Capto Iugulum: 1920 - 1939

The Catholic Church has, since the genesis of Liberalism as an ideology, denounced it as being antithetical to Christianity, condemning it as an ideology injurious to the right ordering of society, and to mans relationship with God. In recent years however, a great multitude have lost sight of why the Church pronounces these condemnations, and it is for this reason that the following essay seeks to present the reasons why the Church teaches as it does, in order that all men of goodwill who adore and glorify the living God may understand why liberalism is so dangerous to the common good, and to true religion.


To begin this essay, we must acknowledge that Liberalism is not just a randomly-chosen collection of unrelated beliefs.

Instead, liberalism is a comprehensive system that describes reality, answers the big questions, and prescribes a code of conduct for individuals and societies. Liberalism too has an intellectual consistency to it, which is why we can have confidence that somebody who is liberal on a certain number of key issues, will be liberal on most other questions of importance. People after all do not form opinions at random; they generally hold views that are consistent with their fundamental beliefs about how reality operates.

If we look at the most basic level, and also at the level of day-to operation, liberalism emphasizes freedom, equality, openness to the outsider (i.e., multiculturalism) and nonjudgmentalism. This can be taken as a fundamental definition of liberalism although, of course, one could spend a lifetime unpacking the definition.

On the surface these tenets seem good, so let us consider these basic elements of Liberalism. “Freedom” to start with, is, of course, another word for the "liber" in liberalism. Liberalism certainly emphasizes freedom when it can, especially as a weapon with which to destroy the traditional forms of thought and life that it hates, such as the traditional truths that men and women have a duty to marry and have children, and (the Occitanian humanists particularly oppose this conception) that homosexuality is a sin. In these cases, liberals use the promise of freedom as a means of destroying traditional morality to clear the way for the utopia that they aim for. They also use it to attract immature and disordered persons to their movement.

But this liberal freedom cannot be the ultimate good, because it is only a negative condition: the absence of restraint, ergo license. More important to the contemporary liberal is equality, both as a moral imperative (“we need to treat all people equally”) and as a description of man’s condition (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”). From the belief in the inherent equality of all people come the imperatives to be open to the outsider and to be nonjudgmental.

As for the imperative to be nonjudgmental, it follows from the belief in equality, and from the imperative to be open to the outsider. When we judge people, we observe that they were unequal in nature and ability: Some are smarter, some are more diligent, and some are more violent and antisocial than others, for example. If one judges societies, he notices that some are more compatible than others with his way of life. From all these judgments it would follow that we would have to treat people and societies unequally, which would be unacceptable to liberalism. Therefore, says the liberal, we must not judge.

[But yes, liberals do judge. This apparent contradiction is explained below.]


What basic beliefs are necessary to justify the liberal emphases of freedom, equality, multiculturalism and nonjudgmentalism? Here are some of the most important principles of liberalism:

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•Liberalism holds that the God of the Bible does not exist.

This does not necessarily mean outright atheism; liberals have varying concepts of God. Most liberals believe in some sort of god, but their god is usually “mystical,” that is, a god about whom nothing can be known with certainty, and therefore “God” for them has no authority. But liberalism definitely denies the existence of the God described in the Bible because to be compatible with liberalism, “God” must not be “judgmental,” must not require belief in any particular religion, must not sent people to Hell (unless, perhaps, they are spectacularly wicked), and so on.

Liberalism, then, denies and opposes Christianity, although it approves of those parts of Christian ethics that call on us to have concern for the physical well being of our neighbor. Liberalism has to oppose Christianity, for the system of liberalism cannot be valid if Christianity is true. If Christianity is true then freedom and equality are not the highest goods. The highest good are instead honoring the God revealed in scripture, and through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and by upholding the traditional social order that honors Him. Since Christianity contradicts liberalism, liberals deny and oppose Christianity.

True, many liberals call themselves Christians. But they have redefined the faith, retaining the words but redefining the meanings when they conflict with liberalism. Real Christianity opposes liberalism.

Let us specially note that liberalism is fundamentally and disastrously wrong about the God of the Bible. He of course exists (indeed atheism has never found favour amongst a significant number of people), and since God is the cause of all being, false beliefs about God produce false beliefs about almost everything important. We say “almost” because even the atheist retains enough intuition (the faculty of knowing without engaging in a conscious process of reasoning) to acknowledge many important truths, even if he denies their source, which is God.

