of His benevolent speech. St. Paul criticizes the schismatic Cretians as "always liars, evil beasts, slothful bellies." The same Apostle calls Elymas the magician a "Seducer, full of guile and deceit, a child of the devil, an enemy of all justice."
- The pacific St. Thomas of Acquin [Aquinas] forgets the calm of his cold syllogisms when he hurls his violent apostrophe against William of St. Amour and his disciples: "Enemies of God" he cries out, "ministers of the devil, members of antichrist, ignorami, perverts, reprobates!"...The seraphic St. Bonaventure, so full of sweetness, overwhelms his adversary Gerard with such epithets as "impudent, calumniator, spirit of malice, impious, shameless, ignorant, impostor, malefactor, perfidious, ingrate!"
- Did St. Francis de Sales, so delicately exquisite and tender, ever purr softly over the heretics of his age and country?...In his Introduction to the Devout Life, that precious and popular work, he expresses himself again: "If the declared enemies of God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry wolf when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock and in every way and place we may meet him."
NEXT SECTION...
Saturday, January 12, 2013
What Is Liberalism? - Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany (1899 - Imprimatur) - Chapters VIII - XIV
Chapter VIII - Shadow and Penumbra
- When we retrospect the field of history...the various heresies that have from time to time appeared, seem clearly and distinctly marked off from the environment of the orthodox faith...But in this we are deceived; it is an illusion caused by distance. The distinction appears so clear, so definite only because we stand on the eminence of the present...A closer study, placing us in the intellectual contact with these epochs, enables us to observe taht never, in any period of history, were the dividing lines between truth and error defined with such geometrical exactness.
- In our own times Liberalism has its Semi-Liberalism, which is nothing else than Catholic Liberalism. This is what the Syllabus [of Errors] terms modern Liberalism...Liberalism is the baneful twilight of the truth beginning to be obscured in their intelligence, or heresy which has not yet taken complete possession.
- We should not fail to note that there are those who are just emerging from the darkness of error into the twilight of truth. This class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will ever enter the city of light depends on their own sincerity and honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and seek it with sincere purpose, God's grace will not fail them...but on the border land between the realms of light and darkness the Devil is most active and ingenious in detaining those who seem about to escape his snares, and spares nothing to retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest his infernal machinations if they only perceived them. His method in the instance of persons infected with Liberalism is to suffer them to place one foot within the domain of truth provided they keep the other inside the camp of error.
- It is because [the Liberal] has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze - a fog which hides from him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by Satan, are invariably drawing him.
Chapter IX - Two Kinds of Liberalism
- Philosophy and theology teach that there are two kinds of atheism, doctrinal or speculative, and practical. The first consists in the open and direct denial of the existence of God; the second consists in acting and living without denying the existence of God, but yet as if He did not really exist...the latter are more numerous. It is the same with Liberalism and Liberals.
- Practical Liberalists are by far in the greater majority. Like a flock of sheep, with closed eyes, they follow their leaders. They know nothing in truth of principles and systems, and, did they perceive the perversity of their instructors, would perhaps detest the. But deceived by a false cry or shibboleth, they troop docilely after their false guides.
- Amongst Catholic Liberals, many of them go to Mass, even make novenas, and yet when they come in contact with the world lead lives of Practical Liberals. They make it a rule "to live up to the times," as they call it. The Church they believe to be somewhat out-of-date, and old fogy; that she is held back by a certain set of reactionaries, ultramontanes; but they have hopes that she will in the course of time catch up with the modern spirit of progress, of which they are the van. The barnacles of medievalism still encumber the bark of Peter...
- Then will a new theology be developed more in conformity with the needs of the times, more in harmony with the modern spirit which makes such large demands upon our "intellectual liberty."
(This is indeed the foundation of the Traditionalist argument - that Vatican II promoted a new theology: "Novus Ordo" (New Order), New Evangelization, etc. And we have certainly seen it repeated that the entire foundation of the council was to update the Church for these modern times and have even heard the analogy used of stripping the barnacles off of the ark)
Chapter X - Liberalism of all Shades Condemned by the Church
- Liberalism stands under the formal ban of the Church, which is sufficient for all faithful Catholics. It would be impossible for an error so widespread and so radical to escape condemnation. Upon its appearance in France, the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, which contains in germ all the follies of Liberalism, was condemned by Pius VI.
(Pope Leo XIII famously said, "The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God"; the controversy is certainly stirred by Dignitatis Humanae declaring many of the so called rights previously condemned by Pius VI, Leo XIII and others as fundamental rights of man)
- Gregory XVI, in his Encyclical Mirari Vos, explicitly condemned Liberalism...[then] God raised up to his Church Pius IX, who justly passed into history as the Scourge of Liberalism. Liberal error under all its forms, shapes and shades has been unmasked by this Pope.
- Numerous briefs and allocutions by Pius IX have clearly shown to Christian peoples what this baneful heresy is, and the Syllabus has put on the final seal of condemnation...Pius IX spoke thus: "Atheism in legislation, indifference in matters of religion and the pernicious maxims which go under the name of Liberal Catholicism are the true causes of the destruction of States; they have been the ruin in France...I have always condemned Liberal Catholicism and I will condemn it again forty times over if necessary."
