LIBERALISMO

LIBERALISM. – A movement inspired by the principle of freedom in every sphere, spiritual and political, which prevailed in Europe after the French Revolution of 1789 and characterized the contemporary era up to the First World War.

That principle of freedom remained poorly defined, but it can be said that most commonly it was understood as an emancipation from the guardianship of others, an affirmation of one’s own independent activity, and the exclusion of any authority not deriving from human consent. Moreover, freedom was generally conceived as freedom of nature, understood in the manner of Rousseau (q.v.), without distinguishing in true human nature the personal values as supreme and such as to impose order and unity upon all human activities, and to constitute in man a vestige of the Divinity itself. The theoretical and practical aberrations to which this gave rise are collected in the so-called *Syllabus* (q.v.) and condemned by Pius IX (8 Dec. 1864).

I. PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERALISM

The philosophical attitude that rejects any guardianship that might come from outside itself is ordinarily traced back to Descartes (q.v.). Even before this, the abuse of Aristotle’s authority in the scientific field had provoked a reaction, justified in itself; this then spread to all fields of human thought. Reason, not content merely to restore the proper criteria of the scientific method, claimed for itself an absolute freedom, refusing to acknowledge any limits in the exercise of scientific and philosophical reflection, and claiming to judge everything, even revealed dogmas. The concept of philosophy as the “handmaid of theology” was excluded from every point of view. It was no longer enough to affirm the autonomy of reason in the search for rational foundations of the act of faith, and in the right to use its own methods to investigate, discover, discuss, and conclude in the field of natural truth; rather, it was further demanded that reason a priori deny the existence of knowledge not derived from itself, such as truths of supernatural origin. Thus, every relationship with these was rejected.

All the philosophical currents of the modern era, even those most opposed to one another in other respects—sensism, rationalism, criticism, skepticism, absolute idealism, positivism, materialism, neo-idealism, problematism, etc.—agree in holding this kind of freedom as their necessary presupposition. Their starting point is the same: the self-sufficiency of human thought as such. In the spirit of philosophical liberalism there is a jealous awareness of this kind of sovereignty. It remains hostile to any investigation, even one conducted by reason itself and with its own proper methods, aimed at demonstrating its dependence upon a higher Mind (from which it derives the power to attain truth in general), and at proving the existence of such a Mind as the true Absolute Subject, from which it is possible to receive communications superior to material knowledge and thus justly evaluate the aids that revelation can offer to philosophy. This is not admitted by the naturalism to which philosophical liberalism is bound: human thought, in order to be free, must rely exclusively on itself. The consequences are well known: it either recognized itself as essentially limited or proclaimed relativism (or skepticism or problematism), i.e., its state of necessity of being unable to make any act of true affirmation; or it believed itself to be the absolute Subject that determines itself in a continuous becoming, and fell into an idealistic pantheism that excludes any individual freedom; or it believed itself to be a result of cosmic matter, and found itself included in the universal determinism (also pantheistic) of this matter. Worthy of note is the fact that the two extremes of modern philosophy, absolute idealism and materialism, both favor totalitarianism in social life, which in practice denies the freedom of thought as an essential right of the individual—a right that philosophical liberalism intended to safeguard as the first and principal one for the life of humanity. Despite these contradictory consequences, philosophical liberalism still persists, as a state of mind rather than as a theory: the man who wishes to be sufficient unto himself.

II. RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM

Religious liberalism has its antecedent in the “free examination” of Scripture proclaimed by the Protestants of the 16th century, i.e., the rejection of any visible living authority in the Church: in their view, the individual could exercise that freedom because directly enlightened by Christ. When faith in this mystical light weakened or even disappeared, as already occurred with the Enlightenment (q.v.) of the 18th century, the individual remained with his freedom to judge matters of religion without any higher control over his personal use of reason. Hence the concept, condemned in no. 4 of the *Syllabus*, that reason is the sovereign norm by which man must judge every kind of truth. This concept, even if not openly accepted, had a wide influence in the Protestant theological schools of the 18th century and made possible the excesses in biblical criticism that occurred in that century and the next, especially in Germany, or else favored the tendency to devalue the supernatural element of religion, especially in England. Here, as a reaction, the “Oxford Movement” (q.v.) arose, led by Newman (q.v.), who perhaps for the first time denounced this tendency by the name of religious liberalism and fought against it, first as an Anglican and then as a Catholic.

The characteristic of this liberalism lies precisely in devaluing Grace in favor of nature, whence its sympathies for Pelagianism (q.v.), and in abandoning the criterion of the supremacy of revealed truth over natural truths.