•Liberalism leads to nominalism.

With God unknowable there is, for the liberal, no transcendent realm, at least no transcendent realm about which we can know anything. The physically tangible and the contents of man’s mind are all that exist, and there is therefore no authority higher than man. Therefore, in liberalism, things mean whatever we say they do. And since societies are diverse, and since man constantly changes his mind, there are no truths that are objective (the same for all people) and absolute (the same at all times and in all places.) There are consequently no objective or absolute limits, standards, rules, categories, etc. We may call this belief “practical” nominalism, in contrast to the philosophical kind that appeals only to a tiny minority of intellectuals. Either way this is diametrically opposed to the conception of certain absolute truths espoused by the Church

The liberal however, being a human being of course, cannot live without limits, standards, rules, categories, and so on. But being liberal, he denies that they are objective, that is, constant. The liberal’s rules change whenever the Masters of Society decide that they must.

Therefore, according to liberalism, we have permission to remake ourselves or our society. Thus, the rampant activism and disrespect for authority that is observable today by liberals, and their ideological bedfellows the proletarists in many quarters of the world today. For the liberal the social order, tradition, is unimportant, and is entirely without substantive meaning, and can be changed whenever the government or the courts assent to manifest the liberal will, regardless even of what the people they supposedly serve actually think on the matter.

Nominalism as such is like liberalism itself: it promises freedom but produces only the chaos that naturally leads to tyranny. Normal people want authoritative truths, that is, truths that are claimed really to be true and not just a convention. If authoritative truths are not taught by society’s legitimate rulers, then the people will seek these truths elsewhere. This produces a chaos of competing and mutually contradictory pseudo-authorities, setting the stage for the Balkanization that eventually produces tyranny.

[It is also true that man does not want always to be constrained by a truth he cannot manipulate, and therefore he is prone to believe those charlatans who teach practical nominalism. This is one of man’s sinful desires. The desire for authoritative truth is a healthy desire, one which competes with his sinful desires.]

But liberalism is wrong about nominalism. Since nature and natures God (as taught in Christianity) exists, a transcendent realm does exist, and man is not the measure of all things. There are truths that do not change, and man decides whether or not to participate in the God-created truths that he acknowledges and receives, but does not create or define.

•Since it believes there is no God to establish an objective order, liberalism holds that we must all be free, equal, and nonjudgmental.

If there is no God then any constraint on freedom is unjust unless it serves a purpose we (or rather the liberals) approve of. With no God in existence all men are on the same level, no being is higher than man, and nobody has the right to impose his opinions on others. Therefore “freedom” to the liberal means the absolute and sacred right of all people to express and define themselves in any way they want and to live their lives without being constrained by custom, authority or even reality. This is the freedom that matters most to the liberal and is quite contrary to the Christian notion of freedom, which is the positive freedom from sin and tyranny (rather than the negative freedom from restraint).

With (allegedly) no God in existence, hierarchy is seen to be invalid, and liberalism accordingly believes in the natural equality of all men. “Equality” for the contemporary liberal is not just the equality of opportunity and treatment. It is the actual equality of results. Thus liberalism creates, inter alia, affirmative action, designed to impose equality. This is particularly evident in the radical efforts of the traditional proletarists (who's ideology proceeded from liberalism)

“Nonjudgmentalism” too, for the liberal, is highly selective, for it only refuses to judge whatever is condemned in traditional societies: sexual sin, indolence, unbelief, criminality, ugliness, and so on. Yet the contemporary liberal is harshly judgmental of traditional thought and ways of life as the many verbal attacks by liberals against the Church of God attest. This, of course at any rate, appears to be a contradiction: The liberal says he does not believe in judgment but is harshly judgmental of certain things.

Observing this, we can say that on a superficial level it is a contradiction, one frequently criticized by conservatives. But on a deeper level it is not a contradiction. If freedom and equality are his highest goods, the liberal must oppose anything that prevents freedom or equality. Traditional morality and religion oppose the idea that freedom is the highest good, and they express inequality: sin and sanctity, virtue and vice, citizen and foreigner, and so on. Therefore the liberal must judge, and oppose, traditional morality and religion.