- In 1873, St. Ambrose of Milan, the Sovereign Pontiff thus expresses himself: "People are not wanting who pretend to form an alliance between light and darkness, and to associate justice with iniquity in favor of those doctrines called Liberal Catholicism, which, based on the most pernicious principles, show themselves favorable to the intrusion of secular power upon the domain of spirituals; they lead their partisans to esteem, or, at least to tolerate iniquitous laws, as if it were not written that no one can serve two masters...Without being warned of it, perhaps without being conscious of it, they second the projects of wicked men, but also because keeping with certain limits, they show themselves with some appearance of probity and sound doctrine. They thus deceive the indiscreet friends of conciliation and seduce honest people who otherwise have strenuously combatted a declared error."
- The same said, "In truth you will extirpate the fatal root of discord and you will efficaciously contribute to unite and strengthen the minds of all in so combating this insidious error, much more dangerous than an open enemy because it hides itself under the specious veil of zeal and of charity."
- "It exhausts itself in interpreting the traditions and teachings of the Church by running them through the mold of its own private opinions."
Chapter XI - The Solemn Condemnation of Liberalism by the Syllabus
- Liberalism is always strategically cunning. It rejected these very plain condemnations on the ground that they had all been made to private persons, that they were, therefore, of an entirely private character, by no means ex cathedra, and, of course, not binding...A solemn official public document of a general character and universally promulgated would sweep away the cobwebs with which Liberal Catholics had endeavored to bind the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff...it was The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864. All faithful Catholics hailed it with an enthusiasm...Liberal Catholics thought it more prudent to strike at it covertly by overwhelming it with artificial interpretations.
- The Syllabus crystallizes all these errors and stamps them with the seal of the explicit and formal condemnation of the Church...Let us briefly enumerate them.
Condemnation of liberty of worship (propositions 15, 77 and 78); of the place of governments (propositions 20 and 28); of the absolute supremacy of the State (proposition 38); of the secularization of public education (proposition 45, 40 and 48); of the absolute separation of Church and State (proposition 15); of the absolute right to legislate without regard to God (proposition 56); of the principle of non-intervention (proposition 62); of the right of insurrection (proposition 63); of civil marriage (proposition 73 and others); of the liberty (license) of the press (proposition 79); of universal suffrage as the source of authority (proposition 60); of even the name of Liberalism (proposition 88).
- Liberals regard the Syllabus of Errors as their most detestable enemy, as the complete symbol of what they term Clericalism, Ultramontanism and Reaction, we may rest assured that it has been well interpreted in that quarter. Satan, bad as he is, is not a fool, and sees clearly enough where the blow falls with most effect...What he most abhors and defames possesses an unimpeachable guaranty of its truth.
Chapter XII - Like Liberalism but not Liberalism, Liberalism but not Like It
- To effect a confusion of ideas is an old scheme of the devil. Not to understand clearly and precisely is generally the source of intellectual error.
- Every heresy in the Church bears testimony to Satan's success in deceiving the human intellect by obscuring and perverting the meaning of words.
- For some, Liberalism consists in certain political forms; for others, in a certain tolerant and generous spirit opposed to despotism and tyranny; for others again it means simply civil equality; for many it becomes a vague and uncertain sentiment, which shapes itself into opposition to all arbitrary government.
(This is important to note, that some are well-intentioned but ignorant of truth to the effect that their own judgment - well-intentioned as it may be - is wrong).
- Their essence consists in the civil authority by virtue of which they govern, whether that authority be in form republican, democratic, aristocratic, monarchical; it may be an elective, hereditary, mixed or absolute monarchy. These various forms of themselves have nothing to do with Liberalism...if they acknowledge as the basis of public right the supreme morality of the Church and her absolute right in all things within her own competency, they are truly Catholic governments.
(It doesn't matter what style of government, it can still either be in union with God & the Church or divorced from it and therefore doomed to perdition)
- To believe that monarchies are of themselves (ex se) more religious than republics is an ignorant prejudice...A government, whatever be its form, is Catholic if its constitution, its legislation, and its politics are based on Catholic principles; it is Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation, and its politics on rationalistic principles.
- Let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles of Catholic right...then, this monarchy and this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and anti-Catholic.
Chapter XIII - The Name Liberalism
- It cannot be said that we describe the situation in exaggerated terms...Liberalism and Catholic Liberalism have been explicitly condemned by Pius IX...the Liberalist current in Europe and America is anti-Catholic and rationalistic.
- Do they not regard as their sole and most potent enemy what they contemptuously term "Clericalism" "Ultramontanism" and do they not describe the Church as medieval, reactionary, the opponent of progress and the nurse of superstition? When then the term is so intimately associated with a Rationalism so radically opposed to the Church, how may Catholics use it with any hope of separating it from its current meaning?
- Rationalism is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades...[its advocates] place [themselves] in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ!
- There is in our day a sect which calls itself "The Old Catholics' " Suppose that we, who are in the true sense of the word "old Catholics" "for our Catholicity dates from Calvary and the cenacle of Jerusalem" (which are proofs of its antiquity)...But could it not be properly objected that this is a false-sounding title, inasmuch as it is in our day the cunning device of a schismatical sect? Certainly it would give occasion to well-informed Catholics to believe that we were schismatic and to the schismatics, who style themselves "Old Catholics" occasion to welcome us as new comrades in their rebellion against the Church.
