Liberalism

Liberalism: A Critique of Its Basic Principles and Various Forms by Louis Cardinal Billot, SJ, translated by Msgr George Barry O'Toole and Thomas Storck, 67 pages

Written in the last years before the First World War, Liberalism is a masterful critique of the political ideology of the so-called Enlightenment.  Cutting right to the heart of the matter, Cardinal Billot exposes the core dogma of liberalism as the enthronement of liberty as the supreme good, and demonstrates how this is corrosive of every human institution and relationship.  Prophetically, he foresees the paradoxical condition of the thoroughly dehumanized mass man who will tolerate no power above or beside him save that of the omnipotent state.  In closing, he distinguishes three types of liberals - the consistent, revolutionary, luciferian liberal, the supposedly moderate liberal who imagines that he can command the revolutionary forces of destruction to only go so far and no further, and the Catholic liberal who, in attempting to separate his politics from his faith, inevitably betrays both.

As incisive as they are short, Cardinal Billot's essays are, if anything, more powerful today than they were when they were written, since history has only added to the evidence for his claims.