In short, under liberalism anything goes, except saying that it’s not true that anything goes. The social ideal of liberalism may thus be described as “equal freedom for all,” with freedom from judgment by others as an essential prerequisite for individuals to be free.

This freedom that liberalism demands is principally the freedom of the individual to define himself. It is not the traditional concept of freedom as the absence of tyranny and the ability to do what is right because of the possession of personal virtue. And if the individual is to have the freedom to define himself in any way he desires, then others must not be free to criticize him as failing to uphold an objective standard. Objective standards must be discredited, and people must not be permitted to appeal to them.

Thus the increasing volume of laws, regulations and standards, which are necessary to ensure that everyone has equal freedom are to be found in those states where liberalism predominates (or where its principles have to some degree been adopted). Unless the state and its bureaucrats intervene, some individuals will not have the means of being free and equal. Some will fail to achieve equal freedom because they lack natural ability; for example, some students do not have the natural intelligence or diligence to have equal academic accomplishments. Others will fail to achieve equal freedom because they lack external means; for example, some individuals do not have enough money to gain what they need. And some individuals will fail to achieve equal freedom because they are prevented from doing so by others; for example, some individuals are victims of racism or sexism.

For these reasons, equal freedom requires that society be tightly controlled by experts and bureaucrats. Freedom and equality, rightly defined, are naturally contradictory, and therefore the liberal “equal freedom” must be a tightly-managed affair, with experts and bureaucrats working hard to ensure that people simultaneously have maximal freedom to define themselves and maximal equality with others.

So liberalism demands radical, equal, nonjudgmental freedom for all. But this is all premised on the nonexistence of God. Since God exists, this liberal premise is also false. Man is not free to sin, to shirk his duty, to deny what he is, or to avoid the judgments of others. Nor is man free to regard all things as equal, in denial of the order established by God. And since reality contains truth and falsehood, good and bad, beauty and ugliness, man is not free to avoid passing or receiving judgment.

•Liberalism opposes Christian and Western tradition, and all traditional forms of authority such as God, Scripture, fathers, clergymen and aristocrats.

In its desire for freedom and equality, liberalism must oppose tradition, for tradition restricts man’s freedom by prescribing what he ought to believe and do. And tradition also provides a social order that by its very nature causes inequalities among men. And since tradition is the sum total of what we receive from those who went before us, liberalism necessarily rejects the wisdom of the ages. Since traditional authorities generally uphold the traditional order, liberalism must also reject traditional authorities.

Observe how liberals constantly rail against God, Scripture, clergymen, fathers, and aristocrats (or, now that aristocracy has been abolished in certain places, “the rich.”) Liberals describe these as the impediments to the establishment of the ideal society of which they dream. Liberals also denounce tradition, holding it to be the discredited and disproved ways of the past, ways which unjustly prevent individuals from freely choosing to be who they really are.

But liberalism is wrong. Every society needs authority, for every order must be maintained. Liberalism has not abolished authority; it has replaced the traditional authorities with others. The liberal authorities include university professors, bureaucratic “experts,” journalists, advertisers and other setters of trends, and artists and other popularizers of ideas. But observe that these authorities are not acknowledged to have authority. Officially, at least in those countries where liberalism has force, the people (or the monarch) are still sovereign. And so the liberal authorities must often lead by deception or force, for their right to lead is not acknowledged by the population.

And tradition is not an evil force that must be overcome. Instead, it is the sum total of what we have received from those who have gone before us. Those who reject tradition cut themselves off from the wisdom of the ages and from all the goods that man needs in order to live, such as God, true religion, knowledge of philosophically first things, objective morality, beauty, higher culture, family, nation, honor, and so on.

•Since it opposes tradition and traditional authorities, liberalism holds that contemporary man is the Supreme Being.

There must always be a highest authority, and with God and tradition invalidated this leaves man as the only possible Supreme Being. This Supreme Being could be either man the group (according to Proletarism, and certain social liberal variants), or man the individual (according to classical liberalism). More specifically, since there is no authoritative god or tradition, contemporary man determines what is true and false, what is (morally) right and wrong, and what is beautiful and ugly. Therefore truth, goodness and beauty are subjective, not objective, and this naturally leads to relativism, the doctrine (or perhaps just the attitude) that truth, morality and even reality itself, vary from person to person. Something inherently contrary to Christianity

Why must there always be a highest authority, a Supreme Being? Partly for logical reasons. A chain must always terminate somewhere and since authority is a hierarchy, it must have a highest element or else the entire chain is invalid. But there are also psychological reasons. Nobody respects a command given “because I said so!” and therefore man needs to believe there is a trustworthy (or at least adequate) authority at the top. For homo liberalis, that “trustworthy authority” cannot be God, tradition or traditional authorities: God is unknown or nonexistent, tradition is flawed because Progress has rendered it invalid, and traditional authorities are wicked. That leaves only two alternatives for the top liberal authority: It could be the group operating as a democratically-evolving collective, or else it could be the individual, marching to the beat of his own drummer.

