(A book by Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany, published by Tan Books.)
What is liberalism? We hear and say, "so-and-so is a liberal," but what does it really mean? Is it a political label? Actually, liberalism was condemned by Ven. Pope Pius IX and many other popes long before Bill Clinton was born.
Here is an excellent book to help Catholics restore Traditional thinking on the duty of man, and of the state, to obey Jesus Christ and His True Church. Written in 1886, Fr. Sarda defines liberalism, details its causes, provides the Church's condemnations of it, and warns us of its consequences. Here are some excerpts:
Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute independence of the individual and of the social reason. Catholicity is the dogma of the absolute subjection of the individual and of the social order to the revealed law of God. One doctrine is the exact antithesis of the other. They are opposites in direct conflict. (p. 28)
Protestantism naturally begets toleration of error. Rejecting the principle of authority in religion, it has neither criterion nor definition of faith. ...Therefore does it finally arrive, by force of its own premises, at the conclusion that one creed is as good as another; it then seeks to shelter its inconsistency under the false plea of liberty of conscience. ...it is clear that one who, under the plea of rational liberty, has the right to repudiate any part of Revelation that may displease him, cannot logically quarrel with one who, on the same ground, repudiates the whole. (p. 8,9)
Protestantism is now a dead dog; Liberalism is a living lion going about seeking whom he may devour. Its dreadful doctrine is permeating society to the core; it has become the modern political creed and threatens us with a second revolution, to turn the world over once again to paganism. (p. 74)
Fr. Sarda foresaw the Communist revolution, but could he have imagined a day when a Church Council "declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom"? (Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, no. 2) Or that churchmen could hail the council as a revision of the Syllabus of Errors? For in 1982, then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that Vatican II "is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-Syllabus."
The return of the Traditional Mass is a welcome blessing, to be sure. But the Mass did not withhold the forces of liberalism in the Church. To stand with Tradition, then, requires a return to Traditional thinking, as is presented in Liberalism is a Sin. Either man is free to embrace that religion which he considers to be true (an error condemned in the Syllabus), or he is bound to obey Jesus Christ and His One True Church. Both doctrines cannot be true.
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