‘Liberalism is a Sin’ takes no prisoners in its dissection of the liberalism present in many of us. (Day 10 of Total Consecration)
Editor’s Notes
The first period of the preparation for St Louis de Montfort’s Total Consecration to the Blessed Virgin is focused on gaining a greater awareness of the spirit of the world, and emptying ourselves of it.
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Today we return to Don Félix Sarda y Salvany’s classic work Liberalism is a Sin, to consider his analysis of how Liberalism – the spirit of the world par excellence – infiltrates the hearts of even the most stalwart Catholics.
The text is a new translation made by The WM Review. In this part, ‘The Don’ sets out some of the ways by which Catholics become complicit with the ‘sin of Liberalism,’ and dissects the three kinds of liberals we might typically encounter.
You can read a recent overview of the history of this work, and the controversy from which it arose, at
’s Substack here. Wright also gives an account of this controversy and the importance of this work in the video below:As with the previous reading from Liberalism is a Sin, we recommend readers to return to a previous day’s meditation. In this case, we recommend The Three Classes of Men or The Three Degrees of Humility.
The themes, as well as vocal prayers and readings associated with this ‘Week 0’, can be found here. You can find the book here.
Although this is part of the Total Consecration preparation, it also stands alone as a great text in its own right.
CONTENTS:
READING: The text consists of a few chapters from Don Sarda y Salvany’s Liberalism is a Sin. This text is intended to provide material for further consideration of the subject of this week.
MEDITATION: Repeat the meditation on The Three Classes of Men or The Three Degrees of Humility, asking God to grant you a greater knowledge and detestation of the spirit of the world. A guide on how to use these points in meditation can be found here.
Reading: Complicity with Liberalism, and the Three Kinds of Liberals
Liberalism is a Sin
Don Sarda y Salvany
Base text translated with AI and every line compared for accuracy and readability.
XVII – The various ways in which, without being a liberal, a Catholic may nevertheless make himself an accomplice of Liberalism.
There are various ways in which, without being precisely a liberal, a Catholic may make himself an accomplice of Liberalism. And here we come to a point even more practical than the preceding, concerning which the conscience of the Christian faithful must in these times be most alert and most prepared.
It is well known that there are sins of which we make ourselves guilty – not by truly and directly committing them, but by mere complicity or connivance with their authors. This complicity is of such a nature that it often equals in gravity the sinful act directly committed. With regard to the sin of Liberalism, therefore, all that the treatises of Moral Theology teach on the point of complicity may and must be applied. Our object is merely to indicate briefly here the principal ways in which, concerning Liberalism, this complicity may be contracted today.
1. By formally affiliating oneself to a liberal party.
This is the greatest complicity possible in this matter, and it scarcely differs from direct action itself. There are many who, in their clear judgement, see all the doctrinal falsity of Liberalism, know its sinister purposes, and abhor its detestable history. Yet, whether through family tradition, inherited resentments, hopes of personal advancement, consideration for favours received, fear of harm that might befall them, or any other motive, they accept a place in the party which sustains such doctrines and harbours such purposes; they allow themselves to be publicly counted among its members, they take pride in its name, and work under its banner. These unfortunate people are the first accomplices – the great accomplices – of all the iniquities of their party; even without knowing them in detail, they are true co-authors of them and share in their immense responsibility. Thus we have seen in our own country very honourable men – excellent fathers of families, upright traders or craftsmen – figure in parties whose programme includes usurpations and plunder which no human honesty can justify. Before God, they are as responsible for such an outrage as the party that committed it, so long as the party itself sees such deeds not as incidental happenings, but as the logical outworking of its own system.
The personal uprightness of such individuals only makes their complicity more grievous. For clearly, if an evil party were composed solely of wicked men, there would be little to fear from it. The horror lies in the prestige which relatively good people confer on an evil party by honouring and recommending it through appearing in its ranks.