Purely rational, attributing to human reason in its infinite progress the right to judge divine Revelation as imperfect in itself (Syllabus, no. 5). The most serious consequences of this liberalism were felt in Protestant countries, where it undermined the ancient veneration for the Bible and fostered indifferentism (q.v.), which allows each individual to embrace and profess any religion that appears true to his subjective reasoning (op. cit., no. 15). This subjectivism or individualism claims to find justification precisely in freedom, without regard for the rights of objective truth, which is communicated both in natural light and in supernatural light. It regards religion as a purely individual matter, in which God may intervene, but only by adapting Himself to the dispositions of individual subjects, each of whom thus creates his own religion; and all are good and true, even if contradictory to one another. Thus there takes root, as a mental habit, a repugnance to admit any authority superior to the individual, which obliges him to adhere uniformly to a single and absolute truth. Hence the pronounced opposition to Catholicism, more than to other positive religions, since in Catholicism the principle of authority is affirmed in the most definite and concrete manner in the teaching Church and in its visible head, the Vicar of Christ.

Religious liberalism spreads a state of mind that is antipathy to dogmatic definitions, as was seen in the world of culture when the Immaculate Conception or papal infallibility was defined. It also penetrated Catholic schools. Pius IX had occasion to censure in the teachings of Hermes (q.v.), Günther, and Frohschammer (q.v.), respectively in 1846, 1877, and 1862, the erroneous prejudice of a freedom of reason in philosophy, such as to grant it precedence over revealed truths and the methods by which the study of theology should be conducted, without regard for divine tradition and the authority that preserves and guarantees that tradition.

Every kind of tradition is distasteful to religious liberalism; hence its aversion to Scholasticism, even in its most vital parts and in its function as the continuator and systematizer of the perennial philosophy to which Christian thought is linked even in its natural progress. The general devaluation of tradition proper to religious liberalism also disposes minds to Modernism (q.v.), condemned by Pius X (1907).

The Catholic Church, each time it condemned these various manifestations of religious liberalism, added clarifications regarding the true concept of the freedom that pertains to human reason and philosophy in their proper sphere, and regarding their relationship with Revelation, tradition, and theology. It insisted especially on the function of natural reason in demonstrating the motives of credibility for the fact of Revelation, on the intrinsic value of such demonstration—logically prior to the certainties of faith—and hence on the reasonableness of accepting the authority of the revealing God and of the Church as the depositary of Revelation: a reasonableness that sets a limit to the freedom exalted by philosophical and religious liberalism.

This latter had other applications as well, always suggested by its aversion to authority. This was the case in the field of Church governance, which was claimed to be democratic. This was easily achieved in the various Protestant confessions, of which few maintained the concept of episcopal hierarchy after all had denied the papacy. Hence the sympathy of liberalism for Protestantism as the religion most suited to the times. The Catholic Church, instead, maintained the principle of authority that comes from above, that is, from Christ, who transmitted it to the Apostles with Peter as head, and thus to the bishops with the successor of Peter as head.

Religious liberalism, in opposing the principle of authority that comes from above, especially targeted the visible head of the Church, in whom all jurisdictional power is concentrated and then shared both with the bishops by divine and immutable institution and with others by ecclesiastical and variable law. In this, religious liberalism continued the work already begun in previous centuries by the current favored by absolute monarchs in Catholic countries, known as "jurisdictionism," and sought to make the definition of the dogma of the primacy—not only of honor but of universal jurisdiction—belonging to the pope by divine institution as unpopular as possible. The concern for this unpopularity, and the harm it could bring to religion in difficult times, was what led a certain number of bishops, among whom the most prominent were Dupanloup (q.v.) and Strossmayer (q.v.), to advise against a dogmatic definition of this truth—which they nevertheless believed to be Catholic—as inopportune during Vatican Council I; and they in fact accepted it when it was defined.

Moreover, religious liberalism opposed in general the concept of the Church as a true and perfect society, possessing inalienable rights by virtue both of natural law and of the power conferred by Christ, its Divine Founder, denying it any freedom of action or other rights not granted to it by the State (cf. Sillabo, nos. 19–38). This was an application to the religious sphere (though inconsistent and arbitrary) of political liberalism. Equally inconsistent was the application of the principle of "a free Church in a free State," expressed in these terms by the Catholic Montalembert (q.v.) but with a different intent from that in which it was taken up by Cavour (q.v.) and other liberals of the time. These interpreted freedom as a separation of Church and State that left the State free to legislate and act, ignoring the Church as if it did not exist, and thus without considering whether its provisions might come into conflict with her just demands. This is not mere separation but in substance practical hostility, for experience shows that between two different powers dealing with the same persons, some motive for conflict always arises. But if each of the two takes as its norm of action to ensure that its provisions do not come into conflict with those of the other, then one can no longer speak of separation but of an understanding that may even be only tacit.

If one looks to history, liberalism saw in the formula adopted by Cavour a justification for attempting to place the Church, in terms of legal status, on a par with any private society existing within the boundaries of the State, and for legislating while ignoring the demands of the religious conscience of Catholic citizens. This is explicitly evident in the civil marriage law.

