LIBERALISM
A CRITICISM OF ITS BASIC PRINCIPLES

AND DIVERS FORMS

BY

HIS EMINENCE, LOUIS

card, billot

•» *

TRANSLATED BY

G. B. O'TOOLE, Ph. D„ S.T.D.,
PROFESSOR OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY, ST. yiNCENT SEMINARY,
BEATTY, PA.

Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou
hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will
not serve.” Jer. II, 20.

1922

IMPRIMATUR
Φ HUGO CAROLUS,
Episcopus Pittsburgensis

This Translation is Published with the
Approval of Ills Eminence,
Cardinal Billot

TB, R A GIS

167903
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

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MS|Îk|) N the days when Louis Cardinal Billot occupied

i

fhe c^*a’r °f Dogmatic Theology at the Gre-

IiIIpi gorian University, the writer was a student at

Rome, and, while he never had the pleasure of
a personal acquaintance with this great theo­
logian and metaphysician, he was privileged to be pres­
ent at the ceremony which raised him · to the dignity of
the Cardinalate. Moreover, the writer had frequent oc­
casion to note the affectionate esteem and profound admi­
ration with which his great qualities of mind and heart were
universally recognized in the years that preceded his ele­
vation to the Sacred College by Pius X. In all who at­
tended his public lectures or who read his great dogmatic
tracts, these sentiments were intensified to the point of
glowing enthusiasm. It was, in fact, a matter of common
agreement then that, for sheer penetration, depth and ac­
curacy of intellectual vision, Cardinal Billot had few, if any
equals, among the foremost thinkers of the day. Nor has
the lapse of intervening years brought with it any reason
for altering or qualifying this verdict of appreciation. It
was, therefore, with feelings of genuine pleasure, that the
translator, having sought His Eminence’s approval of his
design to publish an English version of the Critique of
Liberalism, received notice of the Cardinal’s cordial con­
sent to the project in question.

4

THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

LIBERALISM

Translations so often misrepresent rather than; express
the true sense of an author, that no one is surprised when
the privileges of translation are withheld. Hence, the writer
could not fail to be touched at this mark of confidence, and
to have grave misgivings as to his own ability to measure
up to the standard that it implied. Besides, as is usually
the case with those whose thought is remarkably keen and
clear, the Cardinal’s literary style has a precision and
beauty that are simply inimitable, so that the translator
must needs despair of conveying any adequate impression
of the original. Consequently, there remains no other course
than to limit one’s ambitions to the modest scope of faith­
fully reproducing sense and substance.
Finally, in addition to the inevitable deterioration in
literary form, which is practically inseparable from the pro­
cess of translation, the reader must bear in mind that the
present treatise labors under another disadvantage, that,
namely, of being an excerpt from the Tractatus de Ecclesia
Christi rather than an independent monograph. It com­
prises, in fact, all the subject-matter treated under Question
XVII of that work, and loses not a little of its full signifi­
cance through the absence of the appropriate contextual
framework. The following observations of the writer on
the subject of Liberalism aim at clearing up some of the
obscurities due to the incomplete structure of the treatise
as it stands.
^dl>er-alhxK^nav__b£__defined as that^system-of social
philosophy_which_pmposeii-unrestricted-individual-liberty as
the 'pânacea for all human ills. Liberty, however, is an
equivocal term which admits of such a variety of senses
that it is open to considerable abuse in the mouths of those
who make “liberty a cloak for malice” (I Peter, II, 15).
Let us begin, therefore, by defining the term in question.
Liberty, in its widest acceptation, signifies indifference
or indeterminism with respect to a given course, or with
respect to one alternative as contrasted with the other. As
such it is opposed to necessity, which consists in a determi-

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nation to one course to the complete exclusion of any alter­
native. Determination to one thing, however, may arise
in three ways, and hence there are three kinds of necessity
and three corresponding kinds of liberty:
I. An agent may be determined to one course rather
than another, by reason of the force, violence, or coercion
exerted by an external principle. Such necessity is called me­
chanical necessity, and is characteristic of the movement of
all inert bodies, and even of living bodies, in the measure'
that the latter are impotent to resist or evade the stress of
external force. Living organisms, however, are, to some
degree, exempt from mechanical necessity. This partial ex­
emption is termed the liberty of spontaneity and is char­
acteristic of all vital activity. Thus the direction taken by
a billiard ball is rigidly imposed by action from without, that
is, by the impact of the cue; but the uncaged wild beast is
not mechanically necessitated in its movements, and, in this
sense, it is said to be. free. True, the spontaneous move­
ments of an animal are dependent in a general way on the
various factors, and forces of the environment, but the
particular direction which the animal’s movement takes is
not 'rigidly imposed, in all its determinate specificity, by
the external forces of the environment. Hence, that the
animal moves in one direction rather than another, it owes to
itself and not to the external forces playing upon it from with­
out. This sort of liberty, therefore, consists in exemption from
external coercion; it is the liberty of the wild beast, and has
its widest scope in the jungle and in the forest.
2. Determination to one course, however, may also proceed from an internal ground or principle, and then it is
called physical necessity. The inner nature or instinct of a
brute predetermines its attitude towards a given object or
action. Its instincts are hereditary and specific.. Conse­
quently, its conduct exhibits a certain kind of regularity
and invariability that makes possible certain definite predictions on the basis of the law of the uniformity of nature,
e. g. the bee always builds hexagonal cells and never any

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LIBERALISM

other kind. Knowledge of these inner laws of instinct en­
ables man to control and utilize the' whole animal world.
Physical necessity, then, is necessity emanating from an
innate law or principle. Exemption from such necessity is
called physical liberty or liberty of choice. It is a preroga­
tive which distinguishes man from the irrational brute; for,
although, in all his acts, man must necessarily seek happi­
ness in the abstract, he is not constrained to accept any
‘particular form or concrete embodiment of happiness. Hence
with reference to particular goods such as music, kinds of
food, styles of architecture and dress, etc.,.etc., he is physi­
cally free. This sort of liberty entails, as a necessary sequel,
responsibility or accountableness for our conduct. The
human will has perfect dominion over its conscious and de­
liberate acts.* Hence such acts are imputable to the will
as to their principal cause, and this is the foundation of
accountability.
3. Finally, determination to one course rather than an­
other may arise, in the absence of all coercion whether
internal or external, by reason of. dependence on the will of
another. This necessity is called obligation or moral neces­
sity. The superior will, upon which the inferior will is
dependent, is termed authority. The moral suasion which
lawful authority exercises through the intimation of rewards
and penalties does not annul physical liberty. Morally the
will of the inferior is bound to obey, but physically it is
capable of disobedience. Two wills’ are superior to the will
of the individual man, namely, the. will of the Supreme
Being and Creator of All, and the corporate will of the
social organism: hence there are two kinds of authority,
divine and human. Since, therefore, law is the external ex­
pression of authority, there are two kinds of laws, viz.
divine laws and human laws. Exemption from all depend­
ence upon authority is called moral liberty or the freedom
of independence. This belongs to God alone, Who, as the
Supreme Being and the fount of all human authority, has
mo superior whatever. Not even· human authority is mo-

THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

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rally free, since even the corporate will of society is subject
to the will of God, and this is still more true of the indi­
vidual man who is subject to both kinds of authority, the
human as well as the divine. Hence, it is only, as it were,
in the interstices existing between the various divine laws
and in those existing between the various human laws, that
a man can be said to be morally free and independent.
Thus with respect to actions neither forbidden nor com­
manded by divine or human law, man may be said to
possess moral liberty, but, in the absolute sense, such inde­
pendence is the prerogative of God alone.
From the time of Rousseau onward the philosophers of
Liberalism have admired and envied the freedom of the
jungle and the forest. Neither have they ceased to affirm
man’s absolute independence in the moral sense of the
word. To emancipate the human individual, not only from
external coërcion, but also from all forms of moral suasion,
has been their constant preoccupation. Their interest,
therefore, is confined to the first and the third kind of liberty,
but, with respect to the second kind, i. e. the responsible
freedom of choice, they manifest either cold indifference or
positive hostility.
y
For the liberal, therefore, personal inclination is the
final criterion and norm of all truth, in the religious and
moral, no less than in the scientific and socio-political,
orders. His fundamental principle, as formulated by Zubinski, is the following: “There is no absolute self-existent
standard.of valuation distinct from individual volition”
{Truth, Nov., 1918). And this is scarcely more than a
paraphrase of Martin Luther’s famous enunciation of the
principle of private judgment: Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro
ratione voluntas—-“Sô I will, so I command, let my will
stand for a reason.” This gem of wisdom culled from the
λ7! Satire of Juvenal was mouthed repeatedly and with
evident relish by the Monk of Wittenberg. It represents
the very acme of human perversity, where “reason panders
will {Hamlet, Act III, Sc. iv), where thought accommo-

8

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LIBERALISM

*
dates volition, where intellect is dethroned and forced to
abdicate in favor of caprice. Not the mind, but the will
is made the judge of truth; and since absurdity does no
violence to the will but only to the intellect, this perversion
of their mutual relationship inclines the mind to hug any
delusion, however preposterous, provided only it be an
agreeable one, even as it likewise closes the mind inexorably
against all facts and truths that are unpleasant or sug­
gestive of moral obligations.
Luther has been hailed in song and story as the great
Liberator of the human mind. He, we are told, unshackled
man’s intellect and set it free. If so, he perpetrated an
atrocity upon nature itself, since the human intellect neither
is nor ought to be free. By a fundamental law of nature,
the mind is below truth, not above it, and the function of
intellect is not to manufacture truth but to accept it, not
to create its objects but to manifest them. The will alone
is free, but nature intended the will to follow objective
truth as presented by reason, and not to make reason the
slave of its own caprice. “There is only one human faculty,”
says Gruender, “for which we claim freedom of choice,
namely, the rational appetite or will. My eye, when opened
and brought into contact with any visible object by means
of light, is not free. I may close it and thus make it im­
possible for me to perceive the beauties of the landscape;
but this does not argue liberty of eye, but liberty of that,
appetitive faculty of mine which controls the use of my
eye, namely, my will. The same must be said of the other
cognitive faculties of man, the imagination, memory and
intellect. Though their operations are to a certain extent
under the control of the will, the faculties themselves are
not free... There is, I repeat, only one faculty of man
which is endowed with freedom: our rational appetency or
will. All other faculties, without exception, are governed
by... necessity” (Free Will, pp.n, 12). Unfortunately,
however, the will can so abuse its freedom as to usurp the

ΜΒΒΜΒΒΒΗπηπππππηη

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THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

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directive function of reason, by making pleasantness instead
of evidence the criterion of truth.
When the truths presented by reason entail no obligation and· leave the will untrammeled, the liberal experiences
no difficulty whatever in conforming to the verdict of
reason. When, however, the truths that the mind proposes
disturb the equanimity and complacency of his egoism by
imposing duties or exacting service, the liberal is inclined
to eliminate such unpleasant considerations by forcing his
mind to ignore them and to tolerate delusion in their stead.
God and social duty are truths of this kind, and the liberal,
who is· all for emancipation, and who resents restriction
under any form, is necessarily the enemy of all authority,
both divine and human. Hence from the very nature
of things Liberalism is, at least in tendency, an atheistic
and antisocial philosophy. Man, however, is essentially a
creature and essentially a social being. Consequently, in Γ
asserting the complete independence of man and rejecting “Ç
the restraints of divine and human authority, Liberalism is
iii conflict with human nature itself.
'
The human race has had a beginning. It did not
always exist upon this earth. Indeed, geologically speak­
ing, man is of comparatively recent origin, since, as palæ- '
ontology tells us, no traces of him are found prior to the
Pleistocene epoch. On the other hand, mankind cannot
have been self-productive, because that would imply that
we had anteceded ourselves anti acted before we existed.
It remains, therefore, that we owe our origin to a Cause
outside ourselves, and that createdness belongs to the very
■ conception of human nature. To this First Cause, then,
we owe our existence; and the» duty of love, reverence, and
obedience which nature imposes on us with respect to our
parents, who are the proximate source of our existence, is
incalculably intensified with respect to God, Who is the
ultimate source of our existence. In repudiating divine
authority, therefore, Liberalism repudiates human nature
itself, and this is equally true,.whether there be question

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LIBERALISM

of the immediate intimation of divine authority through
miracles, or of its mediate exercise through human repre­
sentatives in the Church.
.
In like manner, dependence upon human authority is
an essential attribute of human nature; for man is naturally
a social being, that is, his-very nature demands society as
the necessary condition of survival and progress. But the
social organism requires the direction of authority to unite
the minds and wills of its members in a common effort to
promote the public good. Human nature needs ruling and
schooling, if it is to develop all its powers and enjoy the
benefits accruing from civilization and the division of labor.
The individual is not self-sufficient, and, apart from social
cooperation under the guidance of authority, he has no
other means of supplying his inherent deficiencies. Liberal­
ism, therefore, in so far as it is subversive of human author­
ity, is at war with one of the most fundamental needs of
human nature. Even liberty itself is impossible where
there is no impartial authority to coerce might in favor
of right, and to protect the weak from the greed and op­
pression of the powerful. In striking at legitimate author­
ity,. therefore, Liberalism proves itself, to be an unnatural
and inhuman system, which, under the hypocritical pretext
of a general emancipation, gives free scope to the exploita­
tion of those who have little by those who have much.
In short, Liberalism is satanic and antisocial. It is
satanic because it refuses Jto bend the knee to God and
takes on its own lips the Non serviam of the rebel Fiend—
“Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst
my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve ” (Jeremias
II, 2.0). It is antisocial, because it is a philosophy of selfish
individualism and inordinate egoism, which disregards the
human rights of others, and is influenced solely by motives
of self-interest and personal gain.
The roots of this pernicious error are to be found in the
Protestant Reformation, but in its present form, as a sys­
tem which actually guides the policies of modern states,

THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

II

liberalism owes its origin to Rousseau, Voltaire, and other
French philosophers and economists of the period immedi­
ately preceding the French Revolution. It was then, too,
that the secret conspiracy of Freemasonry was organized to
disseminate this revolutionary gospel of liberty, fraternity,
equality throughout the length and breadth of Christendom.
Thanks to the assiduous efforts of this organization, modern
society has been thoroughly secularized, and the influence
of the Church upon public life has- been reduced, if not to
zero, at least to a negligible minimum. The movement
has upset and permanently unstabilized practically, every
government in Europe, and has let loose upon credulous
humanity a veritable flood of fallacious emancipations such
as divorce,'1free thought,” "free love,” “free speech,” "free
press,” "free trade,” unrestricted competition, "open shop,”
etc., etc. It must not be supposed, however, that all the
previously enumerated reforms of Liberalism are placed in
the same category, or that our condemnation is so sweep­
ing as to cover even the good and proper sense that may
justly be read into some of these terms. In our ardent
devotion to true and effective liberty we yield to none. But
true liberty is liberty to do what is right. There is no such
thing as liberty to do what is wrong. Man, indeed, is
physically capable of sin, but sin is not liberty; on the
contrary, it is enslavement by degrading passions. Simi­
larly, effective liberty is more than an empty phrase, more
than a paste-jewel of rhetoric designed to embellish the
periods of thé orator, or to scintillate in the pages of the
publicist. It consists in the actual enjoyment by the indi­
vidual of his right to a reasonable share in the benefits of
that public prosperity to which he has contributed through
the work of his mind or hands. True and effective liberty,
therefore, is essential to human happiness, and the more
we have of such liberty, in thought, in speech, in writing,
and in conduct, the better it will be for all concerned.
Masonic liberty, fraternity and equality, however, are
the veriest caricatures of those sublime ideals to which

9^3ZB^H9BDHEEB

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LIBERALISM

Catholic Christianity applies these, terms. Is there ques­
tion of liberty? From the days of her martyrs onward
through the Centuries of her greatest triumphs, the Church
stands forth as the indomitable champion of liberty of con­
science. None of her conquests have been made through
earthly weapons. “The Koran or the sword” is a Moham­
medan and not a Christian argument. The Church refuses
to receive any but voluntary converts. She has brought
light and true liberty to every country that came under
the spell of her influence. By delivering mankind from the
slavery of sin, and by her teaching that man is made for
God aloriei and that no man exists exclusively for the
benefit of’another, she succeeded in freeing from intoler­
able bondage the unfortunate slaves of pagan Greece and
Rome. Without armies or navies, by the sheer moral
force of her spiritual majesty alone, she constrained the
barbaric despots of Europe to acknowledge the rights of j
the humblest of their subjects, and to constitutionalize their
(
governments. She stood in awe of neither wealth nor
power. She protected the poor from the oppression of the
rich by stringent laws against usury, and she enforced the
laws of God upon the mighty no less than upon the humble.
Is there question of fraternity? The fraternity of Catho­
licity is the fraternity inculcated by the Parable of the
Good Samaritan. In Masonry the duties of fraternity are
restricted to the narrow circle of its membership, while all
outsiders are regarded as “profane.” But Catholic charity
is as universal as the name implies. It knows no distinc­
tions of creed, color, rank or race. It is the charity of Him
Who said: “Love your enemies: do good to them that hate
you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate
you: that you may be children of your Father Who is in
heaven, Who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and the · 1
bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust” {Matt. V,
|
44, 45). Is there question of equality? In the Church of
j
Christ there is “neither bond nor free.” In her sight, as
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in the sight of God, all men are equal, since the ne plus
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THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

