(LifeSiteNews) — Two recent statements from Bishop Joseph Strickland highlight the opportunities and challenges facing serious Catholics today. In his reflections on the 2024 elections, Bishop Strickland encouraged Catholics to take advantage of the opportunity to “bring the light of Christ more powerfully to the world”:
We all need to reform our lives and grow closer to the Lord, but we must embrace this challenge, this opportunity, as people of faith. Let us not relax, but instead become more vigorous, more joyful, more powerfully committed to the truth that we know that flows from the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. Let us do the work I believe we’re called to as a nation where we are free to proclaim God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and live in godly ways, if only we will choose to. Let us use this opportunity to bring the light of Christ more powerfully to the world and to pray for the Church and her leaders to once again be those vigorous and strong voices of the apostles proclaiming Jesus Christ.
Many of us who were grateful for having avoided an anti-Catholic Harris presidency saw the comparatively favorable results of the 2024 election as a call to return thanks to God by doing as Bishop Strickland encouraged us to do. If we can truly spread the Catholic Faith throughout society, then we will honor God, combat evil, and ultimately make it more likely that future voters and politicians will favor policies that correspond with Natural Law and Divine Law.
Less than two weeks after the election, Bishop Strickland put his words into action as only a successor of the Apostles can do authoritatively, by calling out his fellow bishops for their silence in the face of the Synod on Synodality:
Do you not know that Our Lord will send forth His avenging angels to heap coals of fire upon the heads of those who were called to be His apostles and who have not guarded what He has given unto them? And yet almost all of you, my brothers, stood by silently watching as the Synod on Synodality took place, an abomination constructed not to guard the Deposit of Faith but to dismantle it, and yet few were the cries heard from you – men who should be willing to die for Christ and His Church.
Bishop Strickland’s description of the Synod on Synodality as “an abomination constructed not to guard the Deposit of Faith but to dismantle it” probably could not have been more accurate. Not only that, but the Synodal assault on the Catholic Church has taken place in the open over the past three years, with no attempt to disguise the anti-Catholic objective. If ever there was cause for the bishops to speak out, it has been Francis’s construction of the unholy Synodal Church.
These two statements from Bishop Strickland underscore a challenge that is central to the spiritual battle that rages around the world: serious Catholics must cooperate with God’s grace to spread the true Faith at the same time that the majority of bishops and priests work in the opposite direction. This challenge may be greater today than in the past, but we can see the core conflict is one that has long existed: it is the conflict between those who genuinely seek to follow the Catholic Faith in its entirety, and those who identify as Catholic but follow only those teachings that fit their personal desires.
True Catholics and Liberal Catholics
While we may be more inclined to call them “Cafeteria Catholics,” the term “Liberal Catholic” has long been used to describe those who identify as Catholic without committing to believe every truth that the Church teaches. As a frame of reference to better comprehend the Liberal Catholic mentality, we can consider the mentality of a Catholic who truly wishes to follow the Faith in its entirety. In his Liberalism and Catholicism, Fr. A. Roussel described the true Catholic as having an “upright mind,” in contrast with Liberal Catholics:
A ‘Liberal Catholic’ has a mind which is completely warped by his own liberalism, and what is worse, he does not even realize this while he haughtily asks you: ‘What then is an upright mind? Yours I suppose!’ An upright mind is the one who humbly conforms to theoretical truth and to practical truth; one who believes what the Church believes, loves what She loves, and, when confronted with controversial questions, inclines towards the preferences of the Church; one who clearly sees by reason and the light of faith, the last end to which God directs all men, and who determines the means necessary to obtain this end from these facts; one who judges everything according to the Eternal and natural law, and derived positive law. With an upright mind, the Catholic places all things in their hierarchical order according to the teachings of true philosophy and the Magisterium of the Church. Putting it simply, he practices in all things the rule of sentire cum Ecclesia (to feel with the Church). (pp. 73-74)
We might call a Catholic with an “upright mind” a true Catholic or genuine Catholic, but in reality this is simply how all Catholics ought to believe. On the other hand, the Liberal Catholic subjects Catholic teaching to the authority of his own mind, as Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany described in his Liberalism is a Sin:
Strange as may seem that anomaly called Liberal Catholicism, its reason is not far to seek. It takes its root in a false conception of the nature of the act of faith. The Liberal Catholic assumes as the formal motive of the act of faith, not the infallible authority of God revealing supernatural truth, but his own reason deigning to accept as true what appears rational to him according to the appreciation and measure of his own individual judgment. He subjects God’s authority to the scrutiny of reason, and not his reason to God’s authority. He accepts Revelation, not on account of the infallible Revealer, but because of the ‘infallible’ receiver. With him the individual judgment is the rule of faith. He believes in the independence of reason. It is true he accepts the Magisterium of the Church, yet he does not accept it as the sole authorized expounder of divine truth. He reserves, as a coefficient factor in the determination of truth, his own private judgment. The true sense of revealed doctrine to him is not always certain, and human reason therefore has something to say in the matter, as for instance, the limits of the Church’s infallibility may be determined by human science. (pp. 32-33)
So it may at times appear that the Liberal Catholic truly believes what the Catholic Church teaches, and yet his “motive of the act of faith” is not the infallible authority of God, but rather his own intellect.