2. Even without being formally affiliated to a liberal party, and even after making public protest that they do not belong to it, those who show public sympathy for it, praising its personages, defending or excusing its newspapers, or taking part in its festivities, also incur complicity with liberalism.
The reason is evident. A man – especially if he has some standing by talent or position – does much in favour of any idea merely by showing benevolent relations with its promoters. He gives more by lending the prestige of his name than he would by giving money, arms, or any other material help. Thus, for example, for a Catholic – especially if he is a priest – to honour a liberal newspaper with his collaboration is manifestly to favour it with the prestige of his signature, even if in writing he does not defend the bad part of the paper, even if he openly dissents from it.
One may say that by writing there, he succeeds in making the voice of good heard by many who would not hear it in another paper. True; but his name also serves to endorse that paper in the eyes of readers who cannot distinguish easily between the doctrine of one writer and that of another; and thus what was meant to counterbalance or compensate the evil becomes for the majority an effective recommendation of it. We have heard it said a thousand times: “Is such a paper bad? But does not Father So-and-so write in it?” Thus reason the common people—and the common people includes almost the entirety of mankind. This kind of complicity is, unfortunately, all too frequent in our days.
3. True complicity is incurred by voting for liberal candidates, even if the vote is not given on account of their liberalism, but because of certain economic or administrative opinions of that candidate.
For however much he may agree with Catholicism on one such question, it is evident that, on the rest, he must speak and vote according to his heretical criterion; and he who puts him in the position of scandalising the country with those heresies, makes himself an accomplice of them.
4. It is complicity to subscribe to a liberal newspaper, or to recommend it in a sound newspaper out of false collegiality, or to lament, from a similar false courtesy, its closure or suspension.
To be a subscriber to a liberal newspaper is to give money to promote Liberalism; more still, it is to induce another unwary person to read it, because he sees that you take it; it is also to offer to one’s household and friends a reading more or less poisoned. How many bad newspapers would have to abandon their ruinous and malevolent propaganda if they were not supported by certain good-natured subscribers? The same must be said of the stock phrases among journalists: “our esteemed colleague”; or the other, “we wish him abundant subscriptions” when it concerns the first issue of a liberal newspaper; or the more common, “we regret the misfortune of our colleague,” when it concerns the suspension of such a paper.
There must be no such camaraderie between soldiers of two standards so opposed as those of God and of Satan. When such a paper ceases or is suspended, thanks should be given to God because his Divine Majesty has one enemy less; when its appearance is announced, this should not be greeted, but lamented as a calamity.
5. It is complicity to administer, print, sell, distribute, advertise, or subsidise such newspapers or books – even if one does the same with good ones, even if it be merely one’s trade, even if it be a material means of earning one’s daily bread.
6. Parents of families, spiritual directors, workshop owners, professors, and teachers are guilty of complicity when they keep silence upon being asked about these matters, or simply do not explain them when obliged to do so, for the instruction of the consciences of those under their care.
7. It is manifest complicity to conceal one’s own good conviction, thereby giving grounds for others to suspect that one holds a bad one.
Let it not be forgotten that there are a thousand occasions on which a Christian is obliged to give public testimony to the truth, even without being formally asked.
8. It is complicity to buy sacred or charitable property without the Church’s consent, even when the laws of confiscation have led it to public auction – unless it is bought in order to restore it to its rightful owner.
It is complicity to redeem ecclesiastical rents without the permission of their true lord, even if the operation seems highly profitable. It is complicity to intervene as an agent in such purchases and sales, to publish auction notices, to act as broker, etc. All such acts also entail the obligation of restitution, in proportion to the share one has had in the iniquitous dispossession.
9. It is in some way complicity to lend one’s own house for liberal acts or to let it out for such purposes, for instance, for patriotic clubs, secular schools, clubs, editorial offices of liberal newspapers, etc.
