Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]

[Stone]

The Liberal Illusion

Chapter XXVI

Such is the affinity of one error for another and so inevitable is the drift of particular errors towards the general error, that we see liberal Catholicism, for all its truculent pose of independence, tend spontaneously towards Caesarism just as the Revolution did. And it is in the name of liberty of conscience that men are verging toward this wholesale subjugation of the human conscience! The principles of Christianity must be brought into conformity with those of modern society; modern society demands this, so there is nothing left for us but to fall into line, to accept all its conditions, to do away with whatever displeases it, to protest against any return to the ideas it no longer likes.

But what of those who find modern society to be in the wrong; who think that this capricious, not to say fantastic, personage puts forward sinful and insufferable pretensions? . . . Such persons, be their dignity or their number what it may, will have to knuckle down, to disappear from a world whom their presence annoys. Liberal society, emancipated humanity does not propose to put up with their opposition any longer. The thing to do is to rush pell-mell into that unity in reverse with which Liberalism fondly hopes to frustrate the realization of the unity the Divine Shepherd desires; the thing to do is to accept the unity of Hell, which proposes to place the flock exclusively under the pastoral crook of Caesar!

Evidently, the doctors of liberal Catholicism, following the lead of the other doctors of the Revolution, entertain the notion that one and the same mode of life can and should be set up in all European States. As for the differences of race, of religions and political traditions that will have to be demolished and razed in order to bring about such a standardization, they give no thought to them whatever; modern society demands this sacrifice, shall liberty of conscience refuse to make it? Isn’t it imperative to go with the stream, to keep in step with “modern society,” to save the liberty of perdition?