+- The Catacombs (https://thecatacombs.org)
+-- Forum: Repository (https://thecatacombs.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=10)
+--- Forum: Resources Online (https://thecatacombs.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=60)
+---- Forum: Uncompromising Fighters for the Faith (https://thecatacombs.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=96)
+---- Thread: Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866] (/showthread.php?tid=7101)
RE: Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866] - Stone - 06-13-2025
The Liberal Illusion
Chapter XIX
This suggestion to follow the current is an unworthy one, one repugnant even to an elementary human sense of honor. Verily it is a sad reflection on our times that such a proposal can be made to men who have been signed with the Holy Chrism! Imagine a king driven from his throne, the forlorn hope of his conquered country, imagine such a one all of a sudden demeaning himself so low as to declare that he considered himself to have been justly dethroned and that all he asked for was to enjoy the status of a private individual, on the basis of the common right, under the protection of the despoilers of his people: think of the supineness of such a wretch! Nevertheless, his baseness would be as nothing compared with that to which we are asked to stoop.
This imaginary king would be guilty of an uncalled-for abasement. One would prefer not to believe him. Those to whom he made the offer to sell his rights and his honor would say to him: Fiddlesticks! You a king?
We would be doing something still more shameful, and for this reason people would be even less inclined to believe us. I may add that they would have the best of reasons for not believing us. For as was the case in former times with the jurors of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, we, too, would come to have our quota of repenters and retractors. Now, those who had remained Catholics pure and simple or who had become so again, would have their doubts about the sincerity of the ones who preferred to remain liberal Catholics. And then what stand would the latter take between the orthodox hurling anathemas at them and the unbelievers demanding of them guarantees? This is an eventuality they will most certainly have to face. If the liberal Catholics rejoin the faithful and accept the Church’s teaching in her assertion of rights over the whole world, they will have accomplished absolutely nothing. If, on the other hand, they give the guarantees demanded of them by the opposing camp, they decisively cut themselves off and will soon find out that Liberty imposes silence upon dissenters, they will be forced to lend a hand in persecution, becoming at once apostates of the Church and apostates of Liberty.
They can count on it that they will not escape the one or the other of these alternatives: Repentant liberals — or impenitent Catholics.