### III. POLITICAL LIBERALISM

At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the predominant form of government in Europe was absolute monarchy, that is, an executive power (personified in the king) that absorbed within itself the other powers (legislative and judicial) with unlimited authority. The ideal of this system was paternal government, in which all citizens found themselves in the position of minor children within a family. Freedom was invoked as an escape from minority, a conquest of the right to participate in government through representatives and thus obtain a practical "autonomy" for the entire people. This kind of freedom, inasmuch as it imposes limits on the exercise of purely human authority, such as that of rulers, is in itself lawful and just, and indeed becomes a true right in a people mature enough to govern itself and conscious of this maturity. This is democracy in its true sense.

Political liberalism was the movement that, during the 19th century, led to the transformation of European states into democratic states; the guarantee of the new freedom recognized for all citizens was found in representative systems (chambers of deputies). In England, an example of this had already existed in previous centuries. However, English political freedoms developed not so much as a systematic assertion but as a laborious search for a balance between the powers of the prince and certain autonomous functions of the nobility and cities (communes), as a partial control by these over the exercise of royal authority, a continually renewed attempt to reconcile the interests of central power with those of other bodies, which, though subject to the state, were necessary to it and constituted the bulk of the nation.

Continental liberalism, on the other hand, was far more theoretical and, in what was good in its program, was spoiled by importing into the political sphere the confusions of philosophical liberalism. It proposed the exaltation of the individual, but soon realized that naturalistic individualism leads to anarchy. On the other hand, when the individual is absorbed into the "people," to which unlimited sovereignty is attributed, he finds himself facing a new kind of despotism—the despotism of majorities, worse than that of historical monarchies, which at least had a check in the principles of the Christian religion they professed. Instead, the new "popular sovereignty" (conceived on the postulate of man's self-sufficiency) recognizes nothing above or beyond itself. The state, as an emanation and realization of such sovereignty, declares itself the origin and source of all rights (Syllabus, no. 39).

The liberal governments of the 19th century struggled with the insoluble problem—perhaps not fully grasping its gravity—of reconciling such a concept of the state with the principle of individual freedoms. But this internal inconsistency weakened those governments, and in the crisis of the First World War paved the way for the so-called totalitarian governments, which exploited precisely this concept of the state, already accepted by liberal parties.

The so-called Catholic liberals, led by Montalembert, sought to avoid these contradictions and the errors of liberalism tainted by atheism or otherwise opposed to the Church (Syllabus, nos. 39–74). They openly opposed the doctrine of the "legitimism" of the divine right of princes, widely held among Catholics in France and elsewhere, based on the Pauline dictum "Omnis potestas a Deo," understood as a direct and perpetual investiture by God of sovereign power to royal families. This doctrine had first been formulated and defended by the Protestant King James I of England, the first of the Stuarts; it then spread to Catholic countries Bossuet (v.). It gained favor among those opposed to the French Revolution, and many Catholics mistakenly believed themselves bound in conscience to uphold II. Montalembert rightly saw how harmful such confusion would be for the Church and strove to persuade Catholics of the need for a better understanding of the new times, which demanded free institutions. He drew mainly from English liberalism, admiring the political customs of that kingdom. He desired a state that was not the master of rights but the defender and guarantor of the just freedoms of citizens, foremost among which was religious freedom. Regarding this, he rejected the protection that absolute monarchies had granted the Church, doing so at the cost of enslaving the Church and consciences.

Thus, he wanted the state to be free as the Church was free—though the formula "A free Church in a free state" is equivocal and dangerous, as it places the Church within the state, whereas by its very nature the Church is above and beyond all states due to its eminently spiritual character. In general, Catholic liberals proposed accepting from modern times the valorization of freedom as a method of public life, with the aim of opposing the erroneous and perverse applications that the enemies of religion made of II. To others, VEUILLOT, LOUIS (v.), this seemed a concession to the errors and misdeeds of the liberal governments of the era, and they fiercely opposed II. Perhaps the Catholic liberals did not always use sufficiently careful language, especially regarding the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"; yet the good faith of Montalembert and many of his followers is certain. Their occasional inaccuracies were avoided by the "Neo-Guelphs" in Italy, who were also favorable to political freedoms but viewed them in the light of medieval tradition and Thomistic thought, which derives the authority of governments from God but through the people, imposing on the exercise of authority and freedom those limits marked by divine law, whether natural or positive, according to circumstances.

Later, Leo XIII, with the encyclical *Libertas* (June 20, 1888), provided the definitive answer to the problem of Catholics' stance in political life. The messages of Pius XII offer an illustration and development of this teaching. Political liberalism has passed through the crisis of the two world wars and undergone a transformation. Even if this transformation is not accepted by those calling themselves "historical liberals," the concept of freedom has received a new application in politics, with the exaltation of the personal values of man as superior to the state and the control of state action through a supreme court, which at once recalls the executive and legislative powers to respect those values. The elements of truth and goodness implicit in 19th-century political liberalism can thus be preserved and become a particularly necessary force in our day to defend civilization from the looming threat of materialistic despotism.

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