Chapter 17

The Popes and Liberal Catholicism

Catholic liberal liberalism is a veritable plague.

Pope Pius I.

Father Roussel collected in his book a whole series of declarations from Pope Pius

the Ninth condemning the Catholic liberals' attempt to blend the Church and the Revolution.

Here are some of them which is good for us to ponder.

Pius I. 9th to the Pilgrims of Nevere, June 1871.

What afflicts your country and prevents it from meriting the blessings of God is the mixture

of principles. I will say the word, and I will not keep it secret.

What I fear is not all those wretches from the Paris commune. What I fear are these unhappy politics,

this Catholic liberalism which is a veritable scourge, this seesaw game which would destroy religion.

Without doubt, one must practice charity. Do what is possible to bring back those who have lost

their way. It is not, however, necessary for them to share their opinions.

Pius I. The Ninth ninth brief to a Catholic circle in Camper, 1873.

Therefore, venerable brother, notify the members of the Catholic Association that on the numerous

occasions when we have reproved the partisans of liberal

opinions, we have not had in view those who hate the church and whom it would be useless to name,

but rather those whom we have just indicated, who preserving and supporting the hidden virus of the

liberal principles that they have absorbed with milk, under the pretext

that it is not contaminated with an evident malice, and is not, according to them, detrimental to

religion, to easily infect the minds and thus propagate the seeds of those revolutions from

...