10. It is complicity to celebrate civic or religious festivals for acts that are notoriously liberal or revolutionary; to attend such festivals voluntarily; to hold patriotic funerals which have more of revolutionary significance than of Christian suffrage; to pronounce funeral orations in praise of the notoriously liberal dead; to adorn their graves with wreaths and ribbons, etc.
How many unwary souls have faltered in their faith for these reasons!
These indications cover only the most common matters in this field. Complicity may take infinitely varied forms, just as the acts of human life are infinite and incapable of strict classification. The doctrine we have laid down in some points is severe; but if Moral Theology is true when applied to other errors and crimes, is it to be less true when applied to the one which concerns us here?
XVIII – The most common signs or symptoms by which one may know whether a book, newspaper, or person is afflicted by Liberalism, or only tainted with it
In the variety – or better, confusion – of shades and half-tones offered by the motley family of Liberalism, are there signs or distinctive marks by which one may easily distinguish the liberal from the non-liberal?
This is another very practical question for today’s Catholic, and one which the moral theologian must often resolve in one way or another.
For this purpose we shall divide liberals (whether persons or writings) into three classes:
Fierce liberals
Mild liberals
Those only tainted with Liberalism, who are improperly called liberals.
Let us attempt a semi-physiological description of each of these types. This study is not without interest.
The fierce liberal is recognised at once, because he does not attempt to deny or conceal his wickedness. He is a declared enemy of the Pope, of priests, and of all Church-going people; it is enough for a thing to be sacred for it to stir up his unrestrained resentment. Among newspapers, he seeks out the most inflammatory; among candidates, he votes for the most openly impious; he accepts the final consequences of his disastrous system. He makes a display of living without any religious practice, and scarcely tolerates it in his wife and children. He commonly belongs to secret societies, and as a rule dies without any consolation from the Church.
The mild liberal is often as bad as the first, but takes great care not to appear so. Good manners and social propriety are everything to him; once this point is secured, he cares little for the rest.
To burn down a convent does not seem right to him; but to seize the site of the burnt convent is to him far more regular and tolerable.
That some vile penny-sheet newspaper ,at two coppers a copy, peddles its blasphemies – whether in prose, verse, or drawing – is an excess he would forbid, and he even regrets that a conservative government does not forbid it. But to say the very same things in polished phrases, in a well-printed book, or in a play with sonorous verse – especially if the author is an academician or some such person – this, to him, presents no objection.
To hear talk of political “clubs” gives him shivers and fever, for there, he says, the masses are seduced and the foundations of social order are overturned. But free athenaeums may very well be tolerated, because who is going to condemn scientific discussion of all social problems?
A school without Catechism is an insult to the Catholic country that finances it. But a Catholic university – that is, one wholly subject to the Catechism, or to the criterion of faith – must be reserved, he thinks, for the times of the Inquisition.
The mild liberal does not hate the Pope; he merely finds fault with certain pretensions of the Roman Curia, and certain extremes of ultramontanism which, he thinks, do not accord well with present-day ideas.
He loves priests – above all the “enlightened,” that is, those who think in modern fashion like himself; as for “fanatics” and “reactionaries,” he avoids or pities them. He goes to church, and perhaps even to the Sacraments; but his maxim is that one must live as a Christian in church, whereas outside one should live in accordance with the age in which one is born, without obstinately rowing against the current. Thus he sails between two waters, and commonly dies with the priest at his side – but with his library full of forbidden books.
The Catholic merely tainted with Liberalism is recognised by the fact that, though a good man with sincere religious practices, he nevertheless carries the scent of Liberalism in whatever he says, writes, or undertakes. He might well say, in his own way, like Madame de Sévigné:
“I am not the rose, but I was near it, and I took something of its scent.”