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ultra of human destiny, the Beatific Vision of God’s infinite
beauty, is equally open to all, regardless of the natural or
artificial distinctions that differentiate men in this world.
And yet, though she strenuously upholds this supernatural
equality of men before God, as well as their essential equality
(in that all have the same human nature or essence), she
insists no less strongly on their accidental inequality in
natural aptitudes, talents, education and the like, an in­
equality expressly intended by nature for the purpose of
securing the proper division of labor and distribution of
functions in that social organism called the state. Hence,
while she does not subscribe to the insincere and impossible
Liberal program of “equal rights," she does insist most
vigorously upon that very practicable and desirable ideal
of “equal enforcement of all rights both great and small,"
and she views with stern disapproval and Sorrow that
despicable weakness of modern governments which suffers
the rich and the powerful to violate all laws with impunity,
and reserves the rigor of punishment exclusively for petty
and humble offenders
<
Here, however, it may be well to guard against a pos­
sible misapprehension. We are not indentifying Liberalism
with Freemasonry. It was Liberalism that gave birth to
Masonry and not vice versa. Liberalism was a potent
factor in human affairs long before Masonry rose to power
and prominence. |lt is, in fact, a spirit^a psychology, a
mental attitude, a philosophy, which transcends the limits"
of any pafticuIar"“0rganization, nation, or country, and
"which, to a greater or lesser extent, has dominated human
thought for a period of Jour centuries. Ip. religion it ap­
pears as Private Judgment, in science it parades as Free.
Thought, in economics”!!goes under the names of Capital­
ism and InHividualism, and in politics it assumes the hypcC
critical pose of Democracy. In short, wherever and.whenever, by the aid ^f modern euphemisms, the ancient sins of
pride, selfishness, greed and snobbery, succeed in masquer­
ading as social virtues, there we have Liberalism. I

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LIBERALISM

To-day America is the scene of the clash between two
rival systems of socio-political heresy, namely, Liberalism
and Socialism. Neither of these alternatives is in harmony
with reason or Christian revelation, and Catholics must not
permit their horror for Socialism to drive them into the
camp of its equally detestable rival, Liberalism. Unfortun­
ately, little has been said or written in this country to put
Catholics on their guard against Liberalism. Many of them
are aware that Socialism was condemned by Leo XIII in
the Encyclical Rerum novarum, but they do not know that
the same Pope, Leo XIII, in another Encyclical, Libertas,
prcestantissimum naturœ opus, denounced Liberalism as
equally dangerous to human society. “The doctrine of
Liberalism,” he says, “is in the highest degree pernicious
to individuals no less than to commonwealths.. . and leads
by the most direct route to tyrannical despotism.” We
must bear- in mind, therefore, that we are between Scylla
and Charybdis, and never allow the whirlpool to engulf us
whilst we strive to avoid the rock of Socialism. Nor is this
fear merely hypothetical, since the blunder has actually
been committed by more than one Catholic writer of the
present day. In their zeal for the ideals of democracy as
opposed to those of socialism, they make the mistake of
giving a carte blanche to Liberalism. Thus we find even so
eminent and respected a Catholic author as Hilaire Belloc
devoting an entire chapter of his French Revolution to .a
fervent panegyric on Rousseau’s Contrat Social, a book
which may be aptly styled the very Bible of Liberalism.
In vain one looks for reservations or qualifications. There
is no indication whatever that the aforesaid writer realizes
that this work propounds a philosophy at variance with
Christianity and common sense, that it was condemned
and placed on the Index of Prohibited Books'by the Sacred
Congregation in 1766, or that it contains a bitter and ex­
plicit attack on Christianity in general and Catholicity in
particular. One likes to think that this ill-advised en­
comium was due to an oversight arising from excessive

THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

15

-absorption in a particular viewpoint, especially since Mr·.
Belloc seems not to be in sympathy with Liberalistic doc­
trines in his other works. We might mention several Catholic
writers who are far more blameworthy in this respect, but
we single out this instance to show how even a welUinten-,
tioned man may be betrayed on this point into a false
position. Catholics, then, in their zeal for democracy and
their hostility to socialism, must not suffer themselves to
be lured unsuspectingly into ,the awkward predicament of
giving involuntary aid and comfort to Liberalism, a bitter
and formidable enemy of the Catholic Church, and of oc­
cupying, in the face of Socialism, a position that is wholly
and hopelessly indefensible. Socialism can never be refuted
from the premisses of Liberalism. The latter dare not face
the former in the field of logic; to the arguments of the
socialist the liberal has no effective answer except the
policeman’s club.
From the days of the French Encyclopedists to those
of Hegel and Spencer, yea even up to the present moment,
the liberals have labored assiduously and tirelessly to
secularize the machinery of education no less than the
machinery of government. Outspoken Christians are -per­
sona non grata for the more important chairs of our uni­
versities; indeed, infidel and agnostic sentiments are re­
garded as the special badge of true scholarship and the only
reliable evidence of enlightenment. Our liberal capitalists
of the Carnegie brand will give money to institutions of
learning only on condition that they recant their Christian­
ity and make a profession of agnosticism and non-sectarianism in its stead. With such men, the ideologies of edu­
cators are valued not so much for their intrinsic merits as
for their opposition to traditional Christianity. Consis­
tency is an entirely negligible consideration. That a ma­
terialistic objecti vist like Jacque Loeb utterly contradicts the
position of a subjective idealist like Paulsen, does not disturb
the equanimity of the Liberal. He is not interested in truth,
but only in the exclusion of “orthodoxy," “obscurantism,"

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and '‘reaction,”and so,atomists or monists, they are all the
same to him, provided they exhibit the proper degree of scep­
ticism on the subject of religion. God, Free Will, and Immor­
tality are his three bug-bears, and he is willing to pay a hand­
some salary to any professor who can plausibly disprove
their existence. Due moderation, of course, is desirable. A
blunt and fanatical attack on these conceptions would be
bad taste, and might react unfavorably upon the influence
of the instructor. Hence, for such a purpose, the liberal must
hire competent and temperate thinkers who can administer
atheism and materialism in homeopathic doses. If the vic­
tim of modern education must needs be purged of his
superstition, there is really nothing gained by making the
process painful or alarming. Let it be gradual and diplo­
matic. Let it proceed in the approved and gentlemanly
fashion observed by a G. H. Parker, Professor of Zoology
at Harvard, as in the peroration of his Amherst lectures
(delivered in 1914), he delicately breaks to the assembled
audience of rapt and docile listeners, the news of that very
stale and ancient verdict of materialism that man is merely
matter, and not a mixture of spirit and matter, as Christians
have been foolish enough to suppose: “Of the nature of
living substance,” he explains, “we are just beginning to
get a dim appreciation, but when this appreciation grows .
to something of an understanding, we shall feel, I believe,
no more hesitancy in abandoning our old view of the sepa­
rateness of self and body and accepting that of their com­
mon nature than in the past our race had in giving up
Dante’s paradise and its ten heavens for the depths of blue
above us. Organized living material, as we meet it in the
cerebral cortex, is so strictly a part of the universe and yet
so strikingly different from any other aggregate of material
known to us that we can look upon it at present only with
vague bewilderment and yet with a hope justified by the
past progress of science, that its secrets will be gradually
disclosed to us” {Biology and Social Problems, p. 130).
Here, in language but thinly veiled, we have the liberalistic
4

THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

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conception of “an animalistic man and a mechanistic uni­
verse.” True, the professor caricatures the position of
Christian philosophy (which, as matter of fact, teaches the
union of the soul and body to form a single substance and nature,
and which never ascribed personality to the soul apart from the
body),but the fact remains that his intention is to reject alto­
gether the existence of a spiritual and immortal principle
in man. And to Liberalism such a conclusion is peculiarly
gratifying and welcome. For, from the very nature of
things, the materialistic conception of human nature is pre­
supposed as an indispensable preamble to any doctrine,
which makes man a law unto himself and the absolute
master of his own destiny. Hence it comes to pass that,
wherever Liberalism controls the tongues of educators, the
human soul becomes a myth, religion a superstition and the
future life a thing to be ridiculed or disregarded. At the
door of Liberalism, therefore, we may justly lay the blame
of eradicating from the minds and hearts of men their
ancient belief in the existence of a future world of justice
and retribution.
Now Socialism is not at all adverse to this premiss of
Liberalism. In fact, it finds it quite consonant with its
own’ contention. ‘You are quite right,’ it says to the
liberal, ‘in rejecting the Hereafter as a groundless super­
stition. There is really no heaven for man beyond the
grave, and for that very reason it behooves all of us to get
whatever enjoyment we can out of the present life—all of
us, I say; and hence it is high time that this earthly heaven
of ours should cease to be monopolized ;by a few coupon­
holding capitalists, and become, instead, the property of
the workers, who are equally entitled to happiness here
below, and who cannot look forward to compensation for
present privations in a future life. ’ To this logic, Liberal­
ism has, naturally, no other reply than that of recourse to
the bayonet and the machine gun.
Again Liberalism poses as the obsequious servant of the popular will. To gain its selfish ends, it flatteringly acclaims

18

liberalism

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the people as the primary source of all power and government
in the state. Again Socialism gratefully accepts the admission
ofLiberalism: ‘Yes, indeed,’ it says, ‘ the people are the absolute power on earth and they truly ought to rule themselves, but “the people” means us workers who are 90%
of the population, not you financiers and capitalists who
amount to only 10%.’ Here, as before, logic is wholly on
the side of the socialist, and the liberal is compelled to
appeal from the arbitration of reason to that of force.
. Finally, the liberal is forever prating about human
equality and sounding the praises of “equal opportunity.”
He points with great pride and self-complacency to the
empty thrones of Europe, and congratulates himself on
having introduced an era of true equality by overthrowing
■ royalty and aristocracy. It is his ardent devotion to the
ideal of human equality, he tells us, that makes him the
implacable enemy of all distinctions based on birth. Yet,
strange to say, his horror of distinctions and inequalities
does not seem to extend to those which are based on wealth
and property. Indeed, private property (being the indis­
pensable basis of his own economic and political privileges)
is quite sacred in his not altogether disinterested eyes. You
may, if you choose, blaspheme against God, and he will «not
only forgive you,but will esteem you all the more as an enligh­
tened and “thinking” man; yet—andthisis important to re­
member—should you berash enough to raise sacriligeous voice
orhand against the “di vine right” of his private property,
you have committed the one unforgivable sin, and he will
ransack the penal, code from end to end and fail to find
therein a penalty severe enough to fit your crime. History
records the fact that, from the days of Robespierre to those
of Viviani, the liberals have never scrupled to violate the
private-property rights of the Church or of the landed
nobility. In fact, the liberal looks upon these confisca­
tions of property (performed in his own interest) as most
virtuous acts. But let not the Bolshevik presume, on that
account, to threaten the liberal with a dose of his own

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THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

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medicine. For, in that case, he (the liberal) will forget
all about the beauty of human equality, and clamor loudly for
the blood of the scoundrel who menaces his own private prop­
erty. Hence, when the socialist ventures to remind him
of the self-evident fact that private property is the source
of innumerable social inequalities in the economic, political,
and military orders, and to suggest that property-distinctions be abolished in the interest of human equality, the
liberal wisely flings logic and consistency to the winds, and
is all for lynchings and deportations.
But this brazen inconsistency reveals to us something
more than a mere flaw in the logic of the liberal. It gives
us a thorough insight into the motive that dominates
his conduct and determines his evaluation of life itself,
. For the liberal, clearly, the whole point of life lies in the
· possession of fine vesture, sumptuous dwellings, and
broad estates, in the excitement of the thrilling conquests of finance, politics, sport and war, in the cultivation
of art, literature, science and music, in the enjoyment of
theaters, banquets, concerts and novels,'in the pursuit of
diversions, amusements and pastimes of every conceivable
variety and kind, or briefly, in the quest of all the transitory pleasures of this world, whether of the purely æsthetic,
or of the depraved and brutish type—“For they said,
reasoning with themselves, but not aright. The time of our
life is short and tedious, and in the end of man there is no
remedy, and no man hath been known to have returned
from the nether-world: for we are born o.f nothing, and
after this we shall be as if we had not been: for the breath
in our nostrils is smoke: and speech a spark to move our
heart, which being put out, our body shall be as ashes,
■ and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our
life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be
dispersed as a mist, which is driven away by the beams of
the sun, and overpowered with the heat thereof: and our
name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall have any
remembrance of our works. For our time is as the passing

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20

LIBERALISM

of a shadow, and there is no going back of our end: for it
is fast sealed, and no man returneth. Come therefore, and
let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us
speedily use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves
with costly wine, and ointments: and let not the flower of
time pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with roses before
they be withered: let no meadow escape our riot. Let none
of us go without his part in luxury, let us everywhere
leave tokens of joy: for this is our portion and this is our
lot. Let us oppress the poor just man, and not spare the
widow, nor honor the ancient grey hairs of the aged. But
let our strength be the law of justice: for that which is
feeble, is found to be nothing worth” {Wisdom, II, i-n).
The neo-pagan liberal recalls the features of his ancient
pagan prototype. What is it to him that his selfish enjoy­
ment is paid for by the sweat and misery of many? In
his insatiate thirst to acquire and accumulate the means of
pleasure, he brooks no restraint, but insists that the state
shall stand as indifferent spectator or referee, forbidden to
show any pitying partiality for the weak, until the Dar­
winian struggle for existence has crowned the fittest with
triumph and left the vast multitude of “unfit” prostrate
beneath their feet. In time, the liberal’s greed infects
others, imitators spring up on all sides, and social life grad­
ually degenerates into a free-for-all fight of all against all.
Verily, Liberalism is a fair-seeming Circe who has trans­
formed men into pigs, and life itself into a pig-stye, where
the big swine ruthlessly .trample upon their smaller breth­
ren, and thrust both forefeet into the trough in order to
guzzle as large as possible a portion of the pig-wash. Well
does it merit the scathing indictment that Thomas Carlyle
brought against it when he branded it a “Pig Philos­
ophy”:
I. “The universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an
immeasurable Swine’s trough, consisting of solid and liquid
and of other contrasts and kinds; especially consisting of

THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

!

21

attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater
quantities for most pigs.
2. Moral evil is unattainability of Pig’s wash; moral
good attainability of ditto.
3. What is Paradise or the State of Innocence? Paradise
called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other
names, was (according to pigs of weak judgment) unlimited
attainability of Pig’s wash; perfect fulfilment of one’s
wishes, so that pig’s imagination could not outrun reality:
a fable and an impossibility, as pigs of sense now see.
4. Define the whole duty of pigs. It is the mission of
universal pighood and the duty, of all Pigs at all times, to
diminish the quantity of unattainable, and increase that of
attainable. All knowledge, and device and effort ought to
be directed thither and thither only. Pig science, pig en­
thusiasm and devotion have this one aim. Jt is the whole
duty of pigs.
ζ. Pig poetry ought to consist of the universal recogni­
tion of the excellence of Pigs wash and ground barley, and
the felicity of pigs whose trough is in order, and who have
had enough. Hrumph!
.
6. The pig knows the weather. He ought to look out
what kind of weather it will be.
7. Who made the pig? Unknown;—perhaps the Pork­
butcher.
8. Have you law and justice in Pigdom? Pigs of observation have discerned, that there is, or was once sup­
posed to be, a thing called justice. Undeniably, at least,
there is a sentiment in pig nature called indignation, re­
venge, etc., etc., which, if one pig provoke another, comes
out in a more or less destructive manner; hence laws are
necessary—amazing quantities of laws. For quarrelling is
attended with loss of blood, of life—at any rate, with frightful
effusion of the general stock of Hog’s wash, and ruin {temporary
ruin) to large sections of the universal Swine’s trough. Where­
fore let justice be observed, so that quarrelling be avoided.

22.