(What he is saying here is that there was a group at the time who CLAIMED to be holding to ancient Traditions but which actually had perverted those Traditions and was being condemned for its behaviors by the Pope for being schismatic; this is interesting to note because what we have today are Traditionalist Catholics claiming to hold to true Tradition while post-conciliar Novus Ordo Catholics also claim a "ressourcement" return to the roots of Tradition...and they take turns calling each other schismatic).
- It may be said that words are of little importance—why quibble in this way over the meaning of a term? We protest; words are of paramount importance, especially in our own day, when intellectual confusion so obscures fundamental truths in the modern mind. Words represent ideas. That is their value and their use. Modern error largely owes its success to its use of terms of an ambiguous character.
(In 1969 Cardinal Ottaviani submitted a formal denouncement of the Liturgical Reforms from the Novus Ordo Missae; among his chief complaints was that they had redefined the mass no longer as a sacrifice but instead as a general supper...Protestantizing the definition of the mass. He was dismissed and told that their definition of the mass in the general instruction was not a definition but rather a "description." He was effectively told it was all semantics and not to get hung up on words.)
- Agnosticism and Positivism have thus retained a Christian phraseology without the Christian meaning. They speak of God and sanctity and holiness and duty and freedom, but they have eviscerated the Christian meaning. Still these terms, with their former meanings, pass current in the public mind and so half-disguise the fatalism and paganism of the agnostic and positivist schools. Socialism has adopted the terms "liberty," "equality" and "fraternity" as its watchwords, where in reality they mean "revolution "destruction" and "despotism '" Yet it deceives the simple by thus disguising its real intent.
(The three words of the French Revolution denounced so many times as a false banner by former Pontiffs...Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness are the same variation of those former three perniciously deceptive words).
- St. Paul exhorts Timothy to be on his guard, not only against false science, but also against profane novelties of words ...It is a question of truth and salvation. No, you cannot be a Liberal Catholic; incompatibles cannot be reconciled. You cannot assume this reprobated name, although you may be able by subtle sophisms to discover some secret way of reconciling it with your faith.
(Pope Pius XII, On the Ecumenical Movement, 1949, #II They shall also be on guard lest, on the false pretext that more attention should be paid to the points on which we agree than to those on which we differ, a dangerous indifferentism be encouraged)
- Christian charity will not defend you, although you may repeatedly invoke it and would make it synonymous with the toleration of error. The first condition of charity is not to violate the truth, and charity cannot be the snare with which to surprise faith into the support of error. While we may admit the sincerity of those who are not Catholic, their error must always be held up to reprobation. We may pity them in their darkness, but we can never abet their error by ignoring it or tolerating it.
- Most to be feared, however, is not he who openly boasts his Liberalism, but he who eschews the name and, vehemently denying it, is yet steeped to the lips in it and continually speaks and acts under its inspiration. And if such a man be a Catholic by profession, all the more dangerous is he to the faith of others, for he is the hidden enemy sowing tares amidst the wheat.
Chapter XIV - Liberalism and Free-Thought
- Persons, societies, books, governments which reject, in matters of faith and morals, the only and exclusive criterion—that of the Catholic Church—are Liberals.
- THERE IS NO TRUE SPIRITUAL LIFE WHERE JESUS CHRIST IS NOT
(This applies to Jews, Muslims, pagans, etc.
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Session 11, 1442 It firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the catholic church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives)
- How much do perverse Catholics serve the devil by obstinately clinging to such associations and participating in their works! In the folly of their ignorance, which they assert against the wisdom of the Church, they harden their consciences to the practical guidance of the Holy See and blindly enlist in the service of an enemy whose cunning deludes them into the slavery of Hell—under the disguise of freedom! They forget that the Truth alone makes them free...Ultramontanism will never cause you to lose your soul; Liberalism is a broad road to the infernal abyss.
NEXT SECTION...
- When we retrospect the field of history...the various heresies that have from time to time appeared, seem clearly and distinctly marked off from the environment of the orthodox faith...But in this we are deceived; it is an illusion caused by distance. The distinction appears so clear, so definite only because we stand on the eminence of the present...A closer study, placing us in the intellectual contact with these epochs, enables us to observe taht never, in any period of history, were the dividing lines between truth and error defined with such geometrical exactness.
- In our own times Liberalism has its Semi-Liberalism, which is nothing else than Catholic Liberalism. This is what the Syllabus [of Errors] terms modern Liberalism...Liberalism is the baneful twilight of the truth beginning to be obscured in their intelligence, or heresy which has not yet taken complete possession.
- We should not fail to note that there are those who are just emerging from the darkness of error into the twilight of truth. This class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will ever enter the city of light depends on their own sincerity and honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and seek it with sincere purpose, God's grace will not fail them...but on the border land between the realms of light and darkness the Devil is most active and ingenious in detaining those who seem about to escape his snares, and spares nothing to retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest his infernal machinations if they only perceived them. His method in the instance of persons infected with Liberalism is to suffer them to place one foot within the domain of truth provided they keep the other inside the camp of error.
- It is because [the Liberal] has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze - a fog which hides from him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by Satan, are invariably drawing him.