The good but tainted soul reasons, speaks, and acts like a genuine liberal, without the poor fellow realising it. His strong point is charity: the man is charity incarnate. How he abhors the “exaggerations” of the ultramontane press! To call a man bad simply because he spreads bad ideas seems to this strange theologian a sin against the Holy Ghost. For him, there are only “misguided” people. One must neither resist nor combat; one must always seek to “attract.” “Drown evil with an abundance of good” – this is his favourite formula, which he once read by chance in Balmes, and it is the only thing that remained in his memory from the great Catalan philosopher. From the Gospel he quotes only those passages with a honeyed sweetness. One would say he takes the terrifying invectives against Pharisaism as genial excesses and intemperances of the divine Saviour.
Yet he knows how to use them himself – quite vigorously – against the irritating ultramontanes, who, with their “exaggerations,” compromise each day the cause of a Religion which, he claims, is all peace and love. Against these, the good but tainted man is sharp and severe; against them his zeal is bitter, his polemics harsh, and his charity aggressive.
It was because of him that Father Félix exclaimed, in a famous discourse relating to the accusations directed at the great Veuillot:
“Gentlemen, let us love and respect even our friends.”
But no – the good but tainted man does no such thing: he reserves all his treasures of tolerance and liberal charity for the sworn enemies of his faith. Of course – since he must “attract” them! Yet he has only sarcasm and cruel intolerance for its most heroic defenders.
In short, the good but tainted soul could never grasp that principle of diametrical opposition of Father Saint Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises. He knows no tactic but to attack from the flanks – a method which, in religious matters, is generally the most comfortable, but rarely the most decisive.
He would indeed like to conquer, but on condition of neither wounding the enemy, nor causing him any discomfort or displeasure. The word war upsets his nerves; peaceful discussion suits him. He favours liberal circles where people wrangle and debate – not the ultramontane associations where doctrine is taught and error denounced. In a word: if by their fruits the fierce and the mild liberal are known, it is chiefly by his actions that one must recognise the man tainted with Liberalism.
By these roughly sketched traits – which do not amount to drawings or sketches, much less to true and finished portraits – it will nonetheless be easy to recognise at once any type of the family in its various gradations. Summarising in a few words the most characteristic feature of each, we may say that the fierce liberal roars his Liberalism; the mild liberal holds forth on it; the poor tainted soul sighs and whimpers it.
Each is worse than the other, as the little rascal in the tale said of his father and mother; but the first is often paralysed by his own fury, and the third by his hybrid nature, in itself barren and unfruitful. The second is the satanic type par excellence, and the one in our times that produces the true liberal devastation.
Meditation for Day 10
A repeat of Day 8
It is in mental prayer that that much of the preparation will be achieved – and meditation is a means of entering mental prayer. See our guide to meditation for two ways to use the below texts.
The Three Classes of Men – In order to embrace what is best
It is in mental prayer that that much of the preparation will be achieved – and meditation is a means of entering mental prayer. See our guide to meditation for two ways to use the below texts.
In this preparation for the consecration of ourselves to the Blessed Virgin Mary, we should keep Our Lady in mind throughout our meditation. We should consider how she lived in regard to the points discussed, and implore her to obtain for us the light to see the truth about ourselves, and the resolve to act accordingly.
After the meditation, St Ignatius includes this very important note. It is worth reading it beforehand:
Note. It is to be noted that when we feel a tendency or repugnance against actual poverty, when we are not indifferent to poverty or riches, it is very helpful, in order to crush such disordered tendency, to ask in the Colloquies (although it be against the flesh) that the Lord should choose one to actual poverty, and that one wants, asks and begs it, if only it be the service and praise of His Divine Goodness.
The Preparation
Prayer. The usual Preparatory Prayer.
First Prelude. The first Prelude is the narrative, which is of three classes of men, and each one of them has acquired ten thousand ducats, not solely or as they ought for God’s love, and all want to save themselves and find in peace God our Lord, ridding themselves of the weight and hindrance to it which they have in the attachment for the thing acquired.