LIBERALISM

9. What is justice? Your own share of the general Swine's
trough; not any of my share.
10. But what is ‘my share'?. Ah! there, in fact, lies the
grand difficulty upon which pig science, meditating this long
while, can settle absolutely nothing. My share? Hrumph!
my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contrive to get
without being hanged or sent to the hulks. - For there are
gibbets, treadmills, I need not tell you, and rules which law­
yers have prescribed. " {Latter Day Pamphlets, pp.315-317.)
The picture is not a nice one to contemplate, but, how­
ever revolting, it is by no means overdrawn. It portrays
with'faithful exactitude the frightful mess which Liberalism
has made of a world that abandoned the Church in order
to embrace its new gospel of social salvation. And now
that world is wallowing in the mire and feeding on the
husks of swine! Liberalism has degraded the masses. Even
the agnostic now confesses it. “1 hear no laughter among
the rich, ” says Santayana, “ which is not forced and nervous. I find no sense of moral security amongst them, no
happy freedom, no mastery over anything. Yet this is
the very cream of liberal life, the brilliant successs for the
sake of which Christendom was overthrown, and the dull
peasantry elevated into factory-hands, shop-keepers, and
chauffeurs. When the lists are open to all, and the one
aim of life is to live as much as possible like the rich, the
majority must needs be discouraged. The same task is
proposed to unequal strengths, and the competition emphasizes the inequality. There was more encouragement
for mediocre people when happiness was set before them in
mediocrity, or in excellence in some special craft. Now
the mass, hopelessly out of the running in the race for
wealth, falls out and drifts into squalor...
The liberal
system, which sought to raise the individual, has degraded
the masses; and this on so vast a scale and to so pitiable a
degree, that the other element in liberalism, philanthropic
zeal, has again come to the fore” {The Dial, Oct. 1921).

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But Liberalism has not only squandered a heritage of
which it robbed the poor. With respect to posterity, its
boasted “progress” has been purchased at a frightful cost.
Wood, coal, oil, and all the natural resources, on which the
very existence of future generations will depend, have been
senselessly and wastefully consumed by these promoters of .
modern progress, so that the time is probably not far dis­
tant when all these founts of energy available to man will
disappear from the face of the earth. “Simultaneously,”
says Ralph Cram, “man has been dissipating the stored-up
energy of the world through his mastery of thermodynamics
and his precarious dominion over electrical forces, at such a
rate that physical potential has been degraded in a hundred
years more than in the preceding hundred centuries. Of
what becomes of this fabulous force, what the permanent
contributions may be to human life, he cares little. It is
sufficient to him that he is the arbiter of this gigantic
power, and if it is exploited and dissipated, with nothing
of lasting value to show, he cares no more than any other
type of spendthrift” (The Nemesis of Mediocrity, p. 47).
Post nos diluvium!
And what shall we say of the moral heritage of humanity
(that grand contribution of Christianity),aheritage of mutual
good will, charity and-confidence among men, of Christian
purity and Christian morals, of Christian chivalry and Chris­
tian honor? This, tôo, Liberalism has not only cruelly
exploited, but deliberately undermined and destroyed, leav­
ing in its place the poison of class-hatred, animalism, egoism,
and perfidy. For the eternal verities of the Decalogue it
has given us the comfortable maxims of expediency and
opportunism. For virtue it has substituted respectability and
prophylaxis. Under its corroding influence, human'justice
has become the handmaid of finance, and human science
the idolatrous devotee of Mars and Mammon, while journal­
ism has degenerated into an infamous sycophancy that
“calls evil good and good evil.” For the “priestcraft” of

3Ρ000ΜΝΜβ

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LIBERALISM

former times, it has substituted a new and beneficent type
of leadership, exemplified in the corporation-lawyer who
has made of our courts of law a byword and a hissing; in
the venal editor who prostitutes his pen for hire; in the
,
captain of industry who exacts his pound of proletariat
]
flesh in the name of the little tin, business-god, Efficiency;
j
in the banker, whose usury has a Midas-touch that can
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turn the very life-blood of human hearts into tawny coin.
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“These be thy gods, O Israel!” Of the bloody Armageddons [
and fearful social cataclysms that needs must follow in the
|
wakeof this moral anarchy, when human, nature has been
|
outraged beyond the point of endurance, the liberal is loath
|
to think. The optimism.of “laissez faire” is as unserious *
as a baby that giggles and crows on the brink of a dizzy
J
precipice; it has eyes that see not and ears that do not hear.
I
Even if a day of reckoning be inevitable, the Liberal is sure
!
that it will never dawn 'for him, and, as for future genera|
•tions, well, like Cain, he is not his brother’s keeper—Post ΐ
nos diluvium!
■ .·
What, then, is the remedy? Evidently, the last vestige
of Liberalism .must be eliminated from human society be­
fore it can be restored to health. But how is this to be
I
accomplished? Socialism proposes to reform matters by
;
building uniform stalls around the Liberal swine-trough,
;
thus forcing the big pigs to eat peaceably beside their
1
smaller brethren, a measure which, it is claimed, would en1
sure the conservation and just distribution of the pig-wash. j
And the Church of Jesus Christ? Ah! she would fain 1
undo the detestable -work of Circe altogether.
To disenchant 4
men from the fatal spell of materialism, to recall them to a s
sense of their human dignity and supernatural destiny, to
j
win them to the ideals of unselfishness and self-sacrifice, to
|
persuade them to relinquish what is trivial for “the one thing
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necessary;” in a word, to-bring back the prodigal from the|
swine-trough to his Father’s House, such is her program.
To-dav, as in the past, her clarion call of Sursum corda:
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THE SATANIC SOCIAL SOLVENT

“Your hearts on high!” rings in the ears of Circe’s sodden
victims. God grant that, e’er it be too late, they may
heed that call and awaken from their lethal enchantment,
for “it is w’ritten: Not in bread alone doth a man live, but
in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God. ”
George Barry O’Toole.
St. Vincent Archabbev
Feast of the Epiphany of our Lord,
January 6, 1922.

FOREWORD
Concerning the Error of Liberalism and its Various Forms

in so far as it involves an error in matters
of faith and religion, is a multiform doctrine which, to a
greater or lesser degree, emancipates man from God,, from
His law and from His revelation, and, in consequence, re­
leases civil society from all dependence upon religious so­
ciety, that is, separates it from the Church which is the
guardian, interpreter and teacher of the divinely-revealed
law.
Liberalism, I said, in so far as it imports an error in
matters of faith and religion. Because, if one weighs the
value of the term, it is easy to perceive how not exclusively
in those things which pertain to religion and relate to God
Liberalism does or might exist. True, emancipation from
God was the purpose principally intended, for they “have
taken counsel together against the I.ord and against His
Christ,” saying, “let us break their bonds asunder: and let us
cast away their yoke from us. ” (Psalm II, 2jj.) But to this
iberalism,

L

16

LIBERALISM

very end they have laid down a general principle, which
transcends the limits of the religious order, and pervades
and embraces every department of human association. Now
this principle is the following: that Liberty is the funda­
mental good of man, sacred and inviolable, which it is un­
lawful to coerce in any way; and therefore, that this unre­
stricted Liberty must be established: i. as the immovable
rock upon which everything that pertains to human fellow­
ship must be organized de jacto (as a matter of fact) ; 2. as
the inflexible standard according to which everything, must
be judged de jure (by right) ; that, finally, only that is to
be considered the equitable, just, and perfect condition of
society which rests on the aforesaid principle of inviolate
individual Liberty—iniquitous and perverse, any which is
otherwise. This is what the promoters of the memorable
Revolution of the year 1789 excogitated, and whose bitter
fruit is being- reaped throughout almost the entire world
to-day. This is what holds the first, the middle, and the
last place in the celebrated “Declaration of the Rights of
Man.” This is what for those fanatic visionaries served as
a basis for the reconstruction of society from its very foun­
dation upward, in the political as well as in the economic,
the domestic, and especially the moral and religious, orders.
It will be advantageous, therefore, to begin with a criti­
cism of the general principle of Liberalism considered in
itself and with reference to the manifold applications which
it has in every order of things. Starting from this point
we shall have easier access to the more particular considera­
tion of those things wherewith the present discussion is
concerned, namely, religious Liberalism and its various
forms, according to that which is proposed in the title
of this foreword.

'

PART I

Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Liberalism
and its Manifold Applications
The liberty, of which there is question here, is not
precisely that of which the metaphysicians treat, namely,
the power of free choice, consisting in the perfect dominion^?
which the human will has over its own acts, that is, in its
active indifference-whereby it is able to will or not to
will, to will this or to will that. For this sort of Liberty, which is freedom from intrinsic necessity, which entails con­
scientious obligations, and which; binds us to the observ­
ance of the moral law, Liberalism cares not at all, and, in
fact, so little does it care that many of its followers are
absolute materialists, not recognizing in man anything be­
yond the principles of spontaneous movement according to e­
instinct and physical determination. At all events, whether
they admit or do not admit free will, understood in its
proper and metaphysical sense, they do not see in it the
object of their idolatry, but rather in the power to use
one’s own activity, whatever that activity may be, without
any exterior coërcitive impeding its autonomous expansion.
This Liberty, therefore, is freedom from all interference; and
not only from absolute (mechanical) coaction, which is ex- *
erted by violence, and can, in consequence affect only ex­
ternal actions, but also from relative coaction, which is
instilled by intimidation and through fear of laws, by the
threat of penalties, and through social dependencies and
ties, and, in a word, by bonds of any kind whatsoeverwhereby a man is prevented from acting, or being able to
27

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LIBERALISM

act, in all things according to his own individual inclina­
tion. Such Liberty, they maintain, is the good par excellence,
to which all else must yield, those things, perchance, alone
excepted, which are requisite for the purely material order
in the Commonwealth; the superlative good, to which all
other things must be subordinated in order to preserve it
intact, and which of necessity must be placed beneath all
social construction, if the latter is to measure up to. the
true standard of goodness and equity. It will be well,
• therefore, to determine in a few words what verdict must
be passed upon this first principle of Liberalism.

«

CHAPTER!
Thesis: That the fundamental principle oj Liberalism is

inherently absurd, contrary to nature and chimerical.
It is absurd I say, from the very outstart, in that it
wishes the principal good of man to consist in the absence
of every bond that in anywise coërces or restricts Liberty.
As a matter of fact, the good of man cannot be understood
otherwise than under these two aspects: to wit, either as
an end in itself, or as a means to an end. Now in which of
these two categories, I ask,'will you place Liberty? Not
in the former, I fancy. Because no matter what it pleases
you to assign as an end in itself, you will surely at least
concede me this, that Liberty cannot be that end.
For Liberty signifies some sort of power or faculty of
acting, and every power or faculty exists, not for its own ,
sake but for the sake of something else, at least for the
sake of its operation or action, which again, in the present
life, consists exclusively in the pursuit of some good, whether
true or apparent. Evidently, therefore, it remains to be
said that Liberty belongs to the class of goods which are
means to an end. St. Augustine distinguishes such goods
into the following three categories, namely, the supreme
goods, the mediocre, and the minimal; and that by a very
evident and obvious distinction. The supreme goods are
those which no one uses ill (abuses); the mediocre and
minimal goods are those which admit of both a good and
a bad use, with this sole difference, that the mediocre goods
are nevertheless necessary for .a good life, while the minimal
goods are in no wise necessary therefor. “The virtues,
therefore,’’ he says, "by which we live aright, are the great
goods; the species of corporeal things without which we can
live aright are the minimal goods; the powers of the soul,
without which one can not live aright are the mediocre
29

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LIBERALISM

goods.” (Augustine, de Lib. Arb.^ 1. 2, c. 19.) Now from
this it is evident that free will can by no means be clas­
sified among the supreme goods, but rather among the
mediocre goods, because although there can be nothing
praiseworthy or honorable in life without free will, neither
is there anv kind of crime or vice or harmfulness to one’s
self or one’s neighbor, into which it may not plunge head­
long through bad use. Therefore Liberty is in dire need of
barriers lest it fall over the precipice, and the stronger the
barriers whereby it is confined within the sphere of good
for which it is ordained, so much the better is its condi­
tion^ Whoever denies this by assenting to the fundamental
principle of Liberalism is compelled to choose between two
equally absurd alternativesysither he will impudently af,/lfirm that Liberty in the present life is indefectible (incap/\iable of abuse) p&r he will bé brazen enough to assert that
it would be well, nay best, if erring Liberty were to be
sacredly and inviolably protected so as to facilitate even
its gravest abuses. And what else is this than the very
climax of insanity ?
But these are merely the beginnings of this insanity.
Further progress is evident in that which they add: namely,
that everythjng-else__is_to be subordinated to the good of
individu^âl~L[b.ertYù.thatr~tI)erefore. all those things which
rn~any way limit or impede individual Liberty are inimical
and contrary to human perfection; and because, as is mani­
fest, many such fetters arise from social relationships, there­
fore the ideal state of man is to be found only in an un­
social condition, where the law of pure and perfect indi­
vidualism would reign supreme. And this, indeed, was the
monstrous conception of the Revolution and its philoso­
phers, who also, in order to,give their abstract theories
the semblance of justification, imagined the existence of a
certain primitive condition in which man actually lived
outside society, accommodating to this, their fiction, the
traditions of nations concerning a Golden Age, a Saturnian
Reign, a Paradise of Innocence, etc.’ For what, think you,

ITS BASIC TENET ABSURD

JI

was the primeval Golden Age? An age of absolute liberty,
which gradually declined into an age of iron, as men came
more and more to coalesce into society. Do you not see
the principle of Liberalism spontaneously and of an inevi­
table necessity ending in that which is contrary to nature?
If there is anything evident, if there is anything manifest, if there is anything clearer than the noon-day sun,
surely it is this that man is born into society, that man is
by nature social, that the social state is for man the law
of life,· as even the needs of man’s corporeal existence .
abundantly testify: “For other animals nature has prepared
food, garments of fur, means of defense, such as teeth,
horns and hoofs, or at least swiftness in flight. But man
is so constituted that, none of these things having been
prepared for him by nature, reason is given him in their
stead, reason by which through his handiwork he is enabled to prepare all these things, for whose preparation,
however, one man does not suffice. For no one man left
to himself could enjoy a sufficient life. It is, therefore,
natural to man to live in the society of many. Moreover, in
other animals there is inborn a certain natural economy
respecting those things which are useful or hurtful, as the
lamb by nature knows the wolf to be its enemy. Some
animals also by natural instinct are aware of the medicinal
properties of herbs and of other things which are necessary
for life. Man, however, has a natural knowledge of those
things which are necessary for life only in general, as being
able to arrive at the knowledge of the particular necessities
of human life by way of deducing the same from universal
principles. It is not, however, possible for one man alone
to attain to the knowledge of all these things by his own in­
dividual reason. Therefore it is necessary that man should
live in the society of his fellows, so that one can aid an­
other and that different men can engage in different oc­
cupations, specializing in the inventions of reason, for ex­
ample, one in medicine, another in this, another in that
profession, etc.” (S. Thom, de regim. princ. 1. i, c. I.) But ·

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dreaming sophists are not deterred by considerations of .
this sort. For the immovable principle, which they also
do not blush to derive from the law of nature, forbids this.
Hence they think that they are uttering a great principle
when they say: Man is born free; therefore anything that
restricts this native liberty is contrary to nature. Just as
if one were to say: Man is born naked, therefore it is con/ trary to nature that he is covered with clothes. But,
though we are born naked, still we are living in clothes,
and I do not fancy that the madness of their insanity
would ever go so far as to say that the true perfection of
nature has survived only in those tribes which in Australia
and Africa live in the same attire in which the5r came forth
from their mothers’ womb. Moreover, what, may I ask,
does this mean, that man is born free, except that he is
born without impediments to the expansion of his own
activity? And with similar liberty nature has endowed
the animals as well as plants, in such wise, however, that
for them, as we have said above, from the moment, they are
born, nature provides garments and means of defense as
well as other necessities. Hence, by an instinct of nature,
from their very inception they shun what is contrary, and
like what is conducive to their welfare, without any previous
direction or instruction. Not so, however, the sons of men,
not so. “Therefore, the Lord shows that herein the lilies
of the field and the birds of the air are better off than man,
referring the latter’s indigence even to that most opu­
lent King Solomon who enjoyed such exceptional abundance.
“Behold,” He says, “the birds of the air, for they sow not,
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Consider the
lilies of the field, how they labor not, neither do they spin."
Afterwards He adds: “I say to you, not even Solomon in all
his çlory was arrayed as one of these;" as if he, Solomon,
stood in greater need in respect to victuals, attire and
covering than the plants and animals.” (S. Ί horn, de regim.
prine. 1. 4, c. 2.) And so it is in truth. The brute animals
. would be in a better condition than men, nay incomparably