This highest authority is also to be worshipped, because man has a natural need to identify the Supreme Being and then to ascribe supreme worth to him. Man has a natural need to know ultimate reality and the supreme good, for in no other way can he orient his life and feel secure. And the ultimate reality and the highest good must be worshipped, for worship is the ascription of supreme good to the one worshipped, and man has a natural need to affirm the goodness of the highest good. Observe, for example, how prominent atheists and liberals (such as the Occitanian humanists, and certain Proletarists) speak of their feelings of reverence when contemplating the grandeur of the physical cosmos or the great force of certain natural processes. But for most people, the impersonal is not worthy of worship. With God disqualified, man becomes the natural object of worship.

The man who is worshipped could be either man the group, or man the individual. Worship of the group generally consists of superlative attributes ascribed to the human race as a whole, as it allegedly evolves to ever greater heights of knowledge and virtue, or else worship of one’s tribe or clan (radical nationalism). Worship of the individual is generally self-worship, as a man regards his own welfare as the highest good, and his own thoughts as reflecting ultimate reality. We may presume that few people are so egotistical as to regard their thoughts as literally reflecting ultimate reality, but those who take no thought of things higher than themselves are implicitly taking this position. With no God in sight, there is no good reason not to worship yourself.

But liberalism fails. Since God exists, and Man is obviously not the Supreme Being. Man is obviously finite and fallible, both morally and intellectually. When man is held to be the Supreme Being, perceptive people draw the logical conclusion that our situation is hopeless, and they fall into despair, something quite evident in contemporary times.

•Liberalism must believe that man is naturally good, for otherwise, without a God to set things right, we have no hope.

Liberals generally do not believe that human beings automatically turn out good. Instead, the liberal believes that with the right environment, man will be virtuous.

How do we know liberals think this way? Observe how, when they speak of correcting the problems of the world, liberals never speak about restraining man’s sinful nature, unless they speak of restraining Christians, the rich, or the power of some particular group that is the target of liberal angst. Nor do they speak about submitting to God. Instead, they speak of more education, or more welfare payments, or more affirmative action, or more diversity, and so on. In other words, they always speak of changing the external circumstances of society. With the possible exception of the groups scapegoated by liberals, man is never assumed to be naturally sinful, but only to be naturally good, or at least naturally adequate, if the right external circumstances obtain.

If man is naturally good, why is there so much evil? For the liberal, it must be society that makes people bad. People are forced to become bad by their environment. Therefore, concludes the liberal, we must remake society, so that it will always exert the right influence on all people. Liberalism thus holds that all human societies up to those that currently exist have been deeply flawed, at the level of their basic premises, and accordingly liberalism pushes for a fundamental rethinking of every aspect of society and its ordering: its laws, rules, customs, traditions, schools of thought, etc. All must be changed in order to remove from society the false ways of thinking that have allegedly produced so much misery.

This thinking reinforces the liberal’s belief that men can only be equally free if the Masters of Liberal Society control our behavior, so that we don’t pollute, discriminate, sexually harass, religiously discriminate, and so on.

But is man naturally good? If he were, then the external circumstances that allegedly make man bad would never have arisen. Good cannot produce bad. The belief in a naturally good man made bad only by external circumstances is another contemporary analogue of the alleged belief of the ancients that earthquakes and volcanoes are caused by the intervention of evil spirits rather than simply being part of physical reality. Christianity, with its doctrine of the natural sinfulness of men (a sinfulness that is often restrained by God, and that is overcome in some by Jesus Christ), corrects liberalism’s erroneous description of man.

•Liberalism holds that traditional societies are radically unjust and must be radically changed so as to be brought into accord with liberal principles.