As a practical illustration of the difference between a true Catholic and a Liberal Catholic, we can imagine both of them reading Dr. Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, in which we find numerous infallible teachings of the Catholic Church. Even before looking at the book, a true Catholic can honestly say that he accepts everything that is presented as the Church’s settled teaching. He may not understand why certain teachings are true — and they may even run contrary to his intellect or desires — but he accepts them as true on the authority of the Church.
Conversely, the Liberal Catholic may in fact agree with every statement presented as infallibly true, but he will only declare them to be true once he has confirmed them to be acceptable to his own judgment. In practice, though, we know that Liberal Catholics do not believe what the Church teaches — they retain the name of Catholic but their hearts and minds are far from the Church and, as a result, far from God. And, as a general matter, most Liberal Catholics today would reject one or more of the following infallible (De fide.) truths from Dr. Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma:
- Souls who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision.
- Without the special help of God the justified cannot persevere to the end in justification.
- God gives all the just sufficient grace for the observation of the Divine Commandments.
- God, by an Eternal Resolve of His Will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection.
- The Human Will remains free under the influence of efficacious grace, which is not irresistible.
- Without special Divine Revelation no one can know with the certainty of faith if he be in the state of grace.
- The grace by which we are justified may be lost, and is lost by every grievous sin.
- Membership of the Church is necessary for all men for salvation.
By all appearances, many members of Francis’s hierarchy pertinaciously reject some or all of these truths and are, therefore, guilty of formal heresy.
The ascendency of Liberal Catholicism
The popes had long condemned Liberal Catholicism, and Blessed Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors from 1864 condemned the following proposition:
The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.
So if the Roman Pontiff cannot reconcile himself or come to terms with liberalism, no Catholic can. But, as Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany wrote, liberalism’s roots in fallen human nature make it virtually impossible to fully eradicate:
Various are the ways in which a faithful Christian is drawn into the error of Liberalism. Very often corruption of heart is a consequence of errors of the intellect; but more frequently still errors of the intellect follow the corruption of the heart. The history of heresies very clearly shows this fact. Their beginnings nearly always present the same character, either wounded self-love, or a grievance to be avenged; either it is a woman that makes the heresiarch lose his head and soul, or a bag of gold for which he sells his conscience. (Liberalism is a Sin, p. 121)
Because of this tendency to follow the corruption of the heart, there will always be some Catholics who are tempted to follow any false shepherd who gives Liberal Catholicism the appearance of legitimacy.
Unfortunately, Vatican II convinced many souls that the Church had made peace with the errors of liberalism. Sincere Catholics may disagree on whether the Council itself actually served to promote Catholic Liberalism, but it is indisputable that many of those who interpreted and implemented Vatican II’s teachings claimed a victory for Liberal Catholicism. In his Against the Heresies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre quoted a work entitled The Post Catholic Liberal by Prelot:
Liberalism triumphed at Vatican Council II after a century and half of fights and condemnations . . . finally, after an incessant struggle, the moment came for Liberalism to triumph. This triumph was Vatican Council II. (p 126)
We do not need to take Archbishop Lefebvre’s or Prelot’s words for it, though, because we have the following from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:
If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty [Dignitatis Humanae] and world religions [Nostra Aetate]) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus. . . Let us be content to say that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. (Principles of Catholic Theology, 1987, pp. 381-2)
Thus, the future Benedict XVI told us in fairly clear terms that three of the key documents of the Council were essentially an attempt at an official reconciliation with the ideas of the French Revolution, in contravention of the Syllabus of Errors. Interpretations of the Council such as this obviously made it very easy for Liberal Catholicism to gain ascendency.