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so, if once we were to suppose that man is not a social or
political animal by an institution of nature, and that he
ought not to be compensated by the benefit of society for
that which nature has denied to the individual· as such.
For the rest, are we really serious or do we aim at being
facetious? For, that the liberty wherewith men are born
is nothing more nor less than the most ample liberty of
passing from the womb to the tomb, is perfectly plain and
manifest. Insensate sophists, who has caused you to be­
come so demented, that while continually appealing to
nature, you perpetrate so many and such great outrages
against nature?
»
But if the fundamental principle of Liberalism begins
with an absurdity, and if it thereupon proceeds to that
which is contrary to the most evident intention of nature,
what is to be said of those chimeras which it has laid down
and defined in social matters, after the fashion of a norm
or directing idea? For willy-nilly, the necessity of living
in society is imperative, and whether it be fortunate or
unfortunate, there is now no going back to.that primitive
state wherein man lived as a child of the forest. Hence it
behooved the philosophers of Liberalism to be solicitous
for such a social structure as would leave intact the pal­
ladium of liberty, and combine together two things, which
might perhaps have been considered incompatible, namely,
individualism and the social organism. Et hic opus, hic
labor! But nothing is hard for visionaries, nothing is hard
for those who build in the air. And lo, Liberalism has
ready at hand to show thee a society planned according
to the rule of goodness and equity, and it, born of the
social, contract, as they call it. Because, if society is in
nowise natural to men, nay if it be positively contrary to
the intention of nature, according as, and to the extent
that, it is opposed to the inalienable rights of liberty, then
there is naught whereby it can be at all justified, except
it take its origin from liberty, and is artificially constructed,
premeditatedly and by express intention, for the supreme

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LIBERALISM

and sole purpose of preserving liberty intact. Think, there­
fore, of an initial pact whereby men agree freely among
themselves, concerning their association under a common
government and a common law. Think, especially, of the
conditions of the pact being such that they exactly cor­
respond to the end in view and to the will of all the parties
to the pact. Moreover, the will of those participating in
the pact is not to renounce their liberty, but merely to
join together their individual liberties, so that, from these
joined together shall result one total liberty. Liberty is
that which alone is sought, which alone is pooled in com­
mon, because all things are from liberty, by liberty, and for
liberty. Of no importance, then, socially speaking, are
those differences which differentiate one man from another,
of no importance those natural and historical dependencies,
of no importance the ties of·family or those of nationality,
of no importance the diversity of talents, of aptitudes, of
education, of culture, of acquired rights, as they are called,
or any other things of this kind. All these things are
entirely extraneous to the matter of the social contract.
Liberty is at stake, there is question only of liberty, and
nature has endowed each individual man with equal liberty.
Hence each and every man comes into society on ab­
solutely even terms with his fellows. Count now the indi­
viduals, and that will be the number of equal suffrages or
votes: which, if they express the unanimous voice, nothing
is left to be desired; if not, there remains the numerical
majority (one-half plus one), which expresses the general
will, and expressing the general will, it will express also the
general liberty. This is the law of the community reduced
to the rigorous principles of philosophy at last. And does
it not seem most wonderful, most admirable?
However, not perhaps so wonderful, that amid the glare
of philosophical light you may not discern the full and
perfect exemplar of a chimera. Two things especially be­
long to the conception of a chimerical system: that it
should not agree with any real beings or things; and that

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the very conceptual elements of which it is composed
should not cohere for the purpose intended, but rather
tend to its destruction and ruin. Now both of these things
are easily discernible in the system of Liberalism.
In the first place the system certainly does not cor­
respond to real men as they exist in flesh and bone. I
waive the point that no one, with the exception of a dream­
ing philosopher, ever thought of entering human society by
means.of a free, pact or contract. I pass over the fact
that the absolute necessity of society, a necessity anteceding every possible use of liberty, will· be obscure only to
one who perchance has fallen down from the clouds, and
whom society has not received as a baby, nor nourished
as a child, nor whom, finally, during his life-time, society
has not waited upon with benefits of every kind and of
absolute necessity. What of that which the very defenders of
the social contract themselves testify, herein bearing witness
to the truth? For how is the entrance into society free, if, by
their own confession, there is now no way of returning to
the state of original liberty ? But overlook, if you please,
all these things. Take only the social element which is
adopted as the basis of the system. This element is the
individual man, stripped of all differences of place, time,
race and nationality, severed from all religious, domestic,
corporate and political ties whether created or acknow­
ledged as a consequence of his natural and historical evolu­
tion down to the present day. Such a one is a man who is
neither modern nor ancient, neither a Westerner nor an
Oriental, neither a father nor a son, neither a youth nor
an old man: in a word, a man always the same in all individualsj always equal, having neither in a greater nor lesser
degree the power of reasoning and of acting freely. , But
such a man is a mere abstraction; such a man is a merely
conceptual beingTsuclTir~mau has hïs~plaëe in rh~ê~VreT of
Porphyry, but not in the sphere of realities. And if he
has no place in the sphere of realities, then neither has

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LIBERALISM

that chimerical system which has constructed him for its
own special use.
“Apply the ‘social contract,’ if it seems good to you,
but do not apply it to any other men than those for whom I
. it was made. These are abstract men who do not belong
to any century or country, pure entities conjured up by
the wand of Metaphysics. In effect, they have been formed
by expressly prescinding from or eliminating all the differ­
ences which distinguish one man from another, a French­
man from a Papuan, a modern Englishman from a British
contemporary of Cæsar, and only that element is con­
sidered which is common to all. There is left nothing but
an exceedingly scanty residue, an extract extremely at­
tenuated, of human nature, that, is to say, according to the
definition of the time, a being who possesses the desire of
happiness, and the faculty of reasoning, nothing more and
nothing less. On this pattern are cut many millions of
beings absolutely alike. Next, by a simplification quite as
glaring as the first, they are supposed to be all independent,
all equal, without.a past, without kin, without engage­
ments, without traditions, without customs, like so many
arithmetical units, all separable, all equivalent, and one
has to imagine them as assembled together for the first
time, and coming to terms with one another for the first
time. · From the nature which is supposed to be theirs,
and from the situation which has been created for them,
there is no difficulty whatsoever in deducing their interests,
their will and their contract. But from the fact that the
contract is suitable to them, it by no means follows that
it would be suitable to others. On the contrary, it follows
therefrom that it will be suitable to no others, and that the
unsuitableness will be extreme should one attempt to im­
pose it upon living people; because it will have for measure
the immensity of distance which separates an unsubstantial
abstraction, a philosophical phantom, an unreal image with­
out substance, from a real and complete man. (lame, La
Révolution, Tom. 1, 1. 2, c. 2.)

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ITS BASIC TENET ABSURD

“The constitution of 1795, just like its predecessors, is
made for Man as s«ch:\ But Man does not exist at all in
this world. I have seerk Frenchmen, Italians, Russians,
etc., but as to Man, I, for one, protest that I have never
met him in all my life; if he exists he is to me utterly un­
known.. . But a constitution that is made for all nations,
is not made for any nation; it is a pure abstraction, a
scholastic elaboration made to exercise the mind according
to an idealistic hypothesis, and which addresses itself to
Man, in the imaginary regions which he inhabits.” (De
Maistre, Considérations sur la France, c. 6.)
But the chimerical character of the system reveals itself
still more in this, that, while constructed for the express
purpose of preserving liberty intact, in reality, it tends en­
tirely to the destruction and ruin of liberty. This_appears at
once and very clearly in the case of the minorities, which are |
suKrëdtoTall under the tyrannical dictation of the pre- j
vailing number, without any defense, and without any pos- 1
sible recourse. And yet the ideal society was to be such
as «would gather into one the individual liberties, so that -)
each individual in obeying the law, would obey his own !
sweet will, expressed in the law and represented by the
law! Nay, not only as regards minorities, but also in
respect to the very majorities themselves, the same thing
will appear at first glance. Because the majorities, while
they prevail as regards mere arithmetical quantity, do not
excel as a rule in sound reason, iirwisdom or in independent
judgment, nor in any or all of those things which really
constitute them as men in their own right. And if one is
not a total stranger to human affairs, he will easily see
that such multitudes, if perchance they be admitted to the
making of a law, are wont to become the dupes of dema­
gogues, agitators, and bosses, or, to use one word, of the
oligarchies which, born of individualism, subjugate those
majorities and thus use them as the instruments of their
domination to further their own private interests and their
own personal ambition. Hence, from first to last, that

3»

LIBERALISM

boasted liberty is, by virtue of this system, resolved into
the privilege of a few demagogues, whilst for all others
there remains either open oppression or slavery veiled be- .
neath the lying appearance of emancipation. Such, I say,
is the conclusion to which even a summary examination
of the system leads. That, however, in view of the grave­
ness of the matter, this may become more manifest and
evident, and to the end that simultaneously it may become
more and more plain, how pernicious, how noxious, how
deadly is the fundamental principle of Liberalism, even in
respect to the simple purpose of civil life, it will be well to
take up its particular applications. This, indeed, is done
in the chapter which follows.

I

CHAPTER II
Thesis: That the principle of Liberalism, in its applica­
tion to human affairs, entails the disgregation and dissolution
of all social organs, introducing everywhere the struggle for
life, instead of concord for life, which alone is the law of life,
.dnd that it extinguishes all real liberties by the constitution
of the despotic State, absolute, irresponsible, omnivorous to
whose will and omnipotence there is no limit.

To begin with, one should note that for a perfect and
integral application of a chimerical and unnatural principle
there is of course no scope whatsoever. ‘'Naturam expellas
furca, tamen usque recurret’— ‘ Though you drive out nature
with might and main, nevertheless it will return’; nor will it
ever be in the power of visionary philosophers to construct
a real society in conformity with their ideologies, after the

SOCIALLY DISRUPTIVE

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39

manner that a potter has power to fashion the clay, to
make at will any kind of a .vessel from one and the same
mass of material. For as evil, if it were integral and per­
fect, would not even be able to sustain itself, but would
fail of its own weight, so also every system that is contrarv
to nature is in its integrity unbearable, and thus can not
be applied without meeting causes or agencies of various
kinds which obstruct it, and react against it, and partially
cancel the pernicious force of its principles. We must.not,
therefore, measure the noxiousness of Liberalism, solely
from the effects which we have seen thus far in real life.
We must take into account what the application of the
system necessarily implies, also what evil it has in fact
introduced in proportion to its actual influence, that is,
considering the greater or lesser latitude, allowed it by the
greater or lesser resistence, either of religious faith, or of
mere natural righteousness, or even of the simple instinct
of self-preservation* according to the different circumstances
of places and persons.
Having taken into consideration, as it is only.fair to do,
this preliminary reflection, consider now in the first place
how the application of the fundamental principle of Liber­
alism imports of its very nature the destruction of every
minor society, naturalor connatural, which, existing within
the domain of the State, is distinct from the State or at
least not receiving its law from the State. This, indeed,
becomes most evident ‘a priori’ from what has been'said,
and it becomes still more manifest ‘a posteriori,’ if you
consult the legal codes which have taken their origin from
Liberalism, that is, from the principles of the French
Revolution.
, In the first place, 1, say, it is made evident from what
has already been said. For Liberalism, for all that it is
worth, intends the emancipation of the individual, for
whom it desires to preserve absolutely intact that supreme
and principal good of man which is Liberty. Moreover,
it maintains that society is repugnant to the emancipation

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LIBERALISM

of the individual—society, that is, organized society, society
formed on the basis of stable ties and laws, society, in fine,
really deserving of the name society—that one society and
it alone excepted, which has been constituted according to
the norm of the principles of the social contract. Again,
only that society is the society of the social contract, which
gathers together individuals like so many arithmetical units :
entirely equal among themselves, and in every way inde­
pendent of one another, under one common government
emanating from the sum-total of the individual wills, to
which society they give the name of State. The conse­
quence, therefore, is that Liberalism is doomed, either to
repudiate itself, or to proceed towards the dissolution of
every society distinct from the State, not stopping a mo­
ment in its nefarious work of destruction or pulverization,
until it reigns over perfectly disunited monads which are
merely aggregated together in the same way that grains of
corn are aggregated in the ear. Such, surely, are the con­
clusions to which the principles of the system lead with
inescapable logic. But how they have been translated from
the order of ideas into the order of facts, and still continue
from 'day to day to be so translated, is worth our pains to
set forth briefly.
/ The first of all societies is the sdciety which has been
instituted by God Himself, the Author of nature, a society,
which is beneficent among all others, anterior to all political
society, attuned to the more intimate affections of the
human heart, and demanded by the more evident needs of
both our moral and our physical life: I mean domestic
society, commonly known as the family. It, then, first,
too, of all, will experience the adverse blows of Liberalism,
which latter, as far as in it lies, by every means and device,
by every effort, by every resource at its disposal, purposes
' the destruction and elimination of the family, so that one
might well say that, for the legislators of the Revolution,
this in truth was tKe Carthage to be destroyed. And Liberal­
ism destroys it first in its foundation. For the foundation of

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SOCIALLY DISRUPTIVE

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the family is marriage, and that indissoluble marriage,
through an indivisible obligation binding in common both
the man and the woman unto the very end. - Moreover,
how contrary such an obligation is to the liberty and
emancipation of the individual, is easy for all to see at a
glance. Nevertheless, certain prejudices still continue to
' be rooted in the minds of men, which do not allow the
intended reformation to be carried out hastily. Hence,
jCiberalism will begin with the reduction of marriage to the\
istatusof a mere civil contract,sanctioned only by the civil law. j
.(Then, from civil marriage there will be an easy transition to i z
/legal divorce, and not without reason, because whatever can ?
: ' be bound by the authority of the civil law can also be / .
! dissolved’and rescinded by the authority of that selfsame /
; law. Finally, from legal divorce a gradual and impercep- j
! tible descent will be prepared to“free love,” in which is to
I be found the most complete application of “the principles,”
and when this shall come to pass, there will not survive any
i\ more recognizable vestige of the family than exists among
.the brute beasts/ You see,then,howJUberalism intends.by
^eyërÿZmëânS'ând device to accomplish the destruction of
the famjiy_b)^atlackifig'its pltimate_fpundatian. It likewise
intends to destroy the family in its authority. In the first
place, it .does so by means of laws depriving the father of
the family of the power of free disposal of his property, so
that it is not lawful for him to give one of his children a
greater portion than another, nay not lawful for him to
disinherit even an unworthy offspring. But, secondly and
especially, this is done through the laws of public and
obligatory instruction, whereby the education of the chil­
dren is virtually taken away from the parents, and the
entire control of the public school system so completely
given over to the civil authority, that no recognition what­
soever is accorded to the possible right of any other author­
ity to intervene in respect to the discipline or course of
study, or concerning the choice or approbation of teachers.
And what remnant, I ask, will be left of paternal authority,

4-

liberalism

when such legislation, reaching the ultimate term of its
evolution, shall put into complete execution those things
which until now it has been content merely to desire?
But if the family still manages to withstand so many and
such great forces of dissolution, behold finally the laws of
succession, which prescribe that on the death of the father
or mother the property shall be equally divided, and that each of the children shall go his own way taking with him
a portion of the scattered patrimony. Hence the family
has now become a merely temporary association which
death speedily dissolves and disperses to the four winds.
With the stability of the family estate has perished the
continuity of the family down through the ages; the per­
petuity of its examples and traditions has also ceased, and
nothing remains of it except individuals who pass away
and vanish, one after another.
/ In such wise, then, does Liberalism aim with ruthless
/and demoniac effort at the destruction of the family, and
z for no other reason than this, that it sees in the family,
thanks to the solidity of that institution as well as the effi­
cacy of its influence, the most powerful resistent to i.ts own
nefarious purposes. But do not imagine that other minor
societies can find favor in its eyes: such, for example, as
those which are called corporations, like the guilds of
artisans, of laborers, and, in general, of men whom the
exercise of the same art naturally associates together under
determinate laws and by-laws. The individualism of the
social contract does not tolerate the co-existence of such
societies. But since it was easier to destroy them, for that
reason, the Revolution at its very inception chose by a
single decree, by a single law, by a single intimation of its
despotic will, to abolish them forever. And the pretext
was always the same: to preserve absolutely intact the
liberty of the individual; to leave free scope for the com­
petition of individual liberties; and that anything is con­
trary to the principle of liberty which either impedes or
diminishes the free exchange of the labor demanded and

SOCIALLY DISRUPTIVE

43

the wages offered, etc., etc/ In vain will wise economists
protest that which even ordinary common-sense at once
proclaims: that such individual liberty unprotected by any-rz7
resources of united force, is altogether helpless; that.there\
is no liberty for the laboring man enabling him to labor,
to acquire and to profit according as hé wilfXmt only ac­
cording as he cans nor yet even thus, according to a humane
and just law of organized labor, but according to a mechanical· and fatal law of unbridled and destructive com­
petition; that the· case of the man who sells his labor cheer­
fully and voluntarily is not precisely the same as that of
the man whom labor-conditions force to accept a certain
wage, since such a one does not stand on equal terms with
his employer, because the employer of .labor can choose
among many men who are forced under the stress of dire
necessity to consent to a wage which continues to become
more and more insufficient. Such freedom of contract,
therefore, on the part of the laborer, soon ends in the
liberty to die of starvation. It is a negative liberty, an
abstract liberty, nay a substracted .liberty. 'From such
liberty arises the inhuman struggle for life and that dreadful curse of our age, proletarianism, the condition of that
numerous class of society known as the proletariat class,
.
who are stripped of all· stable private property, and reduced, in a most miserable and heart-rending way, to a.
condition of hereditary want and indigence, etc. “The
proletariat, that is to say, the condition of the family de­
tached from all property, appearing (under Revolutionary
law) as a normal thing, instead of as a social monstrosity.”
(La Tour-du-Pin, Vers un ordre social chrétien.) “The ex­
istence of a numerous class destitute of all property, and
living, as it were, in a state of hereditary privation, is a
new and unprecedented fact.” (Le Play, Ref. soc. t. I.) In
vain, I repeat, in vain will you, or anyone else of good and
sound judgment, make these and other protests.
For to
what purpose do you appeal to justice? to what purpose
do you urge the rights of a just and beneficent liberty?