Since traditional societies are unjust, they must be changed. And this imperative to change society leads to totalitarianism. Since the imperative to promote equality and make men virtuous and happy all across the board is non-negotiable, liberal authorities will not tolerate any significant expression of anti-liberalism, even if it originates from a legitimate part of the process of government. (something clearly manifested in vote-rigging in Uruguay). If an executive order, or a bill passed by the legislature or the voters, violates liberalism, it must be (in a liberal state) nullified by the courts or the bureaucracies, which are the two branches of government that liberal invariably seek to occupy. This nullification of the normal process of democracy is not seen as undemocratic (and therefore invalid) by liberals, because it is carried out on behalf of liberalism’s most sacred duties.

This imperative also leads to totalitarianism “in the small,” in the sense that every aspect of society must now be ruled by a vast army of bureaucratic “experts” who decide how human life is to be conducted and create rules to back up their decisions. The basic principle of this bureaucratic rule is that we must have equal freedom, and so nobody must infringe on the rights of anyone else to feel, think or live in any way he likes as long as other people are not hurt (whatever “hurt” means.) Think of the diversity consultants and seminars, the civil rights organizations, and the harassment lawsuits that are increasingly evident in certain liberal states! In order for all to be “free to be who they are,” every aspect of our life must be ruled by experts.

Again, liberalism fails. A society is only unjust if a valid authority declares it to be so, but liberalism, denying God, does not have this authority. And traditional society is not “unjust” as a blanket statement just because liberals say so (logical fallacy). Injustices sometimes do occur in traditional societies, but injustices (often of a different nature) also occur now, where liberalism rules.

•The principles of liberalism are not fixed. They continually change as liberal society evolves.

Under liberalism there is no God to provide unchanging principles. Man is the Supreme Being of liberalism as we have pointed out, but the man who does not honor God constantly changes his mind, for he admits no absolute and unchanging principles. An unchanging principle would be an intolerable infringement of his freedom. Liberalism therefore constantly changes. Anything goes, as long as it is endorsed by the community of liberalism.

It is true that there are persistent themes running through the history of liberalism. And not even liberals will tolerate constant radical change. But given enough time liberalism could evolve into almost anything.

This leads to an obvious problem: If liberalism is so malleable how can we study it? How can we understand something that may change at any time into something radically different?

Two answers spring to mind, a lesser and a greater. The lesser answer is that liberalism changes so slowly that for all practical purposes it can be known, at least at a given point of time. But the greater answer is that liberalism results from man’s sinful nature as a rebel against God. Liberalism is constant in one respect: it always denies the God of the Bible. The exact form that denial takes varies, but the denial is a constant.

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Considering the above errors, we can see that while Liberalism promises man a just society and personal freedom, it delivers a disordered society and personal slavery. This being something the Church has repeatedly warned against.

Liberalism promises man freedom from superstition and ignorance, from tyranny and injustice, from pain and want, if only we join its crusade to create a new world of hope and change. But in pursuit of its utopia, liberalism robs man of everything he needs to live like a man and not like an animal or a demon: God, true religion, objective morality, knowledge of philosophically first things, higher culture, family, nation, honor, beauty, and so on. Robbed of all that makes his life meaningful, man becomes a slave: Of the latest fads, of his transient and often sinful desires, of the petty tyrants who manipulate him for their gain.

Consider: Without (knowledge of) God a man believes that the world has no originating and organizing force, and that reality is just a random collection of meaningless stuff to which we arbitrarily assign meaning in a futile attempt to maintain our spirits. Without true religion a man is cut off from God even if he believes, in some sense, that God exists. Without knowledge of objective morality a man has no assurance that he is doing the right thing and he becomes demoralized. Without some knowledge of philosophically first things a man does not know the basic operating principles of the world he inhabits. Without a strong organic connection with family and nation a man has no reason to aspire to anything great and noble. Without participation in higher culture a man never nourishes his spirit by temporarily leaving the mundane for the world of refinement and beauty.

For these reasons we can see that liberalisms doctrine is ultimately a soul-destroying projection of futility and nihilism, in diametric opposition to the hope proclaimed by Christianity and it directly attacks its assertions of truth. For these reasons the Catholic Church makes itself opposed to Liberalism, and teaches against it. For liberalism is not just another ideology, but a melange of error that attacks and undermines the root principles of Christianity.