maklavan:
Is that with a big “L” or a small “l”? I could be liberal with my use of salt in my cooking, or my application of sun tan lotion. Liberalism has been part of the great historical tradition, and one would hesitate to condemn the millions who have espoused it. One could equally ask ,Is capitalism a sin? since Pope John Paul condemned its excesses in the strongest terms.There is a political part here in the UK, the Liberal Democrats, whose leader is a practising Catholic. Are they all sinners?
In reality, of course, isms, in themselves are neither sinful or non sinful ;it is people who are sinners, and, no doubt, they are equally representated by Liberals, Conservatives;traditionalists and radicals.
- This whole discussion is hopelessly compromised by the imprecision with which the word is used.
That pillar of Ultramontane Catholicism the Catholic Encyclopedia points out that liberalism does have two meanings [if there are not more, indeed - but it, mentions only two]; the wholly pejorative meaning is one of them.
Are people sinners ? Of course we are - “anti-liberals” as much as “liberals”. So conservative attitudes are as liable to be sinful as any others: not because they are conservative, but because they are positions adopted by sinful human beings.
It seems to be taken for granted that any and all conservative positions are allowed - and that no liberal positions are legitimate moral choices.
The problem is, which has conceptual priority: the names - or the attitudes named ?
And is a man a liberal, because although he believes in all Catholic teaching, he finds many features of US capitalism morally abhorrent - or is he a conservative, because, despite his lamentable failure to be a good American in all respects, he believes in the Pope’s infallibility ? If his liberalism of attitude, that is chargeable to him for not being an admirer of all aspects of US capitalism, makes him a liberal, then it seems that it is more important for a US Catholic to be a US citizen, than to be an orthodox Catholic in doctrine.
That conclusion is only one of the paradoxes that results when liberalism is made into an absolute - for then liberalism is treated like a Platonic Idea, and disengaged from all the untidy detail of change and history, such as those among which we spend our lives. So it becomes impossible to ask whether what Fr. Sarda & Salvany was castigating in 1886, is what is called liberalism in 2000. Both things are named liberalism - therefore, they are identical in all respects. They are both liberal & bad; so anything else called “liberal” must be equally bad - however good or necessary it may really be. And conversely, what is bad, is liberal: the set of liberal things, becomes convertible with the set of bad things - a disturbing development in both politics & ethics
Which helps to explain why an anti-liberal philosophy such as Nazism is regarded as a manifestation of liberalism - the liberal character of Nazism means that for some there is no moral difference between Adolf [note to US readers: “f” - not “ph”] Hitler, and Sir Winston Churchill: since both were, in different senses, “liberals”. Since liberalism is bad because liberal, the distinctions between the two are overlooked. But if both men were both liberal/bad, then resisting Hitler is a bad/liberal act; because that is to help liberalism. The solution ? The universal rule of the Pope, because the Papacy is the only earthly power which is against badness/liberalism on principle; “papalism” (= extreme Ultramontanism) thus replaces Christianity as the content of Catholicism - just as Lord Acton thought it had in the 19th century.
As badness is identical with liberalism, it follows that what is not liberal, is not bad; conservatism, because anti-liberal, is therefore not bad, but good. Because we are dealing in absolutes, it is absolutely good - therefore, it is beyond criticism: only bad/liberal people would criticise it anyway - this all the more certain because the CC is the special vehicle of all goodness: to criticise the anti-liberal/absolutely good CC is therefore to attack God: and is therefore diabolical.
All of which would explain why satan is called the first liberal by some. ##
; and avoid assuming that absolute dichotomies like good and bad, liberal and conservative, black and white, must always be sufficient for the judgements we make.