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Liberty is sought for its own sake, liberty as such, liberty
in its conception. And this ideal liberty does not concede
the right of citizenship except to individual persons, which,
in order that they may in nowise restrain, interfere with,
or fetter one another, it desires to be devoid of all cohesion
among themselves.
It is manifest, therefore, that it.is the task of Liberalism
to dissolve all the social organs, into one. ' For, as the
organs of the physical body are not molecules, or atoms,
or cells, but rather limbs and members, so also the organs
of the social body are not individuals, but the family, the
guild and the municipality. And if these be once supposed
to be de-articulated or disorganized within the organism, to
which they belong, it necessarily follows that all real liberties
must perish utterly. And the reason is evident, because
over the disgregated and disassociated monads which indi­
vidualism has introduced, nothing can now remain except
the gigantic and colossal State, an omnivorous thing, which,
having destroyed all inferior organization and autonomy/
will absorb into itself all force, all power, all right, all
authority, and become the sole administrator, procurator,
instructor, preceptor, educator and guardian, until it be­
comes also the sole proprietor, owner and possessor. And
what else, I ask, does this entail except a monstrous form
of slavery? The Apostle says that the heir, as long as he
is a child, differeth naught from the slave, because he is
under tutors and guardians until the time appointed by
the father. But a worse fate has befallen that minor-child ■
of the social contract. For that minor is not placed in
such a condition that he differs naught from the slave, for
a time only, but is so placed indefinitely and forever; that
minor is not under a guardian constituted by the father,
but under a master, to whose will and domination there is,
so far as the system itself is concerned, absolutely no limit.
Indeed, in its last analysis, the Liberalism of the Revolu­
tion is resolved into that proposition which is condemned
in the Syllabus, under n, 39: “The Commonwealth of the

SOCIALLY DISRUPTIVE

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Siste, as the source and Fount of all rights, is endowed
with a kind^of right which is circumscribed by no limits
whatsoever. ”
“In the political order, Liberalism .declares in the very
first clause of the Contrat social, and in the first article of
the Déclaration des droits de l'homme, that man is born free.
Liberalism would detach the individual human being from/
his antecedents whether natural or historical. It would
liberate diim from family-ties, corporative ties and all other
ties, whether social or traditional. Only because it is neces­
sary to live in society and because society needs a govern. ment, will Liberalism establish a government for society
upon the basis of one vote or suffrage to each individual lib­
erty, and of the taking into account of these sovereign votes.
The majority, expressing what Rousseau calls the general
will, for that reason will also, after a fashion, express the
general liberty. The will of the majority becomes thence­
forth a decree of law against which no one at all will have
recourse in regard to anything, however useful and reason­
able, and no matter how precious or sacred that person or
thing may be. Liberty at the very outset establishes a
rule which methodically ignores alj individual forces and
particular liberties. Its vaunt is that it created uniquely
and exclusively the liberty of each single individual; but in
practice, history shows clearly that this..indkidualism weak­
ens the mdividualsr” Thï s~isth e first effect. Its second
effêct~îsu5~aomineer, without any recourse of right, over
all individuals not belonging to the'party of the majority,
and thus to destroy the last refug£_o£real liberties. ”
“In the economic order, sovereign liberty wishes that
the concurrence of the individual liberties, whence good
ought inevitably to result, should be a sacred institution.
There is to be no-jather .policy. than.
faire" and
"lâtssèr'pâssérd' to let things be a.nd^to.le.t..things.go. The
law of labor must then be individual. As well out of
ty reverence for his own liberty, as out of veneration for the
■machinery of the world, the workman must respect the
r

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liberalism

injunctions of the decree of Chapelier, and keep himself
severely aloofjrorn all association, corporation, or federa­
tion, from every syndicate ôfà“prdfessional nature, calculated
to disturbjrhe free, play of supply and demand, the free
exchange of salary and labor. So much the worse if the
merchant of labor be a millionaire^ absolute master of the
fate of ιο,οοο workmen: Liberty! Liberty! Economic
liberty, therefore, ends, by a rapid deduction, in the noble
liberty to die of starvation. I should make bold to call it
a negative liberty, an abstract liberty, better still, a sub­
tracted liberty. All real liberty, all practical liberty, all .
free and assured power of preserving one’s life, and of.
recuperating one’s vital energies, is denied the laborer along
with the liberty of association. It required the decline of
liberal ideals to obtain, in the economic order, a certain
degree of liberty of association. To extend this liberty, to
develop and nourish it, we must obliterate every trace of
liberalism that still subsists in human minds.. . We must
either exclude all liberalism, or else forego all effective
liberty.” (Maurras, Libéralisme et Liberté, y. $, seq.)
But, what sort of enigma, then, is this that a social
system erected upon Liberty, to Liberty, and for Liberty
should lead so evidently to despotism and the elimination
of all real liberty? And what new kind of marvel is this,
that a political doctrine founded, as they claim, upon pure
philosophy, should stupidly recognize as thesupremeauthority
the dictatorship of mere numbers? “It is necessary to refute
the principle of government by number, because it is ab­
surd in its source, incompetent in its exercise, pernicious
in its effects... We have too much respect for the people
to allow.it to be said: It suffices to count the votes .of the
incompetent, in order to resolve questions of very general
interest which demand long years of study, of experience
or meditation. It suffices to receive and to add together
the suffrages of the primaries to decide the most delicate
things... Government by number tends to disorganize the '
country. It of necessity destroys all that which moderates

PURPOSE SATANIC

47

or tempers it, all that which differs from it: religion, family,
traditions, classes, organizations of.any kind, etc.” (Maurras, Libéralisme et Liberté, p. 9, seq.)
And do you imagine that if there was only question here
of civil liberty or of platonic philosophy, that such a doc­
trine would or could ever have reached so lofty a pinnacle
of success? But, indeed, something else was at stake, and
something else still continues to be at stake down to this
very moment. What that something is, remains now to be
explained forthwith.
·■

CHAPTER III
Thesis:. That the principle ofLjberalism_js essentially

ami-religious. raising a^dmdSrS~^~revolt and independence
against God. And that to the end or purpose of eradicating
from the world the worship of God, the religion of God, the
law of God, nay the very notion of Him, all those things what­
soever it has attempted under thefalse pretext of liberty, whethir
in the political or in the economic or in the domestic order, are,
as a matter offact, directed.
The essential irreligiousness or impiousness of the prin­
ciple of Liberalism will be readily seen by anyone who
duly weighs the fact that it was the cardinal principle
of the French Revolution, of which has been said with
truth that its satanic character was so explicit, so visible,
that it is distinguished thereby from every other thing
that had ever occurred throughout the whole previous
course of history. “The French Revolution is unlike any­
thing that was witnessed in past ages. It is satanic in its es-

|Ssr-·

48

liberalism·

sence.” (De Maistre, du Pape, discours préliminaire.) “There
is in the French Revolution a satanic character which dis­
tinguishes it from everything that was ever seen and,
perhaps, from anything that ever will be seen. (Id. Considêrationes sur la France, c. ζ.) Now, impiety has never
been absent from the world, and impiety has always been
a crime; but it had never existed before with the same
characteristic trait, with the same intensity and, par­
ticularly, with the same organization. Among the ancients
impiety generally proceeds in a rather peaceable manner:
it discourses, to be sure; it disputes, it cavils, it ridicules;
but it is devoid of acrimony. Lucretius himself scarcely
ever breaks out into taunts and blasphemy, even when he
traduces religion and denounces it as the fruitful source of
evils. There was not then, forsooth, a religion which was
worthy of exciting the anger and the furv of contemporary
unbelief. When, however, the Gospel began to be preached,
the war against religion began fo increase. Yet still there
was moderation and measure, for the pagan persecutors, in
order not to fight under the standard of irréligion, were
rather wont to persecute the Christians as atheists and
overthrowers of the ancestral religion. Thereafter, in the
centuries which follow, if any precursors of impiety appear,
they are very rare and isolated, not united together by a
pact,· not especially agitated with the fury which we wit­
ness to-day. Hence, even the man who may be considered
the father of modern infidelity, Peter Bayle, in the very
worst passages of his works, still differs considerably from
his successors, so little inflamed does he seem with the
desire of persuading, or of making converts: doubting rather
than denying, arguing for as well as against, abstaining
from the tone of bitterness, as though a neutral party to
the conflict of opinions. But, finally, in the eighteenth
century, impiety grew into a true and formidable power.
Then was first revealed that peculiar impiety characteristic
of our times—the furv of impiety —and, if we be permitted
the expression, the concentrated and unadulterated quin-

sti»

PURPOSE SATANIC

tessence of impiety. No longes the coid indifference of
scepticism, no longer the unperturbed irony of the infidel
against anodyne errors,, but implacable hatred, flaming
anger and frothing frenzy. They attack religion as their
• principal enemy, and those who are known by the name of
philosophers pass from a hatred of Christianity into a pèrsonal hatred for its Divine Founder, in very truth, by a
kind of malice which would seem to be superhuman, they
hold the very person of Jesus Christ in exactly the same
place and light that a personal living enemy would be held.
Then, also, entering into an agreement, with united forces
they swear to extirpate the infamous one from the world;
they pledge themselves to eradicate it from the earth, so
that its name may be no longer remembered. Then they
rise up against God directly, saying: “Depart from us: the
knowledge of Thy ways we do not desire, and who is omnipotent that we should serve Him?” (fjob,21:14.) But now
we must pause to consider what for a long time had been
the state of things in Europe. Religion, of course, had
permeated the entire social body from the soles of the feet
to the crown of the head, and that most intimately. For,
since all of our civilization took its origin from Christianity,
and the ministers of religion had obtained everywhere a
conspicuous and lofty preeminence in the political state,
it had come to pass thereby that everywhere, likewise, civil
institutions and religious ones had become, marvelously
interwoven. For, of all European states can be said with
more or less truth what an English historian said concerning the kingdom of France: to wit, that this kingdom was
constructed by the bishops as the honeycomb is constructed
by the bees. Here, then, the reason is patent why the antireligious fury of the impious promoters of the Revolution
involved, as a necessary sequel, their hatred for the existing
social institutions, as being such that the religious principle
could in no wise be separated therefrom. The ancient structure for whose upbuilding both nature and religion joined
together by friendly compact had labored incessantly, was

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50

LIBERALISM

extremely displeasing to the Revolutionaries. Hence they
decreed that it be leveled to the ground and utterly de­
molished, to make room for a new social , and political
order, which would be suited to their prime and principal
intent of destroying all religion.
“It was not until, the first part of the eighteenth century
that infidelity became a real power. Thereupon it is seen
to spread with incredible rapidity to every quarter. From
the palace to the cabin, it insinuates itself everywhere, it
infests everything; it has invisible channels, an action secret
but infallible, such that the most attentive observer, wit­
nessing, the effect, is sometimes at a loss to discover the
means. Through an incomprehensible sort of prestige it man­
ages to make itself beloved by the very ones of whom it is
the deadly enemy, and the very authority which it is about
to immolate, stupidly embraces it just prior to receiving
the blow. Soon a simple system becomes a formal associa­
tion, which by a rapid transition changes itself into a plot,
and finally into a grand conspiracy which covers the whole
of Europe. Then for the first time is manifested that
peculiar character of impiety which belongs to no other
than the eighteenth century. ' It is no longer the cold tone
of indifference, or the at most malignant irony of scepticism,
it is a deadly hatred, it has the tone of anger and, often, of
rage. The writers of this epoch, at least the most noted of
their number, no longer treat Christianity as a human
error of no consequence, they pursue it as a capital enemy,
they attack it with a vengeance; it is duel to deathj and
what would appear incredible did we not have the sad
proofs thereof before, our verv eyes, is that some of those
men who give themselves the title of -philosophers advance
from the hatred of Christianity to an actually personal
hatred for its Divine Author. They hate Him as really
as one could hate a living enemy... Nevertheless, since
the whole of Europe was civilized by Christianity, and the
ministers of religion had attained to great political standing
in every country, the civil and religious institutions became

PURPOSE SATANIC

' ξI

commingled and, as it were, amalgamated in a surprising
manner; in such wise that of all the states of Europe could
be said with more or less truth what Gibbon has said of
France, namely, that this kingdom was made by the bishops.
It was inevitable, therefore, that the philosophy of the
•century would not be slow to hate the social institutions,
from .which it was impossible to separate the religious prin’ ciple. And this is precisely what happened. All the govern! ments, all the institutions of Europe incur its displeasure,
because they are Christian and in thé measure that they
are Christian; an intellectual unrest, a universal discontent.
takes possession of all minds.
In France, especially,
the philosophical fury knew no bounds, and soon one
single formidable voice, formed by the coalescence of so
many, many voices, makes itself heard cryingout (to God) in
the midst of sinful Europe: “Leave us! Must we, forsooth,
forever tremble before priests, and receive from them the
instruction it pleases them to give us? Throughout Europe
truth is concealed by the smoke of the censer; it is time for
her to come forth from the fatal cloud. We will no longer
speak of Thee (i. e., God) to our children; it is for them,
when they become men, to learn if Thou art, and that
which Thou dost demand of them. All that exists dis­
pleases us because Thy name is written upon all that exists.
We wish to destroy all, and to remake all without Thee.
Depart from our counsels, depart from our academies, de­
part from our homes; reason is sufficient for us. Leave
us!” (De Maistre, Essai sur le principe générateur des con­
stitutions politiques, ^63-66.)
Now, the pretext for introducing this new social order
was liberty; its codex the “Contrat social”; the means, the
rule of the demagogue; the ultimate motive, however,· the
constitution of the atheistic and colossal State, as the su­
preme arbiter of all rights, the omnipotent dictator of all
that is licit or illicit, permitted, or prohibited, under whose
auspices the infamous name and worship of God were to
be abolished forever. To this point everything converges,

167S03

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£2

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. LIBERALISM

to this point all else is ordained as a means; to this end
the destruction of the family, to this end the destruction
of the guilds, to this end the destruction of the liberties of
the Communes and the Provinces, so that, namely, in the
end there may be nothing left but the power of the State,
without whose authorization no one .can move hand or
foot throughout the environs of the universe. This is thé
purpose intended, not civil liberty. Liberty is the pretext,
liberty is the idol to seduce nations; the idol which has
hands and feels not, which has feet and walks not; an in­
animate god behind which Satan prepares to reduce
the nations to a servitude far worse than that with
which he bound the world by means of the material idols
of paganism. For the rest, that which is really at issue is
nothing else than religion. “We wish,” they say, “to organ­
ize a humanity which can dispense with God” (Julius
Ferry). And again: “From the days of the Revolution, we
are in rebellion against authority both divine and human”
(by human understand that human authority which de­
pends upon God)—“Since the Revolution,” exclaims Cle­
menceau, “we fire in revolt against authority both divine
and human, with which we, at one fell blow, settled a ter­
rible account, the twenty-first of January, 1793.” And
again: “Many there are who speak and tvrite of the struggle
of civilization, but few there are who understand that this
struggle is the last desperate stand of the Christian ide'al
before it finally disappears from the world, and that modern
civilization is prepared to resort to any means whatever,
rather than relinquish those things which it has secured at
the cost of such great labor. For modern civilization-and
Christianity are antagonistic to each.other, and therefore it
is inevitable that one give place to the other. Modern
progress can acknowledge no God save one immanent to
the world and opposed to the transcendental God of Chris­
tian Revelation, nor other morality save only that true
kind, whose source is the human will determining itself by

PURPOSE SATANIC

ςγ

itself, and becoming a law unto itself. ” (Hartman, Religion
de Γavenir. )* This, then, is the final conclusion of the present article:
that Liberalism seeks the overthrow of religion, when under
the lying name of liberty, it enters the domestic, the eco­
nomic or the political order. But its description is not yet
complete. It remains to add something concerning its
various forms in relation to religion. For it does not stick
to one method, but knows how to temper the rigor of its
demands in the presence of those whom the portent of its
impiety might still offend; nay, it knows how to transfigure
itself into an angel of light, and under a virtuous semblance
to ensnare the uncautious with certain empty sophisms.
Hence, we must explain, in a few words, into how many
species or quasi-species it is subdivided.
* Lest the Reader be inclined to regard this attitude towards religion
as peculiarly European, and to think, that the American liberal’s views
on this subject are essentially different to those of his European brother,
the translater has taken the liberty tn insert the' following citation from,.
Dr. Elliot, the famous ex-President of Harvard: “The new religion,” he
says, “will not attempt to reconcile people to present ills by the promise
of future compensation. I believe the advent of just freedom has been
delayed for centuries by such promises. Prevention will be the watch­
word of the new religion, and a skilful surgeon will be one of its ministers.
It cannot supply consolation as offered by old religions, but it will reduce
the need of consolation." (The New Religion.) ■—Note of the Translator.

