Christian Liberty

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY "EVERY day makes more evident the fact that two strong essentially incompatible ways of life will divide . the loyalties of men and nations in the political world of tomorrow. They are genuine democracy and Marxian totalitarianism."' 1 It is noteworthy that the American Bishops who issued the statement containing these two sentences make no reference to that false liberalism which is likewise opposed to genuine democracy, though at the opposite extreme from totalitarianism. The omission is doubtless due to the fact that nineteenth-century liberalism is a dying creed, where it has not already passed away, in this day of increasing concentration of power in the absolute State. There is little need to warn the world against so thoroughly discredited a doctrine. There is great need, on the other hand, to beware of twentiethcentury absolutism, the most serious actual threat to society and one more detrimental to souls than liberalism ever was. Liberalism is the political consequence of Naturalism, a philosophical doctrine which repudiates the supernatural order and all revealed teaching, and holds that the human reason is the supreme principle, source, and judge of truth.2 Totalitarianism 1 From a statement by the Administrative Board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, April 14, 1945. • "What Naturalists or Rationalists aim at in philosophy, that the supporters of Liberalism, carrying out the principles laid down by Naturalism, are attempting in the domain of morality and politics. The fundamental doctrine of Rationalism is th«;l supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence these followers of Liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due and proclaim that every man is the law to himself. So arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guize of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless licence . . . It follows . . . that the authority in the State is then taken to come from the people only; and that, just as every man's individual 209 210 DAVID A. O'CONNELL is the political consequence of Liberalism, as an extreme reaction to the excessive liberty and defiance of authority which the error of the Liberals created. It is therefore a grandchild of Naturalism and Rationalism, though often so unnatural and irrational that the family :resemblance is hardly perceptible; the ancestor was clearly eccentric but the descendant is maniacal. In the pages that follow we shall try to show that the Supernaturalism of the Catholic Church's teaching is the only effective answer to the Naturalism which bred Liberalism first, then Totalitarianism. Emphasis will be laid therefore on the theological aspects of the modern political problem created by the friction between a dying Liberalism and the growth of Totalitarianism. Specifically we shall concentrate upon the problem of liberty, which is not only a political, but even more fundamentally, a theological problem. And our main concern in dealing with this point will be to show the relevance of the Christian theology of human liberty to politics. As far as possible we intend to :rely on the social teachings of recent Pontiffs , especially Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII, as well as on the theological doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. Since liberty is of the essence of genuine· democracy, a proper understanding of its meaning is vital to the success of a democratic order. That understanding will never be complete without a theology of liberty, The widespread decline of civil and political liberty in the twentieth century is due as much to ignorance of the nature of freedom as it is to any other cause. And the nature of freedom is never more unknown, never more mysterious, than when the light of :revelation and the theolog ~eal science of revelation are not admitted as pertinent to the mystery. Liberalism and Totalitarianism are not only political errors; they are also theological errors, heresies. As such, they must be dealt the strongest blow by orthodoxy on the theological leveL reason is his only rule of life, so the collective...