Chapter IX - Two Kinds of Liberalism
- Philosophy and theology teach that there are two kinds of atheism, doctrinal or speculative, and practical. The first consists in the open and direct denial of the existence of God; the second consists in acting and living without denying the existence of God, but yet as if He did not really exist...the latter are more numerous. It is the same with Liberalism and Liberals.
- Practical Liberalists are by far in the greater majority. Like a flock of sheep, with closed eyes, they follow their leaders. They know nothing in truth of principles and systems, and, did they perceive the perversity of their instructors, would perhaps detest the. But deceived by a false cry or shibboleth, they troop docilely after their false guides.
- Amongst Catholic Liberals, many of them go to Mass, even make novenas, and yet when they come in contact with the world lead lives of Practical Liberals. They make it a rule "to live up to the times," as they call it. The Church they believe to be somewhat out-of-date, and old fogy; that she is held back by a certain set of reactionaries, ultramontanes; but they have hopes that she will in the course of time catch up with the modern spirit of progress, of which they are the van. The barnacles of medievalism still encumber the bark of Peter...
- Then will a new theology be developed more in conformity with the needs of the times, more in harmony with the modern spirit which makes such large demands upon our "intellectual liberty."
(This is indeed the foundation of the Traditionalist argument - that Vatican II promoted a new theology: "Novus Ordo" (New Order), New Evangelization, etc. And we have certainly seen it repeated that the entire foundation of the council was to update the Church for these modern times and have even heard the analogy used of stripping the barnacles off of the ark)
Chapter X - Liberalism of all Shades Condemned by the Church
- Liberalism stands under the formal ban of the Church, which is sufficient for all faithful Catholics. It would be impossible for an error so widespread and so radical to escape condemnation. Upon its appearance in France, the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, which contains in germ all the follies of Liberalism, was condemned by Pius VI.
(Pope Leo XIII famously said, "The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God"; the controversy is certainly stirred by Dignitatis Humanae declaring many of the so called rights previously condemned by Pius VI, Leo XIII and others as fundamental rights of man)
- Gregory XVI, in his Encyclical Mirari Vos, explicitly condemned Liberalism...[then] God raised up to his Church Pius IX, who justly passed into history as the Scourge of Liberalism. Liberal error under all its forms, shapes and shades has been unmasked by this Pope.
- Numerous briefs and allocutions by Pius IX have clearly shown to Christian peoples what this baneful heresy is, and the Syllabus has put on the final seal of condemnation...Pius IX spoke thus: "Atheism in legislation, indifference in matters of religion and the pernicious maxims which go under the name of Liberal Catholicism are the true causes of the destruction of States; they have been the ruin in France...I have always condemned Liberal Catholicism and I will condemn it again forty times over if necessary."
- In 1873, St. Ambrose of Milan, the Sovereign Pontiff thus expresses himself: "People are not wanting who pretend to form an alliance between light and darkness, and to associate justice with iniquity in favor of those doctrines called Liberal Catholicism, which, based on the most pernicious principles, show themselves favorable to the intrusion of secular power upon the domain of spirituals; they lead their partisans to esteem, or, at least to tolerate iniquitous laws, as if it were not written that no one can serve two masters...Without being warned of it, perhaps without being conscious of it, they second the projects of wicked men, but also because keeping with certain limits, they show themselves with some appearance of probity and sound doctrine. They thus deceive the indiscreet friends of conciliation and seduce honest people who otherwise have strenuously combatted a declared error."
- The same said, "In truth you will extirpate the fatal root of discord and you will efficaciously contribute to unite and strengthen the minds of all in so combating this insidious error, much more dangerous than an open enemy because it hides itself under the specious veil of zeal and of charity."
- "It exhausts itself in interpreting the traditions and teachings of the Church by running them through the mold of its own private opinions."
Chapter XI - The Solemn Condemnation of Liberalism by the Syllabus
- Liberalism is always strategically cunning. It rejected these very plain condemnations on the ground that they had all been made to private persons, that they were, therefore, of an entirely private character, by no means ex cathedra, and, of course, not binding...A solemn official public document of a general character and universally promulgated would sweep away the cobwebs with which Liberal Catholics had endeavored to bind the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff...it was The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864. All faithful Catholics hailed it with an enthusiasm...Liberal Catholics thought it more prudent to strike at it covertly by overwhelming it with artificial interpretations.
- The Syllabus crystallizes all these errors and stamps them with the seal of the explicit and formal condemnation of the Church...Let us briefly enumerate them.
Condemnation of liberty of worship (propositions 15, 77 and 78); of the place of governments (propositions 20 and 28); of the absolute supremacy of the State (proposition 38); of the secularization of public education (proposition 45, 40 and 48); of the absolute separation of Church and State (proposition 15); of the absolute right to legislate without regard to God (proposition 56); of the principle of non-intervention (proposition 62); of the right of insurrection (proposition 63); of civil marriage (proposition 73 and others); of the liberty (license) of the press (proposition 79); of universal suffrage as the source of authority (proposition 60); of even the name of Liberalism (proposition 88).
- Liberals regard the Syllabus of Errors as their most detestable enemy, as the complete symbol of what they term Clericalism, Ultramontanism and Reaction, we may rest assured that it has been well interpreted in that quarter. Satan, bad as he is, is not a fool, and sees clearly enough where the blow falls with most effect...What he most abhors and defames possesses an unimpeachable guaranty of its truth.
