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...

What Is Liberalism? - Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany (1899 - Imprimatur) - Chapters I - VII

Published by Tan Books, 1899.
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.


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