Liberalism: An introduction

The Liberal tradition of philosophy treats the individual (rather than the family or the community) as the basic social unit and emphasizes the freedom of individual choice over and above such concepts as the “common good” and “absolute moral goods”. The Liberal tradition thus operates on different philosophical premises from those of Christianity and in some circumstances this leads to a conflict between the social positions of liberals and Christians.

The following elements of contemporary Liberal political and moral philosophy are criticized by John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae: the raising of abortion, euthanasia, contraception and reproductive technologies to the status of “legitimate expressions of individual freedom, to be acknowledged and protected as actual rights” (paragraph 18), the “mentality which carries the concept of subjectivity to an extreme and recognizes as a subject of rights only the person who enjoys full or at least incipient autonomy and who emerges from a state of total dependence on others” (paragraph 19), “the mentality which tends to equate personal dignity with the capacity for verbal and explicit, or at least perceptible, communication” (paragraph 19), and the notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way” (paragraph 19). A state embracing and promoting such mentalities is described as a “tyrant state” and any such “democracy” effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism” (paragraph 20).

For criticisms of a false (Liberal) reading of the nature of freedom in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, see paragraphs, (32) and (33):

Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken b doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one had a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. (Paragraph 32).

Side by side with its exaltation and freedom, yet oddly in contrast with it, modern culture radically questions the very existence of this freedom. A number of disciplines, grouped under the name of the ‘behavioural sciences’, have rightly drawn attention to the many kinds of psychological and social conditioning which influence the exercise of human freedom. Knowledge of these conditionings and the study they have received represent important achievements which have found application in various areas, for example in pedagogy or the administration of justice. But some people, going beyond the conclusions which can be legitimately drawn from these observations, have come to the question or even deny the very reality of human freedom. (Paragraph 33).

Paragraph (101) warns of the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism. In his homily at the Red Mass for the opening of the legal year of 2001, Archbishop George Pell made the following observations about the problems associated with various versions of liberal moral theory.

In a reflection on the Gifts of the Spirit written in 1875, Cardinal Manning observed that in contemporary society – that is, Victorian society – there was an attempt being undertaken to expunge God from the education system, to “shut out His revealed law from the whole public order of states, and from the whole culture of the human intellect.” Three years earlier in 1882 the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had declared God to be dead, by which he meant that Christianity was no longer the dominant force in European social life. In his novel Crime and Punishment published in 1866, the Russian novelist Feodor Dostoevsky had already observed through the character of Raskolnikov, then everything is permissible.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century we are experiencing the practical consequences of these attempts to “shut out His revealed law from the whole public order of states.” Once God goes, so too does the idea that human life is sacred, and when we no longer believe that human life is sacred, and when we no longer believe that human life is sacred, it can be bought and sold like any other commodity, used for experimental purposes, and destroyed when inconvenient or imperfect. We are living in a period of history when people assert the right to abortion and euthanasia, when babies are bought and sold on the internet and children are desired as assets for self-fulfillment. All of these assertions of so-called rights are attempts to “shut out God’s revealed law from the whole public order of states.”

Speaking of such assertions in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II states that the countries of the developed Western world are facing a choice between two antithetical value systems. These he describes as a “civilization of love” built upon the Ten Commandments and the values of the Gospel OR a culture of death. A major difference between the two is the stance taken towards those who are powerless members of our society: the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the handicapped, the unborn and the elderly – indeed all those who are unable to be self-assertive and competitive.

In the face of such a dichotomy of values some legal philosophies have argues that the state should remain neutral about moral questions. For example, this is the position of Professor John Rawls of Harvard University who dismiss the idea that there is such a thing as natural moral law, and who argues that such ideas – that is, belief in a natural moral law – should be “contained like war and disease”. Rawls classifies persons who believe in a natural moral law as “perfectionists” and argues that perfectionist ideas should be given currency in the public realm. In particular, Rawls describes St Thomas Aquinas as “irrational” and says that St Ignatius of Loyola was “mad”.

While this idea of the “moral neutrality” of the state might sound fair to some in theory, it is a logical nonsense. Whatever position is taken the laws of the state will have the effect of favouring one or other party in these debates. For example, a pro-choice position on the abortion issue has the effect, in practice, of permitting abortion. Even contemporary post-modern philosophers acknowledge that every cultural order has its own constellation of values which it was founded, and its own ends to which its laws and public institutions are being directed. The idea of a state or a system of justice founded without reference to any particular conception of what is just and unjust, right and wrong, is an idea which could only exist in a theoretical vacuum. In practice a state of a system of justice which purported operate without any reference to a moral framework, would be one which was legitimated by nothing else other than the successful use of coercive power.

The principles of the Common Law and of Equity which are the foundation of the Australian legal system have an historical basis in concepts of equity and justice which derive from a Judaeo-Christian moral framework. Such a framework includes the principle that we have duties to our neighbours and that innocent human life may be afforded the law’s protection and as such cannot be given a market value.

The difference between the various versions of liberalism and Christianity is not that one is in favour of individual freedom and the other opposed, for both traditions recognise and respect the free will of the individual. However it is a fundamental principle of the Christian tradition that human life is sacred since all people have been made in the image and likeness of God; and further, this means that certain types of behaviour are beneath the dignity of people made in God’s image. Christians hold therefore that there is a kind of “architecture of freedom” – a set of principles for the exercise of free will so that people do not fall beneath the moral heights to which they have been called as children of God. Abortion, for example, is not merely wrong because it destroys a sacred human life, but also because it attacks the dignity of those responsible for this destruction.

The body of principles concerned with the right exercise of individual freedom is described in the teachings of the Church as the “natural moral law”. Almost all liberal philosophers deny that there is any such thing as a “natural moral law” and instead they argue that there are simply different social conventions about what is right and wrong, and they see their task primarily as one of getting people with radically different moral conventions and practices to live in peace with one another. The Church, while being in favour of peace, takes the position that there can be no genuine peace in kind of society which Pope John Paul II calls a “culture of death” since people who subscribe to the values of this society constantly engage in self-harming behaviour which destroys their own dignity and the dignity of those whom they are responsible as parents, spouses and employees.

One particularly important version of liberalism is known as utilitarianism. This is often summarized by the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number”. Utilitarianism is close to another version of liberalism known as consequentialism – the idea that the morality of an act should be judged by reference to its consequences. Against both of these versions of liberalism the Church teaches that the end never justifies the means, and that human beings can never be treated as mere variables in some kind of economic equation.

The Catholic tradition of moral philosophy thus stands for a belief in “absolute moral goods” and the absolute sanctity of human life, and the existence of both intrinsically evil acts, and intrinsically good acts. The twin pillars of this moral tradition are the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ as found in the Gospels.