Chapter XII - Like Liberalism but not Liberalism, Liberalism but not Like It
- To effect a confusion of ideas is an old scheme of the devil. Not to understand clearly and precisely is generally the source of intellectual error.
- Every heresy in the Church bears testimony to Satan's success in deceiving the human intellect by obscuring and perverting the meaning of words.
- For some, Liberalism consists in certain political forms; for others, in a certain tolerant and generous spirit opposed to despotism and tyranny; for others again it means simply civil equality; for many it becomes a vague and uncertain sentiment, which shapes itself into opposition to all arbitrary government.
(This is important to note, that some are well-intentioned but ignorant of truth to the effect that their own judgment - well-intentioned as it may be - is wrong).
- Their essence consists in the civil authority by virtue of which they govern, whether that authority be in form republican, democratic, aristocratic, monarchical; it may be an elective, hereditary, mixed or absolute monarchy. These various forms of themselves have nothing to do with Liberalism...if they acknowledge as the basis of public right the supreme morality of the Church and her absolute right in all things within her own competency, they are truly Catholic governments.
(It doesn't matter what style of government, it can still either be in union with God & the Church or divorced from it and therefore doomed to perdition)
- To believe that monarchies are of themselves (ex se) more religious than republics is an ignorant prejudice...A government, whatever be its form, is Catholic if its constitution, its legislation, and its politics are based on Catholic principles; it is Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation, and its politics on rationalistic principles.
- Let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles of Catholic right...then, this monarchy and this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and anti-Catholic.
Chapter XIII - The Name Liberalism
- It cannot be said that we describe the situation in exaggerated terms...Liberalism and Catholic Liberalism have been explicitly condemned by Pius IX...the Liberalist current in Europe and America is anti-Catholic and rationalistic.
- Do they not regard as their sole and most potent enemy what they contemptuously term "Clericalism" "Ultramontanism" and do they not describe the Church as medieval, reactionary, the opponent of progress and the nurse of superstition? When then the term is so intimately associated with a Rationalism so radically opposed to the Church, how may Catholics use it with any hope of separating it from its current meaning?
- Rationalism is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades...[its advocates] place [themselves] in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ!
- There is in our day a sect which calls itself "The Old Catholics' " Suppose that we, who are in the true sense of the word "old Catholics" "for our Catholicity dates from Calvary and the cenacle of Jerusalem" (which are proofs of its antiquity)...But could it not be properly objected that this is a false-sounding title, inasmuch as it is in our day the cunning device of a schismatical sect? Certainly it would give occasion to well-informed Catholics to believe that we were schismatic and to the schismatics, who style themselves "Old Catholics" occasion to welcome us as new comrades in their rebellion against the Church.
(What he is saying here is that there was a group at the time who CLAIMED to be holding to ancient Traditions but which actually had perverted those Traditions and was being condemned for its behaviors by the Pope for being schismatic; this is interesting to note because what we have today are Traditionalist Catholics claiming to hold to true Tradition while post-conciliar Novus Ordo Catholics also claim a "ressourcement" return to the roots of Tradition...and they take turns calling each other schismatic).
- It may be said that words are of little importance—why quibble in this way over the meaning of a term? We protest; words are of paramount importance, especially in our own day, when intellectual confusion so obscures fundamental truths in the modern mind. Words represent ideas. That is their value and their use. Modern error largely owes its success to its use of terms of an ambiguous character.
(In 1969 Cardinal Ottaviani submitted a formal denouncement of the Liturgical Reforms from the Novus Ordo Missae; among his chief complaints was that they had redefined the mass no longer as a sacrifice but instead as a general supper...Protestantizing the definition of the mass. He was dismissed and told that their definition of the mass in the general instruction was not a definition but rather a "description." He was effectively told it was all semantics and not to get hung up on words.)
- Agnosticism and Positivism have thus retained a Christian phraseology without the Christian meaning. They speak of God and sanctity and holiness and duty and freedom, but they have eviscerated the Christian meaning. Still these terms, with their former meanings, pass current in the public mind and so half-disguise the fatalism and paganism of the agnostic and positivist schools. Socialism has adopted the terms "liberty," "equality" and "fraternity" as its watchwords, where in reality they mean "revolution "destruction" and "despotism '" Yet it deceives the simple by thus disguising its real intent.
(The three words of the French Revolution denounced so many times as a false banner by former Pontiffs...Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness are the same variation of those former three perniciously deceptive words).
- St. Paul exhorts Timothy to be on his guard, not only against false science, but also against profane novelties of words ...It is a question of truth and salvation. No, you cannot be a Liberal Catholic; incompatibles cannot be reconciled. You cannot assume this reprobated name, although you may be able by subtle sophisms to discover some secret way of reconciling it with your faith.
(Pope Pius XII, On the Ecumenical Movement, 1949, #II They shall also be on guard lest, on the false pretext that more attention should be paid to the points on which we agree than to those on which we differ, a dangerous indifferentism be encouraged)
- Christian charity will not defend you, although you may repeatedly invoke it and would make it synonymous with the toleration of error. The first condition of charity is not to violate the truth, and charity cannot be the snare with which to surprise faith into the support of error. While we may admit the sincerity of those who are not Catholic, their error must always be held up to reprobation. We may pity them in their darkness, but we can never abet their error by ignoring it or tolerating it.