■Μ

PART II
('om erninj»: the Various Korins of Liberalism
in Belijrions Matters
There are three principal forms of religious Liberalism.
I here is absolute Liberalism; there is moderate Liberalism;
. and, finally, there is a Liberalism which it is difficult to
characterize, since it consists in complete incoherence, and
defies every attempt at a definition: namely, the Liberalism
of those who designate themselves as Liberal Catholics.
Common to all three forms is the intent to set up the
emancipation of the civil order from the religious, and
thereby ensure the emancipation of the State from the
Church. But in the first form this emancipation is secured
by means of the absolute domination of the State over the
Church; in the second form it is secured by means of the
complete independence of the State from the Church, and
of the Church from the State. In the third form, finally,
this mutual independence and separation is defended and
approved of, not as a theoretical principle of justice, but
as that which in practice supplies the best modus vivendi.
What should be our estimate of each of these forms, and
what their proper and distinctive characteristics are, we
must now consider in due order.

54

i

CHAPTER I
Thesis: That the first form of Liberalism is reducible to
Materialism anf Atheism.

This is the form of absolute Liberalism with which we
were concerned in the preceding chapters. It conceives the
State as the highest power to which humanity in its social
progress can raise itself. Not only has the State nothing
above it, but it has not even anything equal to it, or any­
thing that is not subject to it. It has a supreme and
universal power which nothing can resist and which every­
thing must obey. It is the norm par excellence; it is the
regulator of all human relationships; in respect to it no
right whether individual or domestic is inviolable, and
much less any sacred right of which another society might
boast. For all rights are derived from it in virtue of the
social will, which, being first manifested by public opinion,
is. then erected into a law by the representatives of the
• people in their parliaments. And because the social will is
essentially progressive, it follows that no law nor institution
possesses immutability, but all things are amenable to
social progress. Always, however, the law of the State,
as long as it is and remains the law of the State, exhibits
the supreme rule and standard of human conduct. This
is the theory, as anyone may see for himself, which more
or less regulates, the modern constitutions of European
countries, resting as they do on the “Declaration of the
Rights of Man.” According to its principles, the Church
loses not only all preeminence in relation to the State,
but also even the character of a perfect and independent
society. At most it can only continue as a simple associa­
tion like any other corporation, receiving its existence from
the State. And, as the State, according to its pure good
pleasure and to the degree that it judges expedient, allows
ir to enjoy public life, so also it defines what are to be the
'55

'

LIBERALISM

limits within which the rights which it concedes may be
exercised, always reserving for itself “ altwm dominium. ”
Thus, finally, it has come to such a pass that the present
condition of the Church is worse from a certain standpoint
than her condition under the pagan Emperors when the
intermittent violence of the bloody persecutions allowed
her at least brief intervals of respite. Now, however, what
we must think of the intrinsic character of this theory is
apparent. In the first place, it contains an implicit nega­
tion of the spirituality of the soul as well as of its immor­
tality. For what justification would it have for conceiving
the State as the supreme authority, if it did not restrict
the destiny of man exclusively to the sphere of organic
and material life? For whoever once admits that man’s
destiny is not complete in this world and that there re- .
mains for him after the present life another immortal life,
is, willy-nilly, forced to .admit that only a religious society
can be supreme, that, namely, which guides man and aids
him in securing his supreme and imperishable good. Nor
is there any reason at all for anyone to assume that the end
of temporal prosperity, which is looked after by the State,
is that supreme good to which all else must give way and
be subordinated, unless he at the same time thinks of man
as being evolved from pure matter. Therefore, absolute
Liberalism is equivalent to Materialism.
But the root-error whence all others spring is, properly
speaking, the denial of God. For, certainly, if one for a
moment supposes that there is no God, or (what comes to
the same thing) that there is no God distinct from the
world, it is easy to understand that man is the highest
power in the universe, that is, man amplified by associa­
tion, man evoluted into a multitude and ranged and drawn
up in the ranks of a civil community. Indeed, in such a
man we find the last limit of perfection to which unpro­
duced matter has hitherto attained. He, in consequence,
is his own absolute master; he the one who lays down
standards for himself and his inferiors concerning that

EXTREME FORM

ςγ

which it pleases him to call good or evil, just or unjust.
But no greater absurdity is conceivable, where a personal
God is once recognized, a Creator of heaven and earth,
above all other things distinct from Him, nay above all
things which are conceivable, and ineffably above chem.
For then, in that true and living God, of inevitable neces­
sity, we must recognize the Supreme Lord and Law-giver
of the universe, before whom man, and society, and those
who preside over society must of necessity bow down. Then
not the State, not public opinion, not the fads of progress,
but the immutable principles of morality divinely imprinted
upon our souls are to be received as the supreme rule and
standard of human action both in the private and the public
order. Then, finally, the highest human authority will ap­
pear to have no other right to govern or rule than a power
which is subordinated to God’s authority, so that it is only
authorized to rule the nations in accordance with the will
of that God, to whom all human authority is subject.
“Hear, therefore, ye kings, and understand: learn, ye
that are judges of the ends of the earth. Give ear, you
that rule the people, and that please yourselves in multi­
tudes .of nations: For power is given you by the Lord, and
strength by the Most High, who will examine your works,
and search out your thoughts: Because being ministers of
his kingdom, you have not judged rightly, nor kept the law
of justice, nor walked according to the will of God. Horribly
and speedily wjll he appear to you: for a most severe judg­
ment shall be for them that bear rule. For to him that is
little, mercy is granted: but the mighty shall be mightily
tormented. For God will not except any man’s person,
neither will he stand in awe of any man’s greatness: for he
made the little and the great, and he hath equally care of
all. But a greater punishment is ready for the more mighty.
To you, therefore, O kings, are these my words, that you
may learn wisdom, and not fall from it.” (Wisdom, 6: 2-jo.)
Behold what sort of a conception of political power the
divine Scriptures inculcate. Surely quite a different one

mKKSŒ33SSSS

<8

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LIBERALISM

from the notion of a power which is the fount and origin
of all right! Behold how in a political ruler they recognize
no more than a minister (servant): “For he is God’s minister-for good” (Rom. 13: 4). A minister, I repeat, applying
the law which he has received, and from which, should he
dare to deviate, not only is there no longer due him the
obedience of his subjects, but rather a most severe castiga. tion from God. All this is most evident, from the stand­
point of rigorous logic alone, for everyone who acknowledges
a God, and does not even admit of so much as the shadow
of a doubt. Wherefore, that monstrous conception of the
State as the supreme norm of public morality, having do­
minion over religious society itself, so that it concedes to
the latter, takes away, limits or measures the right of the
forum externum according to the necessity or utility of its
own political purpose—such a conception, I say, coheres
essentially with the absolute denial of God, that is, of the
true living God, Who is something more than a mere empty
idea invented to overawe the common herd.
Nor does it avail to say that this conception still leaves
independent individual and private religion. For that is
tantamount to nothing at all. First, because individuals
are not any more self-sufficient for religious life than they
are for temporal life, nay much less so, religious society
being for them a necessary means, in relation to their in­
struction in religious worship. And therefore, to claim
dominion over social religion, is, by necessary consequence,
to render dependent also religion of conscience (of the
private and internal forum). Secondly; because religion
does not alter its nature when it passes from the public
to the private order. If, therefore, in the public order it
is rated among the merely human things ordained for a
political end and placed under the dominion of the State,
likewise in the private order it assumes the guise of a
human affair, for example, of an empty opinion concern­
ing God, who, although in reality a sort of imaginary or
fabulous being, is still, nevertheless, thought to exist by

MODERATE FORM

Çy

superstitious and weak-minded men. Hence, in every wav,
from start to finish, absolute Liberalism,, that is, the kind
which asserts the domination of the State over the Church,
amounts to pure and downright atheism. . And since this
does not seem to admit of any possible evasion, the point
need not detain us further. But we must now proceed to
the consideration of a milder form of Liberalism, wherewith
the following chapter is concerned.

CHAPTER II
Thesis: That moderate Liberalism is reducible, if not to
formal Atheism, at least to Manichteism.
The Liberalism of which we have spoken hitherto is so
utterly at variance with the presage of its name, that
one might fancy the name had been imposed by way
of antiphrasis, as, in like manner, by antiphrasis, to the
Furies of ancient fable was given the title Eumenides
(eù/zeinSeç,‘gracious goddesses’). For, verily, that liberty
from which it takes its name, if it is the liberty of impiety,
is yet much more the liberty of exquisite tyranny, of des­
potism-far worse than barbaric. Hence its enormity has
been displeasing to many, who therefore undertook to con­
struct (pardon the expression) a more liberal Liberalism.
It is the Liberalism which is commonly termed moderate,
which, so far as words go, no longer defends the absolute
domination of the State over the Church, but only the
complete independence of the former from'the latter, and
their mutual separation from each other, according to the
. celebrated formula, “z? free Church in a free State." It

6o

liberalism

professes not to deny the religious order, not even the
supernatural religious order, with the absolute autonomy
due to it, but merely to desire that one should utterly
prescind therefrom when it comes to ordering the affairs of
political society. Religion and politics, forsooth, are two
entirely disparate things. The field,' purpose and means of
civil society are quite different to those of religious society.
And why should we mix up those things which from the
very nature of things are separate? For the rest, we must
not depart from the general principle of justice, whereby
we are bidden to render to everyone his due, both to Cæsar
the things which are Cæsar’s, and to God the things which
are God’s; so that, to wit, ecclesiastical society shall enjoy
its own exclusive rights and likewise civil society, and,
since there is room for both beneath the sun, let each go
its own way, not bothering at all about the affairs of the
other. Hear the répertoire of talk which the moderate liberal
dispenses: “No more union between Church and State.
Since the Church has no more in common with govern­
ments than governments have in common with religion,
why should they meddle in each other’s affairs? The
individual professes after his own fashion the form of wor­
ship which he chooses as agreeable to his own peculiar
taste; as a member of the State, however, he has no par­
ticular form of worship. The State recognizes all religions,
assures them all of equal protection, guarantees them equal
liberty, such is the regime of tolerance; and it behooves us
to pronounce it good, excellent, and salutary, to maintain
it at all costs, and to spread it perseveringly. One can say
that this regime is of divine right. God Himself has es­
tablished it in creating man free; He puts it into practice
by making His suri to shine alike upon the just and the
unjust. Respecting those who disregard the Truth, God
will have His day of justice, which no man has a right to
hasten. Each church, as being free iri a free State, will
incorporate its own proselytes, direct its own faithful, and
excommunicate its own dissidents; the State will take no

MODERATE FORM

6ι

account of these things, will excommunicate no one, and
will never be excommunicated. The civil law will recog­
nize no ecclesiastical immunity, no religious prohibition, no
•religious obligation; the temple will pay thç impost on
doors and windows, theological students will do military
service, the bishops will serve on the jury or in the national
guard, the priest may marry, if he will, be divorced, if he
will, and be remarried, if he will. On the other hand, there
will be no more civil disfranchisements or prohibitions
than there will be immunities of another kind. Every
religion will preach, publish, hold processions, ring its bells,
and bury according to its fancy, and the ministers of religion
will be all that a citizen can be. Nothing, so far as the
State is concerned, will prevent a bishop from commanding
his company in the national guard, keeping shop, or con­
ducting a business; and no more shall anything prevent
his Church, pr the Council, or the Pope, from, being able to
depose him. The State does not take cognizance of any­
thing save the facts of public order.” (L. Veuillot, Z.7Zlusion libérale, § i.)
This is certainly more specious, nay it will seem to
many so thoroughly in keeping with the rule of equity, that
nothing could be more so. However, if one considers the
matter a little more attentively, he will easily see that the
position is untenable by reason of the irreducible dualism
which it introduces. And this, indeed, Boniface VIII had
long since remarked in his Bull “ Unam Sanctam, ” in the passage where he declares that whosoever asserts the absolute in­
dependence whether of the Church from the State or of the
State from the Church, resists the ordinance of God, '‘unless
he imagines like Manichceus that there are two Principles, which
we do pronounce to be false and heretical." And thus it is in
very truth, because the doctrine logically coheres with the
absurd tenets of the Manichæans, or certainly with what is
equivalent thereto, whether we consider the Manichæans
according to their belief that there were two gods as well
as two natures in single principles, or according to their

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LIBERALISM

H”.

assertion that there were'also two souls in every man, “one
from God, which is of its very nature that which He is;
tiie other from the tribe of darkness, which God neither
begot, nor created, nor put forth, nor cast off, but which
has its own life, its own offspring and animals, and finally
its own regime and ungenerated origin.” (St. Augustine,
De Vera Religione, c. 9; cf., also De Moribus Ecclesice,
Lib. I, c. 10.)
And first, indeed, it is self-evident, that, if the source
or principle of the whole world is one, according to the
words of Ecclesiasticus {Ben Sirach, 1, 8), “There is one
most high Creator Almighty," one likewise will be the ordi­
nation of the universe, one the supreme purpose of creation.
And it is also evident that this purpose, most sublim.e on
the part of Him who ordains, and the most beneficial for
those who are ordained, can be none other than the glory
of God and the eternal beatitude of the rational creature,
for whose sake all inferior things were made. Finally, it is
• evident that to this end or purpose every inferior end or
purpose should be subordinated, provided it be true that
secondary goods in respect to the primary good have the
relation of means to an end, and that means are necessarily
subordinate to the end. Hence, with irresistible evidence,
the conclusion .follows: that the political State itself falls
under the one and only order of the supreme end, from
which it may no more dare to prescind than, for example,
a carpenter may prescind from the purpose of the architect
for whom it is his duty to prepare the lumber and dispose
it for use in erecting a house. I say, however, that the
consequential force of this evidence is irresistible, because
there is no way of evading it, except by denying the major
premiss whence it follows. Whosoever, therefore, main­
tains that the purpose of the State and the purpose of
Religion are in relation to each other utterly disparate
purposes, recognizing in consequence two utterly disparate
and separate powers to preside over the pursuit of each,
such a one by that verv fact implicitly denies the unity of

·

MODERATE FORM

6^

the original Source or Principle, asserts that the creator of
spiritual things is different from the creator of temporal
things, that there-is one god by whom man is ordained to
civil life and quite another by whom he is destined to
religious life. Like Manichæus, therefore, he imagines that
there are two origins or principles, and, if haply he differs
in aught from Manichæus, it is only in this, that his atti- ■
tude is still Mirse. For, the author of temporal things,
whom Manichæus considered an evil god, he will be in­
clined to regard as a deity of light and progress, while the
author of spiritual things, whom Manichæus called the
good god, he will call a god of darkness and obscurantism.
Of course, it is customary with those who are wont to
concoct historical arguments against history, philosophical
arguments against philosophy, and scriptural arguments
against the Scriptures: it is customary with such, I say,
to appeal to that passage in the Gospels where we are
bidden to render to Cæsar the things that are Çæsar’s and
to God the things that are God’s. Now, concerning the
true aspect under which the things which are Cæsar’s are
contrasted with the things which are God’s, there is no
place for discussion here, that being reserved for consideration elsewhere.* Meanwhile, however, it .may be permissible to put this one question: whether, or not, Cæsar is to
be regarded as a creature of God. If a creature of God,
how, I ask, is he independent of God, having the right to
dispose his own affairs without any regard to God, God’s
law, or the religion which God has instituted? But if not
a creature of God, then, by your own confession, there is
assumed to be some other god of temporal things opposed
to the deity of spiritual things, and in truth two Principles
are believed to exist in accord with the teaching of Manichæus.
And not only two first Origins or Principles, but also
two souls must needs be admitted in each single man, and
* See Supplementary Note appended to this chapter.

