LIBERTY VERSUS LIBERALISM

Catholic Social Teaching on human liberty

There is a light in the darkness.

Here I continue my series on the nine encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, known as the Catholic Social Teachings.

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Following on from the first - which I covered here - the second encyclical explores the question of human liberty.

''Such, then, being the condition of human liberty, it necessarily stands in need of light and strength to direct its actions to good and to restrain them from evil.''

Pope Leo XIII

Published in 1888, Libertas Praestantissimum explains the concept of human liberty in alignment with the natural order of God.

It directly addresses the “calumny” against the Church, levelled by Liberals to this day, that its teachings are opposed to human liberty.

This encyclical very presciently argues that liberalism directs humanity into the freedom to destroy itself in predictable and known errors, which reduce to a rejection of God and the basis of the reality He created.

Such a dramatic statement may have seemed almost absurd in the late 19th century, but in an age of informational decoherence ruled by powers who hate anything that is good it is simply a statement of the obvious.

So too is the obvious conclusion. Liberalism, says this excellent and brief encyclical, liberates men from meaning and the truth - into the hands of Satan.

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