- Most to be feared, however, is not he who openly boasts his Liberalism, but he who eschews the name and, vehemently denying it, is yet steeped to the lips in it and continually speaks and acts under its inspiration. And if such a man be a Catholic by profession, all the more dangerous is he to the faith of others, for he is the hidden enemy sowing tares amidst the wheat.
Chapter XIV - Liberalism and Free-Thought
- Persons, societies, books, governments which reject, in matters of faith and morals, the only and exclusive criterion—that of the Catholic Church—are Liberals.
- THERE IS NO TRUE SPIRITUAL LIFE WHERE JESUS CHRIST IS NOT
(This applies to Jews, Muslims, pagans, etc.
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Session 11, 1442 It firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the catholic church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives)
- How much do perverse Catholics serve the devil by obstinately clinging to such associations and participating in their works! In the folly of their ignorance, which they assert against the wisdom of the Church, they harden their consciences to the practical guidance of the Holy See and blindly enlist in the service of an enemy whose cunning deludes them into the slavery of Hell—under the disguise of freedom! They forget that the Truth alone makes them free...Ultramontanism will never cause you to lose your soul; Liberalism is a broad road to the infernal abyss.
NEXT SECTION...
Thursday, January 10, 2013
What Is Liberalism? - Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany (1899 - Imprimatur) - Chapters I - VII
Translated from original text in Spain in 1886.
From chapter to chapter, I will basically separate thoughts or phrases where necessary by starting a new line with "-". But I may also use "..." to continue thoughts that can be coherently strung together.
Following the preface, my comments in parentheses will be in italics to differentiate from the verbatim text.
I am going to type out the entire Preface because I think it merit's great consideration.
PREFACE
In 1886, there appeared in Spain a little work under the title el Liberalismo es Pecado: Liberalism is a Sin by Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, a priest of Barcelona and editor of a journal called La Revista Popular. The book excited considerable commotion. It was vigorously assailed by the Liberals. A Spanish Bishop, of a Liberal turn, instigated an answer to Dr. Sarda's work by another Spanish priest. Both books were sent to Rome praying the Sacred Congregation of the Index to put Dr. Sarda's work under the ban. The following letter, under date January 10, 1887, from the Sacred Congreation itself, explains the result of its consideration of the two volumes:
Most Excellent Sir:
The Sacred Congregation of the Index has received the denunciation of the little work bearing the title, "El Liberalismo es Pecado" by Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, a priest of your diocese; the denunciation was accompanied at the same time by another little work entitled, "El Proceso del Integrismo," that is "a refutation of the errors contained in the little work El Liberalismo es Pecado." The author of the second work is D. de Pazos, a canon of the diocese of Vich.
Wherefore the Sacred Congregation has carefully examined both works, and decided as follows: In the first not only is nothing found contrary to sound doctrine, but its author, D. Felix Sarda merits great praise for his exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order and lucidity, and without personal offense to anyone.
The same judgment, however, cnanot be passed on the other work by D. de Pazos, for in matter in needs corrections. Moreover his injurious manner of speaking cannot be approved, for he inveighs rather against the person of D. Sarda, than against the latter's supposed errors.
Therefore the Sacred Congregation has commanded D. de Pazos, admonished by his own Bishop, to withdraw his book, as far as he can, from circulation, and in future if any discussion of the subject should arise, to abstain from all expressions personally injurious, according to the precept of true Christian charity; and this all the more since Our Holy Father, Leo XIII, while he urgently recommends castigation of error, neither desires nor approves expressions personally injurious, especially when directedagainst those who are eminent for their doctrine and their piety.
In communication to you this order of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, that you may be able to make it know to the illustrious priest of your diocese, D. Sarda, for his peace of mind, I pray God to grant you all happiness and prosperity and subscribe myself with great respect,
Your most obedient servant,
Fr. Jerome Secheri, O.P.
Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Index.
Chapter I - What Begets Liberalism
- Swarming in the atmosphere of our spiritual lives are innumerable deadly germs ever ready to fasten upon the depleted and weakened soul, and, propagating its leprous contagion through every faculty, destroy the spiritual life.
- Intellectual torpidity, inexperience, ignorance, indifference, complaisance, or even virtues such as benevolence, generosity, and pity may be the unsuspecting way open to the foe, and lo! we are surprised to find him in possession of the citadel.
- The difficulty is that the uniform of the enemy is so various, changeable, sometimes even of our own colors, that if we rely upon the outward semblance alone we shall be more often deceived than certain of his identity.
- The population of this country (Spain) is at present something over sixty-three million. Of these, ten million are Catholics, and according to their claim, twenty million Protestants, leaving a population of thirty-three million or more who do not profess any form of Christianity at all. Amongst the twenty million Protestants every shade and variety of belief in the Christian dispensation finds easy lodgment, from the belief in the Incarnation and Consubstantiation to the rejection of the Divinity of Christ altogether in the vacuous creed of Unitarianism. In this scale of heresy the adjustments of creeds are loose and easy. Lack of any decisive authority renders any exact standard of belief impossible.
- Outside of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians, stands a still larger mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to Christianity as a creed or positively reject it.
- Heresy and infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. "Who is not with me is against me" are the words of Our Lord Himself, for denial of Catholic truth is this radical and common element of both heresy and infidelity.
