(LifeSiteNews) — If you read Catholic books from the Before Times you will find no confusion, but more than a few surprises. Thanks to a recommendation from a reader of mine, I discovered an excellent example.
Liberalism is a Sin not only explains what liberalism is, why it is a sin, and how it leads to atheism and moral collapse – it also shows that the phenomenon of cancelled priests is nothing new.
What is also not new is the presence of liberals in the Church.
When Father Felix Sarda y Salvany published this book in 1884 it provoked a response from his liberal diocesan bishop – Jacobo Catala Et Alboso.
This bishop decided to have a priest, Father De Pazos, write a counterblast in favour of liberalism.
Both books were sent to the Vatican, with the bishop expecting to see Fr. Sarda’s denunciation of liberalism repudiated.
Unfortunately for the bishop, the pope at the time was a Catholic. Father Jerome Secheri, O.P., Secretary of the Sacred Congregation Of the Index under Pope Leo XIII, replied with a letter.
This letter celebrated the valiant defense of the faith in Liberalism is a Sin, and condemned the defense of liberalism by the bishop and his scribe. The letter demanded that this book be withdrawn from circulation for its errors, as well as for its personal attacks on Fr. Sarda, who it said, “merits great praise for his exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order and lucidity, and without personal offense to anyone.”
Philosophy and common sense
The combination of common sense with an extremely subtle command of philosophy is a hallmark of Catholic publications in the Before Times.
Fr. Sarda does not simply rail against liberalism. He tells us what it is and what it does, and where its ideology leads – to sin and to the replacement of all with nothing.
To read this book is to better understand the intellectual weapons wielded against you today – and to learn how to fight back.
In one instance, Fr. Sarda shows how liberalism is itself irrational – because it claims reason is supreme, but also insists that only liberal ideas are reasonable. His book demonstrates how the cult of rationalism has produced a culture of trans-sanity, policed by liberal chauvinists.
In doing so he shows why we are in the state we must call the “new normal” today. This combination of practical wisdom and intellectual rigor in the service of the salvation of souls is typical of the treasure house of traditional Catholic wisdom found in pre-modernist publications.
Liberal or Catholic – never both
Fr. Sarda shows that a liberal can never be a Catholic. Why? His book begins with a simple definition of liberalism. It is founded on the basic rejection of the supremacy of God, placing the reason of man in His stead.
From this flows Protestantism, Fr. Sarda says – and the idea that one religion is as good as another. This means in practice, he points out, that none of them are any good at all.
Liberalism leads inexorably to atheism and to moral collapse, with each deciding for himself what is good and just and true.
“Free thought begets free morals,” observed the Don – as he was also called – noting also that the liberal idea promotes “freedom of religion.”
This heretical concept was, of course, promoted in Dignitatis Humanae – published after the Second Vatican Council.
Fr. Sarda correctly concluded that liberalism is a rebellion against God and “warfare on the Church” – replacing the authority of God with the decisions of men.
Liberalism and modernism
Liberalism is described by Fr. Sarda as “the foundation for all heresies.” Why would he say this?
“Liberalism strikes at the very foundations of faith,” he explained. “It is heresy, radical and universal, because within it are compounded all heresies.”
Again, Fr. Sarda is no mere pulpit bully. He shows why this is the case in passages like this, from page 28: “Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute independence of the individual and of the social reason.”
On the other hand, “Catholicity is the dogma of the absolute subjection of the individual and of the social order to the revealed law of God.”
He concludes, “They are opposites in direct conflict.”
Seventeen years later, in his “feeding of the flock,” Pope St. Pius X would condemn modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
What is the one to the other?
From reason to chaos
The liberal idea was to do away with God by means of reason. The modern idea was to do away with reason, too.
Modernists are critics of the rational assumptions of liberalism – that man is rational, that rationally ordered institutions can improve our lives – that there is no supernatural element to life.
The modernists questioned all this, looking into themselves for an explanation of the newly mystified world, into which modernists infused their personal and rather pagan sensibilities.
Looking inwards to project what they discovered outwards, modernists made new totems of themselves to venerate in various forms. In short, liberalism is a cult of reason and modernism a cult of the self. Today we have postmodernists, who reject all morality, refuse to acknowledge the possibility of facts, and assert there is no reality at all beyond personal fancy and perspective.
This is how reason led to chaos, and to the complete moral nihilism of our times.
If you would like to understand how we came to be in this state, Fr. Sarda’s book is an outstanding primer. It will secure you in the Catholic faith and reveal the poverty of liberalism in its basic essence. Though it promised liberation into a paradise on earth, its path of rational supremacy has liberated mankind into the void.
There is a way out of this mess, of course, and Liberalism is a Sin is as a lamp lit in the depth of darkness. Reading it is a pleasure, and not only for the fact that its very existence shows the truth conveyed by the Church of Christ can never be cancelled.
You can watch Frank discuss this book on the latest episode of Frankly HERE.