Second Prelude. The second, a composition, seeing the place. It will be here to see myself, how I stand before God our Lord and all His Saints, to desire and know what is more pleasing to His Divine Goodness.
Third Prelude. The third, to ask for what I want. Here it will be to ask grace to choose what is more to the glory of His Divine Majesty and the salvation of my soul.
The Points for Meditation
First Class. The first class would want to rid themselves of the attachment which they have to the thing acquired, in order to find in peace God our Lord, and be able to save themselves, and they do not place the means up to the hour of death.
Second Class. The second want to rid themselves of the attachment, but want so to rid themselves of it as to remain with the thing acquired, so that God should come where they want, and they do not decide to leave it in order to go to God, although it would be the best state for them
Third Class. The third want to rid themselves of the attachment, but want so to rid themselves of it that they have even no liking for it, to keep the thing acquired or not to keep it, but only want to want it or not want it according as God our Lord will put in their will and as will appear to them better for the service and praise of His Divine Majesty; and meanwhile they want to reckon that they quit it all in attachment, forcing themselves not to want that or any other thing, unless only the service of God our Lord move them: so that the desire of being better able to serve God our Lord moves them to take the thing or leave it.
One could consider these points in reference to oneself: How far have we been conscious of this in our daily lives so far, what practical conclusions should we draw from these truths, how far have we lived up to them so far, what must we do to live up to them in the future, etc.
One could consider the acts of virtue we can make in response to these truths – Acts of faith, humility, hope/confidence, thanksgiving, contrition and love – talking all the while to God, the Blessed Virgin, our Guardian Angels, etc.
The Colloquy
Three Colloquies. I will make the same three Colloquies which were made in the Contemplation preceding, on the Two Standards.
First Colloquy. One Colloquy to Our Lady, that she may get me grace from Her Son and Lord that I may be received under His standard; and first in the highest spiritual poverty, and—if His Divine Majesty would be served and would want to choose and receive me—not less in actual poverty; second, in suffering contumely and injuries, to imitate Him more in them, if only I can suffer them without the sin of any person, or displeasure of His Divine Majesty; and with that a Hail Mary.
Second Colloquy. I will ask the same of the Son, that He may get it for me of the Father; and with that say the Soul of Christ.
Third Colloquy. I will ask the same of the Father, that He may grant it to me; and say an Our Father.
Note. It is to be noted that when we feel a tendency or repugnance against actual poverty, when we are not indifferent to poverty or riches, it is very helpful, in order to crush such disordered tendency, to ask in the Colloquies (although it be against the flesh) that the Lord should choose one to actual poverty, and that one wants, asks and begs it, if only it be the service and praise of His Divine Goodness.
Fr Ambruzzi offers some suggestions for colloquies (see the previous piece), but it is important to speak frankly to God in our own words, rather than simply reading somebody else’s.
If one feels moved to speak to God before meditating on all the points, one should certainly do so. The same applies if one feels moved to simply rest in God, rather than engaging in discursive meditation. These impulses should be followed over any particular method of meditation.
The End
End the meditation with a vocal prayer – such as the Our Father, the Anima Christi.
Reflect on how well we have prayed, and how well we have followed our chosen method.
Select a spiritual nosegay from your meditation to keep with you for the rest of the day.
See you tomorrow. Hit subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it or any of our other material:
For more on Liberalism:
For more on the St Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion and Total Consecration, for which we are preparing, see here:
The theological basis of ‘True Devotion’ and the Consecration to Mary (Garrigou-Lagrange)
The fruits of ‘True Devotion’ and Consecration to Mary (Garrigou-Lagrange)
For more on the importance of not getting bogged down with methods, and on allowing God to act, see here:
For more on Week 0, and the vocal prayers that are are suggested for each day, see here:
‘Week 0’ of St Louis de Montfort’s Total Consecration preparation (Prayers, practices and reading)
Get the book here:
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (St Louis de Montfort)
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