- We live in the midst of this religious anarchy. Fifty-three million of our population is anti-Catholic. From this mass, heretical and infidel, exhales an atmosphere filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to take root in the Catholic heart...We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us. Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear...It now soothes and flatters; now hates and curses, now threatens and now praises. But it is most dangerous when it comes in the form of "liberality." It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise.
Chapter II - What Liberalism Is
- Protestantism naturally begets toleration of error. Rejecting the principle of authority in religion, it has neither criterion nor definition of faith. On the principle that every individual or sect may interpret the deposit of revelation according to the dictates of private judgment, it gives birth to endless differences and contradictions...Belief is not imposed by a legitimately and divinely constituted authority, but springs directly and freely from the unrestricted exercise of the individual's reason or caprice upon the subject-matter of revelation. The individual or sect interprets as it pleases, rejecting or accepting what it chooses. This is popularly called liberty of conscience.
- Such is the mainspring of the heresy constantly dinned into our ears flooding our current literature and our press. It is against this that we have to be perpetually vigilant. The more so as it insidiously attacks us on the grounds of a false charity and in the name of a false liberty. Nor does it appeal only to us on the ground of religious toleration.
- Liberalism is 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.
Such are the radical principles of liberalism.
- Here we have individual, social and political Rationalism, the corrupt fountain head of liberalist principles: absolute freedom of worship, the supremacy of the State, secular education repudiating any connection with religion, marriage sanctioned and legitimized by the State alone, etc.; in one word, which synthesizes all, SECULARIZATION.
This is veritable social atheism.
- In secret societies, organized in a spirit destructive of religion and often for the express purpose of exterminating Catholicity, 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 tyranny of darkness.
- It will be ever found stigmatizing the most ardent defenders of the faith as reactionaries, clericals, ultramontanes, etc.
- 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, in radical opposition and in perpetual warfare against that society composed of the Children of God, the Church of Jesus Christ.
Chapter III - Liberalism is a Sin
- Liberalism, whether in the doctrinal or practical order, is a sin. In the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against faith. In the practical order it is a sin against the commandments of God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments.
- It repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine.
- Liberalism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth, or a truth consequent upon revelation, by its infallibility constituted exponent...Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and the social reason...
- It follows, therefore, that Liberalism denies the absolute jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society, and, by consequence, repudiates the jurisdiction which God has delegated to the visible head of the Church over each and all the faithful, whatever their condition or rank in life. It moreover denies the necessity of divine revelation and the obligation of everyone to accept that revelation under the pain of eternal perdition. It denies the formal motive of faith, viz., the authority of God revealing, and admits only as much of revealed doctrine as it chooses or comprehends within its own narrow capacity. It denies the infallible magistracy of the Church and of the Pope, and consequently all the doctrines defined and taught by this divine authority.
- It denies the validity of faith by baptism, when it admits or supposes equality of any or all religious cults; it denies the sanctity of marriage when it sanctions so-called civil marriages; it denies the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff when it refuses to accept laws of his official commands and teachings, and subjects them to scrutiny of its own intellect...to sit in defiant judgment upon their contents...Liberalism is radical immorality.
- We may say then of Liberalism: in the order of ideas it is absolute error; in the order of facts it is absolute disorder.
Chapter IV - The Gravity of the Sin of Liberalism
- The gravity of sin is determined by the object at which it strikes. Blasphemy, for instance, which directly attacks God Himself, is a sin of much graver character than theft, which directly attacks man. With the exception of formal hate of God, which constitutes the deadliest of all sins and of which the creature is rarely culpable unless he be in Hell, the gravest of all sins are those against the faith.
- To cutoff the branch of a tree will not kill it; but to lay the ax to the trunk or the roots is fatal to its life. "Hoc est peccatum quo tenentur cuncta peccata." "This is the sin which comprehends all other sins."
- The Angel of the Schools expresses himself with his usual clearness on this point: "The gravity of sin is determined by the interval which it places between man and God; now sin against faith, divides man from God as far as possible, since it deprives him of the true knowledge of God; it therefore follows that sin against faith is the greatest of all sins."
- Besides the deadly sin against faith itself, it is accompanied by hardness of heart, obstinacy, and the proud preference for one's own reason over the reason of God Himself. Hence the heretical doctrines, and works inspired by them, constitute the greatest of all sins with the exception of the formal hate against God, of which only the demons in hell and the damned are capable. Liberalism, then, which is heresy, and all the works of Liberalism, which are heretical works, are the gravest sins known in the code of Christian law.
Liberalism is, therefore, greater than blasphemy, theft, adultery, homicide, or any other violation of the law of God, save in such case where one acts in good faith, in ignorance, or thoughtlessly.
- The law of the Church in matters of faith and morals and doctrine is unchangeable; it ordains today as it did yesterday, and heresy is always heresy no matter what shape it takes. Appearances may be fair, and the devil may present himself as an angel of light. The danger is the greater as the outward show is more seductive. Heresy has never been so insidious as under its present form of liberalism...When encountered it is obligatory upon the Catholic conscience to resist it with all the powers of the soul.
Chapter V - The Degrees of Liberalism
- In whatever aspect we consider it, whether as a school or a sect or party, it presents itself in various degrees or shades; yet none the less liberalism because variant; for with specific and logical unity there may be a multitudinous variety.
