Point 15. True and False Christians.

1. The liberal claims to maintain this impossible attitude of faith and opinion, of intimate certitude and objective incertitude, without any relativism or scepticism! For this purpose he distinguishes two independent spheres: the intimate domain of religious convictions where absolute certitude reigns, and the social domain of pluralism and strict equality of opinion, where everything is plausible and nothing is certain. As a Christian, the liberal knows himself to be in the truth and shows himself to be faithful to it, but as a public person, be he head of state or even bishop or pope, he conceives that others regard themselves as belonging to another truth and that, considering him to be in error, they will forbid him to profess his truth publicly lest it appear to offend against their freedom. The liberal will therefore not allow his true religion to oppress others, yet he is resigned to seeing it oppressed by them.

2. In order to give the appearance of sincerity, this split between the private and the public person must become ever more interior and profound. The liberal comes to doubt his own faith whilst not doubting it, in order to put himself in the other person’s place without ceasing to be himself! This co-existence of faith and of doubt, this dialectical synthesis of contradictories, is the “ faith in search, ” a typical encroachment of the Masonic “ search ” into the very intimacy of the Christian “ Faith”. The liberal’s soul is a truly astonishing thing!

3. The science and works that result therefrom are well known. Liberal science consists in denying and rejecting all the apologetic proofs that proximately or remotely demonstrate Catholic truth. On the other hand, it manifests the greatest credulity, not to say blindness, where other religions are concerned. Liberal science favours idealism and scepticism; it has struck a mortal blow at Catholic intelligence.

Liberal action is no less pernicious. Going out to meet the enemy forces, the liberal Catholic criticises and destroys – whilst proclaiming his own irreproachable Christian character and evangelical zeal – every external manifestation of the Catholic Faith, its certitude and glory, viewing it simply as an unbearable aggression against the freedom of others. For him, public worship, preaching, simple clear expressions of their Faith by Catholics, and popular traditions all appear embarrassing, showy and triumphalist. He intends that Catholicism should have no special privileges but should be reduced to the level of the most worthless opinions.

This attempt to lower Our Lord Jesus Christ to a level of certitude and historical importance no greater than Mohammed, Buddha or Confucius, turns into a passion for reform and for the destruction of Christendom, in the name of a spiritual gospel that no longer seeks to direct a secular, laicist, and indifferent world. “ Modernism leads to the annihilation of all religion. The error of Protestantism made the first step on this path; that of Modernism makes the second; the third step will plunge us into Atheism. ” (Saint Pius X, Pascendi, 1907)