The harms of Liberal Catholics
It is difficult to overstate the grave harms caused by Liberal Catholics. We know that they offend God with their faithlessness and lead souls to hell, but they also cause inestimable harms in the societies in which they propagate their deformed version of the Catholic Faith. In 1871, Blessed Pius IX alluded to these harms in a message to Catholic pilgrims in Nevers, France:
What afflicts your country and prevents it from receiving the blessings of God, is this mixture of principles. I will tell you what it is, I will not be silent: It is not the Commune of Paris that I fear but this terrible politics which is Catholic Liberalism . . . This game of hide-and-seek is the real scourge of your country and destroyer of Religion. Of course one is to practice charity and to do whatever is possible to bring back these lost sheep. This however does not mean that one should share their opinions. (quoted in Fr. Roussel’s Liberalism and Catholicism, p. 119)
God wants to bless all people, and all nations, through the means He established, namely through the work of the Catholic Church; but Liberal Catholicism prevents society from receiving the full measure of God’s blessings. Because they retain the name of Catholic despite rejecting the actual Faith, these Liberal Catholics not only fail to personally transmit the truth and goodness willed by God but also work to undermine the efforts of those attempting to faithfully transmit Catholicism.
It is not difficult to see how Liberal Catholics oppose the good work attempted by true Catholics. Today, for example, there are so many souls who have realized that they must reject the woke lunacy that dominates politics, education, and entertainment. These souls know to flee the lies, but will they find the truth? If they have some inclination to consider Catholicism, will they find someone to explain that the religion promoted by Francis and almost all of the bishops is not actually Catholicism? Souls hunger for the truth that they can only find in the Catholic Church, but the work of so many Liberal Catholics effectively inoculates them against true Catholicism.
How to counteract the evil of Liberal Catholicism
In the first place, we should recognize that sixty years of corruption following Vatican II has caused tremendous harm. As a result, there are surely good Catholics today who truly practice what Fr. Roussel described above as the “rule of sentire cum Ecclesia” (to feel with the Church) who nonetheless adhere to certain beliefs that a future pope (who is truly Catholic) might declare to be erroneous. The profound crisis in the Church calls for us to have some forbearance with other Catholics who earnestly seek to follow the unadulterated Faith, even as we engage in serious debate.
But with respect to those who are actually Liberal Catholics, we can heed the words of Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany:
‘It is all well enough to make war on abstract doctrines,’ some may say, ‘but in combating error, be it ever so evident, is it so proper to make an attack upon the persons of those who uphold it?’ We reply that very often it is, and not only proper but at times even indispensable and meritorious before God and men. . . The cholera threatening a country comes in the persons of the infected. If we wish to exclude it we must exclude them. Now ideas do not in any case go about in the abstract; they neither spread nor propagate from themselves. Left to themselves — if it be possible to imagine them apart from those who conceive them — they would never produce all the evil from which society suffers. It is only in the concrete that they are effective; when they are the personal product of those who conceive them. They are like the arrows and the balls which would hurt no one if they were not shot from the bow or the gun. It is the archer and the gunner to whom we should give our first attention; save for them the fire would not be murderous. (Liberalism is a Sin, pp. 103-104)
Francis and so many of his preferred collaborators today are arguably causing far more harm than any of the worst villains in our history books. Not only do they usurp the authority of the Catholic Church to spread Satan’s lies, they use their authority to crush those who seek to spread God’s truth and grace. Moreover, as Michael Hichborn recently reported, the US bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development has misdirected Catholic donations to anti-Catholic causes for decades. All of this emphasizes the need to identify and rebuke those who are carrying out their heretical, and even criminal, agendas against Catholics and the Catholic Church.
Beyond this, the formula to address the evil of Liberal Catholicism is surely the same as the formula for addressing almost every evil that has plagued the Mystical Body of Christ through the centuries: we should unwaveringly defend the unadulterated Catholic religion and try to become saints. As the Liberal Catholics spread scandals and lies, true Catholics ought to cooperate with God’s grace to boldly proclaim that all souls are called to unwaveringly adhere to the unadulterated Catholic Faith currently attacked by Satan and his woke minions.
God created us to live in these times and to be saints in these times. And, as in all times, we fight the battle worthily by following the words of St. Paul:
Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace: In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints . . . (Ephesians 6:11-18)
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!