- Their common criterion is "liberality" and "independence of mind."
- Sometimes Liberalism stalks along in the careless trappings of an easy-going good nature, or a simplicity of character which invites our affection and allays our suspicion. But all the greater the danger when it appears least possible.
Chapter VI - Catholic Liberalism or Liberal Catholicism
- Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute independence of the individual and of the social reason. Catholicity is the dogma of the absolute subjection of the individual and of the social order to the revealed law of God...the two can no more harmonize than the square can be made one with the circle ("What accord hath Christ with Belial?")
- The modern State does not recognize God or the Church. In the conflict of different religious creeds the public reason must stand neutral and impartial. Hence the necessary independence of the public reason. The State as State can have no religion...Now all this means civil or social atheism. It means that society is independent of God, its Author.
- THE ROAD IS OPEN TO ODIOUS TYRANNY
(Of note, this is the same exact thing Leo XIII says in Libertas Praestantissimum)
- They could actually, under the cover of authority, legislate against Christianity
(HHS Mandate, anyone?)
- In modern times it has gone further still and extends its baneful influence to the school-room, propagating itself by placing the education of the youth under its dominating influence. It forms the conscience of youth not according to the divine law which acknowledges the will of God, but upon a premeditated and careful ignorance of that law. It is a secular education that seizes upon the future and breeds atheism in the hearts of the coming generations.
(This is EXACTLY what is happening in this country!)
- The Catholic liberalist or the Liberal Catholic admitting the fatal distinction between the private and the public reason, throws open the gates to the enemies of the faith, and, posing as a man of intellect with generous and liberal views, stultifies reason by his gross offense against the principle of contradiction...He has not the courage to withstand the derision of his cunning foe. To be called intolerant, illiberal, narrow, ultramontane, reactionist, is gall and wormwood to his little soul. Under this epithetical fire gives way and surrenders his birthright of faith and reason for a mess of Liberal pottage.
Chapter VII - Intrinsic Causes of Liberal Catholicism
- With [the liberal catholic] the individual judgment is the rule of faith. He believes in the independence of reason. It is true he accepts the magisterium of the Church, yet he does not accept it as the sole authorized expounder of divine truth...[The Church] is of course infallible, they say, but we will determine when and in what she shall speak infallibly.
- He calls himself a liberal catholic because he believes no one can impose upon him any belief which his individual judgment does not measure as perfectly rational...As a consequence, he is not really a Christina, but a pagan. He has no real supernatural faith, but only a simple conviction.
- They have a horror of any coercive element in faith; any chastisement of error shocks their tender susceptibilities, and they detest any Catholic legislation in the direction of what they are please to call intolerance. THE SYLLABUS OF PIUS IX IS A NIGHTMARE TO THEM, a most inopportune, dominating, harsh and peremptory document, calculated to offend the sensibilities of the Protestant and modern world; it need not be accepted as an infallible utterance, and, if accepted, must be taken in a very modern sense.
- [They have] an abhorrence to antagonize the convictions of others, no matter how directly opposed to revealed truth, for with the Liberal Catholics the most erroneous are as sacred as the truest convictions, being equally founded upon the principle of intellectual liberty. Thus they erect into dogma what is called the principle of toleration. The differences of belief are, after all, they complacently argue, due to differences of temperament, education, etc.
- Liberal Catholics' appreciation of the Church has no foundation in its supernatural character...whose first and supernatural end is the glory of God and the salvation of souls. It is on her social and human side that he regards her with affection.
- Under this false conception apologies have been written in our times, and with strange inconsistency the Church is often lauded as the great promoter and preserver of civilization in the past, while her regressive tendencies are deplored in the present.
- True progress can only be through an advance to God...This the Church of Jesus Christ alone can do, for she, under His institution, is as He Himself, the way, the truth, and the life.
- Piety does not escape the action of this pernicious naturalistic principle; it converts it to pietism - that is to say, into a parody of true piety, as is painfully seen in the pious practices of so many people who seek in their devotions only the sentimental emotions of which they themselves are able to be the source...[this is] spiritual sensualism.
(This is part of the danger in the charismatic movement, also more precisely indicative of New Age and Buddhism. Looking within or trying to force "feelings" to take place. The Holy Spirit operates on a basis of need for the edification of the Church not to make people feel good or to be "slain in the spirit." "Blessed is he who believes without seeing." The point below details this more...)
- Thus we see in our day in so many souls the degeneration of Christian asceticism, which is the purification of the heart by the repression of appetites, and the falsification of Christian mysticism, which is neither emotion nor interior consolation, nor any other epicurean foible of human sentiment, but union with God through a supernatural love for Him and through absolute submission to His holy will.
- Liberal Catholicity, [is] rather, a false Catholicity. It is not really Catholicity, but mere naturalism, a pure rationalism; it is in a word paganism disguised in Catholic forms and using Catholic language.
NEXT SECTION...
What is this blog?
I am basically going to either just type out summaries of what I have highlighted from books for my own quicker reference and retention, or I may also type my comments below certain parts...or I may write out more drawn out responses to books.
Could be anything really related to books I read.
PS It will be non-fiction.
Could be anything really related to books I read.
PS It will be non-fiction.
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