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64

liberalism

with far greater reason for revetting to this new dualism
than the Manichæans had. For the Manichæans, indeed, in
as much as they were conscious of two wills in deliberat­
ing, concluded that there were two natures of two different*
minds, one good, the other bad. Nevertheless, they did not
conceive of them as traveling their different ways simultane­
ously, but as struggling against each other, so that, when
one prevailed, the other was forced to cea%e from activity:
which was not so absolutely at variance with their possible
reduction to one soul turning alternately now to good, now
to evil, until· by the victory of one tendency over the other,
the whole will as one should begin to be anchored in one
alternative, whereas formerly it was partially, distended in
opposite directions. Now, however, moderate Liberalism,
by separating the civil order from the religious order,
separates the citizen from the Christian, the thinker from
the believer, the public from the private man, the politician
from the member of'the church. It separates, I say, not
as belligerents are separated, one of whom„.wishes to sup­
press the other, but as collaterals, each one of whom pur­
sues his own way, and regularly discharges simultaneously
with the other his own peculiar function, although they
are moyed forward by separate governors to disparate and
contrary objectives. And this, I say, is absolutely and
essentially incompatible with any reduction to unity, nor
is it otherwise conceivable than by supposing in one and
the'same man two souls, two minds, two consciences really
distinct from each other: the one atheistic, the other re­
ligious; the one believing, the other unbelieving; the one
intent on temporal things without regard or respect to
spiritual things, the other intent on spiritual things and,
as it were, sojourning in a superlunar universe outside this
world; one by whom he serves Cæsar, and the other by
whom he serves God. “No wealth of eloquence can hide
for long the depth of incurable misery, no words in any
language have elasticity enough to harmonize or hold to­
gether such contradictions: Free cooperation, reciprocal in-

'■-

’·

H
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MODERATE FORM

65

dependence oj two powers, etc. What signify these highsounding phrases? What follows practically from the free
cooperation of soul and body, the mutual (reciprocal)
independence of mattèr and spirit?” (L. Veuillot, Id illusion
libérale, § 24.)
No matter which way, therefore, the problem is viewed,
that mutual independence of the two powers, or the fiction ' ■
of a free Church in a free State, restores a new Manichær
ism, theoretically indeed absurd, and practically impossible.
For how is one to conceive of two forces as acting continu­
ously on the same moveable body, unless there be sub­
ordination between them, whereby contrariety of impulse
is eliminated, and the necessary unity of direction observed?
And this not even the moderate liberalists. themselves at­
tempt to conceal whenever they descend from the abstract
rhetoric of words to the field of concrete reality. The
essentially requisite subordination of either the State to
the Church, or of the Church to the State, does not
escape them. But it is out of the question to admit the
former; for that would involve the renunciation of the first
and most essential principle of Liberalism. Hence, com­
pelled by necessity, and not being able to maintain them­
selves in the apparent equilibrium of reciprocal independ­
ence, they revert to absolute Liberalism, and subjugate
the Church under the hand and power of the State, as
often as, in the judgment of the State itself, regard for
political ends and temporal interest would seem to demand
it. “It is necessary that there should be one superior
power which has the right to remove all doubts and solve
all difficulties. This power is that to whom it is'given to
weigh all interests, that upon which the public and general
order depends, to whom alone it pertains to assume the
name of power in the proper sense.. . Religious society
should recognize in civil society, as being more ancient and
powerful, and that of which it becomes a partner, the
authority necessary to assure the union, and the supremacy
which makes the interest of the State prevail in all things

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and all points of discipline wherever their affairs are mixed.”
(Portalis, Discours et travaux inédits.') “One would have to
admit two powers absolutely equal, whose concurrence
would produce a sort of political Manichaeism, and would
result in perilous conflicts, or in a negation without issue.”
(Dupin, Rapport sur les travaux inédits de Portalis.)
And thus there happens to them that which is wont to
befall those who, while holding fast to the root of the error,
seek palliatives whereby they may conciliate for the error
a better appearance. Who not only do not succeed, but,
becoming lame on both sides, fall with ungraceful awk­
wardness into the very ditch they desired to avoid. But
it is this selfsame deformity of lameness which will appear
even more conspicuously in the third form of Liberalism of
which we are now to speak in the last place.

*

*

*

* ;

Supplementary yfote ..
Cardinal Billot gives an analytic interpretation of the
“Render to Cæsar” passage in Question XVIII of the De
Ecclesia. Lack of space, unfortunately, prevents us from
quoting it in extenso, and we must limit ourselves to a
mere summary of the principal points. He starts with the
axiom that two societies stand in the same relationship to
each other as their respective aims or purposes. From
this it follows that the Church, which guides man to eternal
happiness, is superior to the State, whose purpose it is to
procure man’s temporal prosperity; for compared to eternal
happiness temporal prosperity is evidently a secondary and
subordinate consideration: “For what doth it profit a man,
if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own
soul.” {Matt. 16:26.) On the other hand, Christ expressly
stated that His kingdom was not of this world, and He
also drew a sharp distinction between “the things which
are Cæsar’s” and those things which He committed to the
providence and care of His Church. How, then, is this

MODERATE FORM

67

seeming paradox to be resolved? The solution must be
founded on a rational and objective basis, because any
' arbitrary adjustment would be insufficient. To get at this
rational basis, we must bear in mind the philosophical '
distinction according to which two kinds of final causes or
purposes are recognized, namely, 1. the purpose of the doer,
and 2. the purpose of the deed', or, in other words, the pur­
pose of the worker and the purpose of the work. The purpose
of the worker is the subjective motive or intention which
induces him to perform the work; the purpose of the work
is that to which the work is of its very nature ordained, irre­
spective of the subjective intention of the worker. Thus a
watchmaker, for the sake, of drawing a salary (purpose of
the worker) makes a time-piece whose inherent purpose it
is to designate the time (purpose of the work). Now,
considering the matter in hand frbm the standpoint of the
purpose of the doer or worker, we find that there is only one
supreme purpose to which all other intentions are necessarily
subordinate, and this one supreme purpose is the salvation
of our souls through the service of God. If a man’s other
intentions harmonize with the service of God, they are
virtuous; if they are at variance with the intention of serv­
ing God, they are vicious and sinful. Hence in the realm
of conscience the purpose of the Church, which is the service
of God and the salvation of souls, is unique, supreme,
absolute, universal, and must prevail over every other con­
sideration. So far as intentions are concerned, both the
individual and the state are subordinate to the Church.
Here “all power” has been given to her by Christ in the
words: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be
bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon
earth shall be loosed in heaven.” {Matt. 16: 19.) Hence
Cardinal Billot lays down, in the first place, the principle
“that the supreme good to which, through the intention
of the doer, all human acts are to be referred, is the single
good and single purpose of eternal happiness. Hence, when­
ever there is question of righteous actions of any kind

i

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w

LIBERALISM ·'

whatever, consisting in the legitimate use of anything what­
soever, in so far forth as such actions subserve the execu-·
tion of the requisite good intention, we need not trouble
about the distinction between direct and indirect subordi­
nation to our Last End, seeing that all such actions are
direct means whereby the ascents are disposed in our
hearts and we go from virtue to virtue, until the God of
gods shall be seen in Siom”
If, however, we abstract from the purpose of the worker,
and consider only the purpose of the work, then we find in
life two purposes and two orders of means, between which
there is no direct, but only indirect, subordination. “Speak­
ing, therefore, of the complete and total purposes of works,
there are, I say, only two such purposes which are supreme
and ultimate in their respective orders, in accordance with
the distinction of the twofold life which man lives: the one
being the purpose of his temporal life which comes to an
end with death, the other being the purpose of his spiritual
life, which, begun in the present world, knows no termina­
tion in the next.” Thus there are some things which are
of their very nature ordained to the service of God, such,
for instance, as prayer, worship, sacraments, sacrifice, etc.,
and all these things are called spiritual goods and are directly
subordinate to the jurisdiction of the Church. Other human
works, such as houses, clothing, weapons, tools, etc., are
indifferent to God’s service, so far as their intrinsic nature
is concerned, and can only be consecrated to God’s service
indirectly, that is, only by means of the good intention of the
user. Such goods are termed temporal goods, and as such
they fall under the direct jurisdiction of the State, coming
only indirectly (by reason of a moral issue) under the
jurisdiction of the Church; for “the Church has received
no political or .temporal power from Christ, nor has she
ever claimed for herself jurisdiction in secular things.”
Hence the Cardinal lays down a second principle “that,
-when we prescind from the purpose of the doer, and con­
sider only the purpose of the deed or work, then there are

MODERATE FORM

69

two purposes, and two different orders of means: on the
one hand, thè good of eternal salvation whereunfo are re­
ferred all those means that are called spiritual, and, on the
other hand, the good of this present life whereunto are
referred the means that are called temporal. And that
there is no direct subordination between these purposes,
but rather indirect subordination, in the sense that tem­
poral purpose (as pursued by the State) must not only
not obstruct, the spiritual purpose (as pursued by the
Church) but must be of assistance thereto both by remov­
ing obstacles and by furnishing conditions that make for
the free and expeditious prosecution of the Spiritual pur­
pose.”
,· Somewhat akin to the foregoing difficulty concerning
the relation subsisting between the Church and the State,
is that other concerning the relation between Science and
Religion. Unfortunately, the notion is current among sci­
entists that the Catholic Church is hostile to the autonomy
of natural science and aims at substituting authority for '
research. Nothing, however, could be farther from the
truth, since, as a matter of fact, the Church -positively in­
sists on the autonomy of philosophy and the natural sciences.
Nor must we seek far to find the reason. To begin with,
the Church could not expect reasonable and thinking beings
to accept her revealed doctrines, unless she were in position
to furnish solid motives and arguments of credibility. But
to serve their purpose of demonstrating the reasonableness
of faith, it is imperative that such arguments of credibility
should not presuppose faith, but should rest on the exclusive'
basis of natural reason alone; otherwise, the whole procedure
would be a vicious circle. On the other hand, from the
very nature of things, the Church must draw her “argu­
ments of credibility” from philosophy, history, and science,
and the whole value of these arguments depends upon
their being established with absolute certainty upon ex­
clusively natural and scientific grounds. Consequently, un­
less philosophy and science were bound to establish their

yO

ffl

LIBERALISM

conclusions by investigation and research independently of
all authority, Revealed Religion could not appeal to these .
conclusions as “arguments of credibility.” It is vital, there- .
fore, to the Church that philosophy and science should
stand on their own legs and not on those of religion, and
hence, as Cardinal Mercier remarks, “when in the first half
of the last century De Bonald and La Mennais sought to
oblige human reason to receive its first principles and its
primary motives of certitude from revealed teaching, Gre­
gory XVI, far from accepting this dutiful subjection offered
to the Church, publicly reproved and condemned the mis­
taken loyalty of its authors... In short, philosophy and
the sciences are autonomous in this sense that in their
case the supreme motive of certitude is the intrinsic evi­
dence of the object they study, whereas in matters of faith
the ultimate motive is the authority of God, the author of
supernatural revelation. ” {Scholastic Philosophy, Eng. ver­
sion, vol. i, pp. 22, 23.) Such is the legitimate freedom
.which the Church vindicates for natural science. Naturally,
however, this does not mean that the scientist is free to
cheat in the presentation of facts, or to attack religion by
means of hasty, rash, and snapshot conclusions which are
the fruit of an insane anti-religious animus rather than of
careful and sincere investigation. For the rest, the God of
Nature and the God of Revelation are one and the same
God, and it is impossible for natural science to discover
and establish any truth antagonistic to revelation, and “if,”
as the Vatican Council declares, “the vain appearance of
such contradiction should arise, this is either because the
dogmas of faith have not .been understood and expounded
according to the mind of the Church or because arbitrary
opinion has been mistaken for judgment founded on reason.”
{Const, de Fide Catholica, cap. 4.)

CHAPTER III
Thesis: That the so-called Liberalism of “ liberal Catho­

lics” defies all classification, having but one distinctive and
characteristic trait, namely, that of complete and absolute
incoherence.
The truth of this assertion can be shown even from
the mere analysis of the terms which are joined together
in that title, “A Liberal Catholic.” For, a Catholic is one
who professes what the Christian faith teaches, and es­
pecially that which it lays down as a veritable foundation
in its catechism: that man is created to praise, reverence,
and serve God, after the manner that accords with the
good-pleasure of His divine will, and by this means to
save his own soul. And that the other things on the face
of the earth are created for man and that they may help
him in prosecuting the end for which he is created. From
which, consequently, it follows that man is to use them
as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid
himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it; especially
since Truth Incarnate testifies that it profiteth a man
naught if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of
his own soul, nay that it doth profit him exceedingly to
enter maimed or lame or blind into life everlasting, rather
than having two hands and two feet and two eyes to go
into hell, into unquenchable fire, where their worm dieth
not and the fire is not extinguished. That, therefore, false,
pernicious and deadly, in the highest degree detestable, is
that prosperity which is purchased at the cost of our soul’s
salvation; that this selfsame present life must be wholly
and entirely regulated with a view to the future life, that
all temporal. things must be subordinated to eternal things,
and that therefore the ordination of the power which presides
over temporal things should be subordinate to the direction
of the higher power, to whom by God Himself the pursuit
71

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72

liberalism

of the eternal end is believed to have been committed
together with the promise of perpetual divine assistance.
Is not all this involved in the principles of every Catholic,
provided he does not utterly belie his own profession ?
Take now the profession of the Liberal. , Certainly a
Liberal, in the present usage of the term, is one who pro­
fesses and eulogizes and approves of and propagates ' the
so-called immortal principles of the year 1789. We must,
therefore, see what these principles contain. Now these
principles, setting aside once for all that which is not
proper or peculiar thereto, but borrowed from the ancient
and common treasury of natural justice and equity, these
principles, I say, reduced to the minimum and construed
in the best light possible, proclaim the independence of
human from divine things, the substraction of the civil
ordinance from religious law, the divorce of the regime of
temporal things from the regime which aims at the ultimate
and supreme end; in a word, the removal of the orbit of
the State into a sphere apart, wherein the dominion of
God ceases, together with the obligation of acknowledging
and worshipping Him, wherein the ordination of man to
everlasting life ceases, and only the eye which regards the
present life is opened, while the eye which is to show him
the. way to the future life remains closed. “Nothing is
more laborious and fruitless than an excursion of research
into the principles of ’89. One encounters there an abun­
dance of empty verbiage, of banalities and meaningless
phrases. M. Cousin, who has undertaken the task of shed­
ding light on these mysteries which bear the redoubtable
and glorious name of the Principles of the French Revolu­
tion, reduces them to three: the sovereignty of the nation;
the emancipation of the individual, or justice; the progres­
sive diminution of ignorance, misery, and vice, or civil
charity. Tocqueville does not contradict M. Cousin; he
only proceeds to prove without the least effort that ’89
discovered neither that nor anything good and acceptable
that can be subsumed under the caption of ’89. All ex-

sacxKcaa&attfw

CATHOLIC FORM

73

isted better than in the germ in the ancient French con­
stitution, and the development thereof would have been
more general and solid if the Revolution had never put its
hand or rather its knife to the task. Before ’89, France
believed itself to be quite free, and, long before, one has
glimpses of equality before the law as the natural sequence
of the practice considerably antecedent thereto of equality
before God. Charity manifested itself by the exceedingly
large number of charitable institutions and congregations;
public education had been more liberal, more solid, and
more widely diffused than at the present day... If, then,
the principles of ’89 are what M. Cousin says they are,
wherein do they .contradict the Catholic Faith? Liberal
Catholics and non-liberal Catholics alike have not only ‘ re­
spected them, but have practised and defended them.”
(L. Veuillot, L’llusion libérale, § 32.) Not these truisms,
therefore, but the absolute divorce of .‘the temporal from
the spiritual and-eternal, constitutes what is peculiar to
the principles of ’89. This is what is contained in the
“Immortal Principles,” and that according to the most
benign interpretation of which they admit.; for, in the
sense of the Fathers of the Revolution, which by the way
is alone consistent' with the logic of things, they import
absolute and complete secularization, that is, the banish­
ment of the theocratip principle from the world, and the
definitive rupture between the whole of human society on
the one side and the Church, Jesus Christ, and God on the
other, nay the abandonment of the very idea of God and
of the last vestige of religion. “But it is time to uncover
the secret arcanum of ’89, and to ascertain the point at
which the liberal Catholic faith will have to cease, and
either become liberal or else Catholic. There exists one
principle of ’89 which is the Revolutionary principle par
excellence, and for it alone the whole Revolution and all the
principles thereof came into existence. One is not â revo­
lutionary’ until the moment that he admits it, one does not
cease to be a revolutionary until the moment he abjures it.

