Liberalism Is the Heresiarchy of the Times

[Stone]

Liberalism Is the Heresiarchy of the Times
Lucien Chapot, Revue Catholique des Institutions et du Droit, September 1904, n. 9, p. 198;
apud Henri Delassus, La Conjuration Antichrétienne, Lille: Desclée de Brouwer, 1910,
vol. 1, pp. 243, 244, note 1.

TIA [All emphasis by TIA] | August 15, 2026

Today's fight between Counter-Revolutionaries and Progressivists was preceded by the fight between Liberal Catholics and Ultramontanes in the second half of the 19th century.

This is the reason why the text below, written by Lucien Chabot – an Ultramontane historian at the turn of the those centuries – has a special interest for us. It sharply defines Liberalism as the "major heresy" or heresiarchy of the times, thus anticipating the famous definition that St. Pius X would give to Modernism – the son of Liberalism – as "the synthesis of all heresies."

It is also a useful text for us to examine our position and check whether we have the same horror of Liberalism – and its followers Modernism and Progressivism – as those Ultramontane heroes had. If we do not, perhaps it would be the time for an examination of conscience...


Lucien Chabot

Liberalism is not an ordinary heresy. It has been very rightly called heresiarchy [the major heresy] by Fr. Chesnel (The Rights of God and Modern Ideas).

It is Satan's own personal heresy, since it consists of the creature usurping for his own profit the independence and sovereignty that belong only to God from all eternity, and in the order of time to Our Lord Jesus Christ. We see by this how modern Liberalism differs from all that preceded it in terms of revolt and sin.

It is sin itself, the final end and the highest degree. Liberalism calls for "the man of sin;" it prepares the way for the Antichrist.

The liberal seduction has blinded almost all intelligences; the last notions of true Christianity are vanishing as they fade away in minds. What a transformation in ideas, morals and beliefs from the regal jurists of the 14th and 15th centuries to the present day, passing through Luther, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Lamennais, the great seducer of Catholics! They are the sons of the same idea, the agents of the same seduction. Their successive appearances mark the stages of the revolutionary movement.

The last to arrive, Lamennais, is not the least dangerous or least disastrous. He is the father and the head of the school that is both Catholic and revolutionary, the school of pacification, adaptation, union and, finally, fusion between Christianity and the Revolution.