LIBERALISM in religion asserts that everyone is entitled to his own opinion — and to absolute respect for his opinions. It thus has the great advantage of giving the appearance of flexibility, open-mindedness, kindness and generosity.
Yet beneath the surface lurks that horror of all horrors — dogma, the very thing Liberalism claims to reject.
Beneath the appearance of complete tolerance, one finds stern, unyielding disapproval. Those who do not accept the primacy of personal opinion and hold that religious truth is based on the authority of God, opinion be damned, are in for a rough time.
Liberalism, as Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany wrote in 1899, “repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently, it denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Liberalism, have been denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or another rejected—from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility.
“Nonetheless Liberalism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth — or a truth consequent upon Revelation — by its infallibly constituted exponent [the Pope]. [Ed. note — We have not had a true pope since 1958.] This logically implies the obedient acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society. Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and social reason and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of authority. It knows no dogma except the dogma of self-assertion. Hence it is heresy, fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against God.” [emphasis added]
Liberalism — what is today often known as Modernism — was at the time Salvany wrote in the nineteenth century, the “dominating idea.”
Since then it has decimated the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and we live in the wilderness that Jesus himself predicted would come upon the earth before his glorious return.
Tolerance and openness have created a wasteland, where true charity is as rare as water in the Sahara, where tolerance is vicious and the dogma-less are the most dogmatic of all. Man is prouder than ever of himself. He has “revealed himself to himself,” as the saying goes.
He has successfully committed the final revolt, his mind and will against God, his own opinion first — and God seems not to have noticed.