ιιιιτ-γ-~~·'~ιτ——in~BnimniMinnnfff*"

liberalism

4
■1

In one sense or another, it is the one supremely significant
issue; it raises between revolutionaries and Catholics a wall
of separation across which the liberal Catholic Pyramuses
and the revolutionary Thisbes will never make anything
pass but their fruitless sighs. This unique principle of ’89
is that which the revolutionary politeness of the Con­
servative? of 1830 (euphemistically) calls the secularization
of society; it is that which the revolutionary frankness of
the Siècle, the Solidaires and M. Quinet brutally calls the
expulsion of the theocratic principle; it is the rupture with .
the Church, with Jesus Christ, with God, with all acknowl­
edgment, with all ingérence and all appearance of the idea
of God, in human society.” (Veuillot, op. cit., § 33.) In
any case, even accepting for the time béing the mitigated
intèrpretation, who is there that does not perceive therein
such an irreducibility to the fundamental principles of
Christianity that any attempt at reconciliation must neces­
sarily end in complete incoherence? Moreover, this a priori
estimate is entirely confirmed, when the arguments of liberal
Catholics are weighed one after another.
In the first place, this incoherence appears when they
distinguish between abstract principles and their applica­
tion, admitting that, speculatively speaking, those things
are indeed true which we have said concerning the neces­
sity of union and subordination of the respective powers,
and that they, again speculatively* speaking, in no wise
dissent therefrom; but that the object of speculation is one
thing, and what holds true in the concrete order of things
quite another, because in the latter sphere there are many
things entirely at variance with theoretical conditions. And
so they imagine that they have compromised satisfactorily
with truth by relegating it to the far-off regions of the
abstract. But, with all due respect to them, those principles
which they call .abstract, do they or do they not pertain
to moral matters, that is, do they or do they not determine
the standard of human actions and the rule of right conduct;of the conduct,! mean,whichin humansociety is rightly

'' V

eOMMaaanam

CATHOLIC FORM

yr

directed so as to achieve the purpose of life? And if they are
wholly practical dictates, as is self-evident, how is it not the
height of incoherence for anyone to accept them and at the
same time to be unwilling to have them practically applied?
For, from the fact that the concrete order of things differs
from the ideal conditions of theory, this alone follows: that
it will never happen that such principles will obtain among
us an actuation or realization of the same perfection as that
exhibited in pure speculation. But, forsooth, with the
same sort of argument I could prove that the precepts of
virtue should be left exclusively in the field of speculation,
because man’s condition does not admit of such a high
standard of rectitude. With the same sort of argument,
likewise, I might demonstrate that there could not and
ought not to be any application of the science of mathe­
matics to the arts, on the ground that the ideally exact
triangle of geometry has no existence in the concrete, or
that the experimental effect is always at variance with the
rigor of calculus.
Again, this incoherence appears in the distinction which
they make between that which is properly due to the
Church de jure (of right) and that which is de facto (in fact)
useful to the Church, saying: that as a matter of fact, the
regime of union has always been pernicious to the Church; .
that the Church, as a matter of fact, has never suffered
greater harm than it did at the *hands of those bishops of
the forum externum (as opposed to the forum internum of
conscience), and of its royal protectors, as the interminable
quarrels with the Byzantine emperors, the Germanic kai­
sers, and the kings of France, England, Spain,'etc., attest;
that the Church, alas! is perishing on account of the tem­
poral props wherewith she has inadvisedly equipped her­
self; and that consequently there remains but one saving
remedy, one only haven of refuge, and that is Liberty!
that Liberty it is which shall restore the lost crown to the
majestic brow of the Church; Liberty on whom she must
rely as on a faithful friend, nor ever part from her com-

/6

LIBERALISM

pany on account of a priori principles which must, with all
due reverence, of course, be left safe and intact in their
utterly ideal sphere. Thus they argue, but incoherently.
First, because, if the aprioristic principles give expression
to an order instituted and intended by God, it is impossible
that the neglect thereof should result in greater utility to
the Church. Second, because the facts which they adduce
prove only that man through his own perversity often
corrupts the institutions of God. They do not prove that
the divine ordination ought on that account to be repudi­
ated or set aside. Third, because the historical argument
sins by incomplete enumeration, giving only the evils which
happened under the regime of union, and ignoring and
pretermitting the immense benefits which so superabound
that it becomes manifest that, though' the protection of
princes sometimes degenerated into oppression, still it was
in most cases an advantage and powerful aid'to the Church.
Fourth, because the defect of incomplete enumeration is
further aggravated by the lack of a comparison with the
evils which spring necessarily from the separation, and
which, as present-day experience attests, are vastly pre-,
ponderant. Fifth, because there is no more lucid example
of a disconnected, inconsequential and incoherent piece of
argumentation, than the ultimate conclusion concerning
the necessity of having recourse to liberty. For liberty,
with its propensity towards evil, its proneness towards ir­
réligion, is the actual cause of all the evil, and it is pre­
cisely this selfsame liberty which is held up as a remedy
therefor—“The Church is perishing on account of the ille­
gitimate reënforcements which she has seen fit to adopt.
The time has come for her to change her attitude; her
children must make her aware of the opportunity. It
behooves her to renounce all her coercitive power over
consciences and to deny this power to governments. No
more alliance between the Church and the State... Our
liberal Catholic waxes enthusiastic in unfolding these mar­
vels. He maintains that no exception can be taken to his

CATHOLIC FORM.

77

position ,·that reason, faith, and the spirit of the times alike
speak in his behalf. As regards the spirit of the times, no one
willcontesthisassertion. As regards reason and faith, however,
one need not let him off without urging certain objections,
but he shrugs his shoulders and is never at a loss for an
answer. It is true that outrageous assertions and out­
rageous contradictions cost him no qualms whatsoever. ,
He always staffs off on the same foot, protesting that he
is a Catholic, a child of the Church, an obedient child;
but also a man of the world, a member of the human race
no longer young, but mature and of an age to govern itself.
To the arguments drawn from history he answers that
mankind, in its present stage of maturity, is an entirely
new world, in the presence of which the history of the
past proves nothing at all. But this does not prevent him
in the least from exploiting the historical argument when­
ever it apparently bears out his own contentions. To the
words of the Fathers of the Church, he sometimes opposes
other words of theirs, sometimes he says that the Fathers
spoke for their own times, but that we must think and
act according to our own times. Confronted with the
texts of Scripture, he avails himself of the same resource.
Either he tears out of their context some seemingly con­
trary texts, or he fabricates a commentary (a gloss) to
support his own sense, or finally he will say'that this text '
was intended for the good of the-Jews and for their par­
ticular little state. Nor is he to any greater degree embarrassed’by dogmatic bulls of the Roman Curia.. . They
are, says he, mere disciplinary formulas laid down for those
times, but which have no raison d'être (reason for existence)
to-day. The French Revolution has buried these rules
along with that world on which they weighed so heavily.
Constraint has been abolished; the man of to-day is cap­
able of liberty and he wants no other law! This regime,
which so disconcerts your timidity, he continues in sibylline
tones, is for all that the very one which will save the Church,
and the onlv one which can save her. For the rest, the

•78

LIBERALISAI

human race is up in arms to impose this order, it will be
wisest to submit, and that, indeed, has already been done.
See whether anyone would be able to oppose anything what­
soever to this triumphant force, if indeed any one had the
slightest desire to do so, if indeed anyone, with the exception
of yourselves, ever dreamt of doing so. Intolerant Catholics,
you are more absolute than God, the Father, who created man
for liberty; more Christian than God the Son, who desired to
establish His law for no other purpose than for liberty.
You make yourselves more Catholic than the Pope, be­
cause the Pope, in approving them, consecrated modern
constitutions, which are all inspired and replete with the
spirit of liberty. I say that the Pope, the Vicar of Jesus
Christ, approves of these.constitutions, because he permits
you to take the oath of allegiance thereto, to obey them
and to defend them. Now equal liberty for all religions
is contained therein, also the atheism of the state. It is
necessary to overlook that, to pass it over; and you do
overlook it, of that there can be no doubt. For the rest,
why are you antagonistic? Your resistance is vain; your
regrets are not only insensate, but disastrous as. well. They
cause the Church to be hated, and they are a distressing
source of embarrassment to us liberal Catholics, your sav­
iours, in that they cause our sincerity to be suspected.
Instead, then, of drawing down upon yourselves certain and
probably terrible ruin,Tush to the arms of Liberty, salute
her, embrace her, love her. She will be to you a good and
faithful friend, and she will give you more than you can
ever repay. Faith stagnates under the yoke of the author­
ity which protects her. Obliged to defend herself, she will
rise again; the ardor of polemics will restore her to life.
What will not the Church undertake when she will be able
to undertake everything? How can she fail to appeal to
the hearts of the people, when she has been abandoned by
the powerful ones of the world, to live solely by her own
genius and her own virtues? In the midst of the confusion
of doctrines and the corruption of morals, she will stand

CATHOLIC FORM

79

revealed as alone pure, as alone firmly-established in good­
ness. She will be the last refuge, the impregnable rampart
of morality, the family, religion, and liberty! Everything
has its limits, and so even the breath of our orator gives
out at last.......
“The Liberal has recovered his breath. So soon as he
has recovered it, he resumes his discourse, and it is quite
evident that what he heard made no impression on him
whatsoever, if indeed he heard it at all. He adds any
number of words to those which he has already spoken in
great profusion, but says nothing new. It was all a most
intricate medley of historical arguments against history, of
biblical arguments against the Bible, of patristic arguments
against history, Bible and Fathers, nay even against com­
mon sense.. . He keeps on rehashing this cant about the
modern world, emancipated humanity, the Church asleep
and on the verge of awakening to rejuvenate her creed.
The dead past, the radiant future, liberty, love, demo­
cracy, humanity, are interspersed therein like the false
brilliants which "the ladies now-a-days scatter through their
false tresses. All he says subsequently appears neither
more clear nor more true than the first time he said it.
He becomes conscious of this at last, and so he tells us
that we are separating ourselves from the world and from
the living Church, which will also be well rid of us. He all
but anathematizes us, and finally leaves us filled with the
consternation at his folly. ” (L. Veuillot, L’illusion libérale,
§ 1-4·)
But, say they, such a union and subordination of the
two powers, however desirable in itself, is now at least
utterly out of the question; for the spirit of modern times
is adverse thereto, and it is useless to struggle against this
modern spirit. Prudence, therefore,’ requires the accept­
ance of the present state of affairs, whether for the purpose
of preventing things from becoming constantly worse, or ■
for the purpose of getting the best results possible under
existing conditions. And this is the plea on'which, when

8θ

LIBERALISM

other arguments fail, they make their last stand. The
only difficulty is, as Liberatore correctly remarks, that in
so doing they fall into incoherence of a still more unpardon­
able kind, in as much as they deviate entirely from the
question at issue. For our dispute is not upon the question
of whether, presupposing the contumacy of the world, it
would not be well to bear patiently that which escapes our
control, and in the meantime to give ourselves whole­
heartedly to the task of warding off greater evils and of
saving from the .wreckage all possible good. But the ques­
tion is whether we ought to approve positively of that
social condition which Liberalism introduces, to celebrate
with encomiums the liberalistic principles which are at the
bottom of this order of things, and, by word, teaching,
and deed, to promote the same, as those do who along
with the title of Catholic vindicate for themselves the
name of being Liberals. And they above all are the very
ones who will never succeed at all, because they are lame
on both feet, and, attempting in vain to hit upon some
compromise, they are neither recognized by the children of
God as genuine, nor received by the children of the Revo­
lution as sincere. They come, indeed, to the camp of the
latter with the countersign or password of the principles
of ’89, but, because they pronounce the password badly,
they are denied entrance.
We read in the Book of Judges (12: 5-6) that when the
Galaadites, in their conflict with the Ephraimites, had
overcome the latter, they conspired to let no fugitive of
Ephraim escape. “And the Galaadites secured the fords of
the Jordan. And when one of the number of Ephraim
came thither in flight, and said: I beseech you let me pass:
the Galaadites said to him: Art thou not an Ephraimite?
If he said: I am not: they asked him: Say then, Shibboleth,
which is interpreted, an ear of corn. But he answered:
Sibboleth, not being able to express an ear of corn by the
same letter. Then presently they took him and killed him
in the very passage of the Jordan.” And thus, too, it hap-

»
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CATHOLIC FORM

• /

8l

pens at the entrance to the gate of the camp of Liberalism.
To those who desire to enter it is said: Say then,'Shibboleth,
which is interpreted the secularization of society. It is allimportant, however, whether their pronunciation thereof is
good or bad. Now, liberal Catholics suffer from a defect
of the tongue in this respect, and they are unable to enun­
ciate the sacramental word in the proper manner. Hence
they are not admitted, and they have merit neither with
men nor with God, because they verify in themselves that
dualism whereof the Scripture speaks: “One building up
and one pulling down, what profit hath he but labor?
One praying and one cursing, whose voice will God hear?
{Ecclesiasticus, 34: 28-29.)
“They willingly swear by the principles of ’89; they
call them the immortal principles. It is the Shibboleth
which gives entrance to the camp of mighty Liberalism.
But there is a manner of pronouncing it, and our Catholics
are not quite equal to it... This is why they pronounce
the Shibboleth badly, and why the Revolution will not open
to them. The Revolution is more fair to them than they
are to themselves. It detects their Catholicity, and it
does them the honor of not believing them when they try
to convince it that they are no more Catholics than persons
outside the Church, that nothing will come of their Catho­
licity, and that they will play their atheistic part very well
indeed in that ideal form of government without religion
and without God. ” (Veuillot, op. cit., § 32-34.)

BBUKOonnaacuaani

EPILOGUE

AFTERWORD
/Jk lready the presage of a better state of things has made
■*^· its appearance, in as much as those who are to-day
preeminent in the political and economic sciences, are
coming more and more from day to day to recognize, and
to acknowledge without hesitation, how disastrous was the
work of the Revolution, and how deadly were the fruits of
liberty, of liberal liberty, I mean, or license, the libertine
liberty of the Social Contract, the liberty of the visionaries
of 1789. These last, forsooth, did not hesitate to pro­
claim that the one and only cause of public evils and the
corruption of governments was ignorance or contempt of
the rights of man, of which the first is liberty with its
necessary complement of equality and fraternity. “The re­
presentatives of the people, as constituted in the National
Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect or contempt of
the rights of man are the sole causes of public calamities and of
the corruption of governments, have resolved to set forth
in a solemn declaration the rights of men, natural, inalien­
able, and sacred.. . Article 1. — Men are born and remain
free and.equal in rights, etc., etc.” (Déclaration des droits
de lhomme de 1789.} O levity! O fatuousness! O folly!
And surely, their liberty has ended in a despotism far
worse than barbaric, of the powerful over th’e weak; their
equality has ended in an ever-increasing multitude of prole­
tariats on the one side, and an oligarchy of progressively
influential millionaires on the other; their fraternity, finally,
has ended in sowing the seeds of internal strife and factions’
and of implacable class-hatred, among all classes of society’
Nor have these things escaped the notice of certain elect
geniuses of our own times. “What is the meaning in eco­
nomic life of the freedom of labor, the freedom of trade,
the freedom of ownership, if it be not a facility for the
unchaining of all greediness to the detriment of all weak­
ness, or, according to the expression of one publicist, the
freedom that one enjoys in the forest ? And what have
82

83

.we gained by all these beautiful theories? Never has
there been more universal unrest, never have the people
been more discontented, never have conditions of every
sort been more precarious. Is this the political liberty
which we won? One group of citizens stubbornly sets
itself against all that is claimed as a right by another group
of citizens. Is this the equality? Never have we had so
many proletariats, and, likewise, never so many bloated
millionaires. Is this the fraternity? Never has there been
so much selfishness, never so many factions, never so much
fermentation of social strife, etc.” (De La-Tour-du-Pin,
Vers un ordre social chrétien, 3, § 1.)
True, there are many who still remain on the surface
of the problem, not perceiving as yet the essential char­
acter of the Revolution, which is satanic. But there are
others, too, who go deeper into the matter, and thoroughly
understand that the religious question underlies all others
that are now being agitated; that the plague of political
and economic liberalism was bom of the, atheistic ancTantichnstiânTibëralism'orwhich we Have spoken above; that,
in fine, the”sôcial order can in no wise be upheld and stabi­
lized, until the Church resumes the direction of social
affairs. It is to be hoped, therefore, that, with the as­
sistance of divine grace, these seeds may mature to ripe­
ness, that these principles having been theoretically ac­
knowledged may become the foundation of a restoration.
And such a restoration we welcome from the bottom of our
hearts, knowing that under that pagan legislation, beneath
which we now live, individual Christians, indeed, can still
exist, but that there can not be any truly Christian society.
Herein, then, we seek preeminently the kingdom of God
and His justice, although we do not despise those other
things which shall be added thereto, nor are we unaware
that what is written of godliness may also be understood
of the Church’s influence: namely, that she is useful for all
things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of
that which is to come. (Cf. I Tim. 4: 8.)

INDEX
3
25

Translator’s Preface
Foreword.......
*

PART FIRST

The fundamental principle of Liberalism and its application to human
affairs.........
27
Chapter I. — Absurdity of the basic principle of Liberalism.... 29
Chapter II. — How the application of this principle to the affairs
of men begets social strife and absolutism............ 38
Chapter III.—The antireligious purpose of the principle of
Liberalism......... ..............
47
PART SECOND
The various forms which Liberalism assumes with respect to re­
ligion.......
............
54
Chapter I. — Extreme Liberalism.... ... ............... 55
Chapter II. — Moderate Liberalism...... ..... ......... 59
Chapter III. — Catholic Liberalism........
.
Afterword^........ ........... ............. ........... 82

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