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 XJBEKALISM

212

UBERALUM

ment might be bought from amenable commiBeioiiers without any declaration of paganism.

It was in connexion with the reconciliation of these libeUatici as well as other lapsi that the libeUi pads, or letters of indulgence, were- introduced. The lapH were in the habit of seeking the intercession of the confessors, who were suffering for the Faith; and the latter would address to the bishop libeUi pacts peti- tioning for the reconciliation of the apostates. The libeili were, however, more than mere reconmienda- tions to mercy; the confessors were understood to be petitioning that their own merits should be applied to the excommunicated, and procure them a remission of the temporal punishment due to their defection. And this indulgence was not simply a remission of the canonical penance; it was believed that it availed before Goa and remitted the temporal punishment that would otherwise be required after death (Cyprian, "De Lapsis", ad fin.), luis custom does not seem to have been established in Rome, but it was partic- ularly prevalent in Carthage, and was not unknown in Egypt and Asia Minor. Even in the time of Ter- tullian, the lapsi of Carthage were in the habit of thus appealing to the intercession of the confessors ("Ad Mart.", i; "De Pudicitia", xxii). In the letters that Saint Cyprian wrote from his place of exile he has freauent occasion to complain of the abuse of the libeUi. There was a party of laxists who ignored the necessity of the bishop's sanction, and their leader actually promulgated a general indulgence to all the lapsi (Cyprian, "Epp.", xxxiv, 2.3). The confessors themselves seem to have lacked discretion in the petitions they presented. Cyprian's letter to them (ep. xv), couched though it is in the tenderest of terms, begs them to be more judicious, to avoid vague petitions, such as " Let him and his people be received mto communion ", and not to lend tneir services to the schemes of the seditious or the avarice of traffickers. The bishop's own method of treating the petitions for indulgence varied according to circumstances. Ep. xviii contains instructions that the lapsi who held such letters should be reconciled in ease of sickness. Subsequently, however, owing no doubt to the above- mentioned abuses and the need for wider methods, the libdli were not given any special mention in the general conditions of reconciliation (African Councils, I, 38).

See the Letters of St. Cyprian, e. g. in P. L., IV and V; and notably his treatise De iMpsis; Vita S. Cypriani per Pontium diaconum ejus acripta; Eusebius, Hist, eccl., IV, xfii; Beniion, Cyprian (I/ondon, 1897): Allaro, Histoire des Persecutions, II (2nd ed., Paris, 1896), \'iii.

James Bridge.

Liberalism, a free way of thinking and acting in private and public life. I. — Definition. — The word liberal is derived from the Latin liber, free, and up to the end of the eighteenth century signified only " worthy of a free man ", so that people spoke of " lib- eral arts ", " liberal occupations ". Later the term was applied also to those qualities of intellect and of char- acter, which were considered an ornament becoming those who occupied a higher social position on ac- count of their wealth and education. Thus liberal got the meaning of intellectually independent, broad- minded, magnanimous, frank, open, and genial. Again Liberalism may also mean a political system or tendency opposed to centralization and absolutism. In this sense Liberalism is not at variance with the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church. Since the end of the eighteenth centur>% however, the word has been applied more and more to certain tendencies in the intellectual, religious, political, and economical life, which implied a partial or total emancipation of man from the supernatural, moral, and Divine order. Usually, the principles of 1789, that is of the French Revolution, are considered as the Magna Chartji of this new form of IJI)eralism The most fundamental

Srinciple asserts an absolute and unrestrained free- om of thought^ religion, conscience, creed, speech, press, and politics. The necessaxy conseauences of this are, on the one hand, the abolition of uie Divine right and of every^ kind of authority derived from God; the relegation of religion from the public life into the private domain of one's individual conscience; the abso^ lute ignoring of Christianity and the Church as public, legal, and social institutions; on the other hand, the putting into practice of the absolute autonomy of every man and citizen, along all lines of human activ- ity, and the concentration of all public authority in one ''sovereignty of the people'*. This soverei^ty of the people in all brancnes of public life as l^isla- tion, aaministration, and jurisdiction, is to be exer- cised in the name and by order of all the citlsens, in such a wa^', that all shottld have share in and a con- trol over it. A fundamental principle of Liberalism is the proposition: '.'It is contrarv to the natural, innate, and inalienable right and liberty and dignity of man, to subject himseS to an authority, the root, rule, measure, and sanction of which is not in himself *\ This principle implies the denial of all true authority; for authority necessarily presupposes a power outside and above man to bind him morally.

These tendencies, however, were more or less active long before 1789; indeed, they are coeval with the human race. Modern Liberalism adopts and propa- gates them under the deceiving mask of Liberalism in the true sense. As a direct offspring of Humanism and the Reformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, modern Liberalism was further developed by the philosophers and liierati of England especiiuly Locke and Hume, by Rousseau and the Encyclope- dists in France, and by Lessing and Kant in Germany. Its real cradle, however, was the drawing-rooms of the moderately free-thinking French nobiOty (173(>- 1789), especially those of Mme Necker and her daughter, Mme de StaSl. The latter was more thaya anybody else the connecting link between the free- thinking elements before and after the Revolution and the centre of the modern Liberal movement both in France and Switzerland. In her politico- religious views she is intimately connected with Mira- beau and the Constitutional party of the Revolution. These views find their clearest exposition in her woric ''Considerations sur les princlpaux ^v^nements de la Revolution frangaise*'. She pleads for the greatest possible individual hberty, and denounces as absurd the derivation of human authority from God. The legal position of the Church, according to her, both as a public institution and as a property-owner is a national arrangement and therefore entirely subject to the will of the nation; ecclesiastical property be- longs not to the church but to the nation; the abolition of ecclesiastical privileges is entirely justified, since the clerg>' is the natural enemy of the principles of Revolution. The ideal form of government is in smaller states the republic, in larger ones the consti- tutional monarchy after the model of England. The entire art of government in modern times, consists, according to Mme de Sta^l, in the art of directing public opinion and of yielding to it at the right moment.

II. — Development and Principal Types op Mod- ern LiBERAUSM IN NON-EnOLISH-SPEAKING COUN- TRIES. — Since the so-called Liberal principles of 1789 are based upon a wrong notion of human liberty, and are and must forever be contradictory and indefinite in themselves, it is an impossibility in practical life to carry them into effect with much consistency. Conseciuentlv the most varying kinds and shades of LilK^ralism fcave l>cen developed, all of which re- mained in fact more conservative than a logical appli- cation of Lil>eral principles would warrant. Liber- alism was first formulated by the Protestant Genevese TRousseau, Necker, Mme de Sta^l, Constant, Guisot);