The Whore of Licentiousness versus Catholic Liberty
Liberty divorced from truth is not freedom at all, but slavery—first moral, then social, and finally spiritual.
“The Church most earnestly desires that the Christian teaching, of which We have given an outline, should penetrate every rank of society in reality and in practice; for it would be of the greatest efficacy in healing the evils of our day, which are neither few nor slight, and are the offspring in great part of the false liberty which is so much extolled, and in which the germs of safety and glory were supposed to be contained. The hope has been disappointed by the result. The fruit, instead of being sweet and wholesome, has proved cankered and bitter. If, then, a remedy is desired, let it be sought for in a restoration of sound doctrine, from which alone the preservation of order and, as a consequence, the defense of true liberty can be confidently expected.” - Pope Leo XIII in Libertas praestantissimum (1888)
Few words are invoked more frequently in modern discourse—and fewer still are understood with less precision—than the word liberty. In the contemporary world, liberty is treated not merely as a political good, but as the supreme moral principle, the ultimate standard by which all claims of truth, authority, and obligation are judged. It is invoked as an absolute, immune from critique, and weaponized against God, the Church, nature, and tradition. Liberty, in the modern imagination, is the right to choose without restraint, to define one’s own good, and to live unaccountable to any authority higher than the autonomous self.
In other words, liberty (or, more accurately, licence) is the religion of modern man. Ironically, this religion—which defines right and wrong in terms of pleasure and pain—is nothing but man worshipping his own tyrannical will, and the consequences have been catastrophic. As I argued in a similar vein in my essay on Aleister Crowley, this so-called “liberty,” which is in fact the whore of licentiousness, has defiled both the Church and its clergy, and Catholics to such an extent that many do not even realise how thoroughly they have been poisoned.
Sadly, even traditional Catholics (and I include myself) fall prey to this cancerous spiritual and philosophical disease, to varying degrees.
The late Bishop Richard Williamson has argued that the American state religion is liberty. He voiced the unpopular opinion that American Catholics have not fitted their Americanism into their Catholicism, but their Catholicism into their Americanism. As the bishop rightly stated (and I paraphrase slightly), “your religion is not what you do on a Sunday; it is what informs your entire worldview every day.” Nor are Americans alone victims of this insidious idolatry. In one way or another, we all are. It has become almost impossible even to imagine criticising the oh-so-noble principle of liberty.
Against this moral and intellectual confusion stands Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas praestantissimum of 1888, one of the most penetrating magisterial treatments of human freedom ever written. Leo XIII does not merely criticize excesses or abuses of liberty; he dismantles the modern concept of liberty at its root and rebuilds it according to Catholic philosophy. The encyclical is not a defense of “freedom” as the modern world understands it, but a condemnation of liberalism’s counterfeit liberty and a reassertion of the perennial Catholic doctrine that freedom exists only in obedience to truth. For Leo XIII, liberty divorced from truth is not freedom at all, but slavery—first moral, then social, and finally spiritual.
Leo begins by grounding liberty not in political arrangements or subjective preference, but in the nature of man himself. Liberty belongs exclusively to rational creatures because it flows from the possession of intellect and will. As he states plainly, “Liberty… is the highest of natural endowments, being the portion only of intellectual or rational natures” (§2). This single sentence already overturns the modern reduction of liberty to instinct, impulse, or desire. Animals follow appetite; man deliberates. Liberty is not the power to act without reason, but the power to act according to reason.
The will, Leo explains, is not an arbitrary faculty. It is ordered by nature toward the good as apprehended by the intellect. “The will, as the rational appetite, is of itself inclined to good only; and liberty consists in the power to choose between means adapted to an end” (§5). Here Leo XIII situates liberty within a teleological framework inherited from Aristotle and perfected by St. Thomas Aquinas. Man is not free to invent his own ultimate end. His freedom consists in choosing the proper means to attain the good for which he was created. This good is God Himself. Liberty, therefore, presupposes an objective moral order. Any theory of freedom that denies this order must necessarily redefine man himself.
From this foundation Leo proceeds to one of the central errors of modern thought: the separation of liberty from truth. Liberal ideology presumes that freedom consists in the ability to choose between truth and error, good and evil, as if such choices were morally equivalent. Leo XIII insists that this is a profound misunderstanding. “If the intellect, which is the guide of the will, holds firmly to truth, the will easily chooses what is good; but if the intellect is deceived… the will also is drawn aside” (§6). Error is not a neutral option; it is a corruption of reason, and therefore a corruption of freedom.
This leads Leo to a conclusion that modern ears find scandalous, but which Catholic philosophy recognizes as unavoidable: “The freedom of choice is not a power of choosing evil as well as good, but of choosing good only” (§7). To choose evil is not to exercise freedom properly, but to abuse it. The will that chooses against reason does not expand its liberty; it diminishes it. Freedom is perfected in truth, not in indifference to it. The liberal claim that liberty requires neutrality between truth and falsehood collapses under this analysis, for neutrality itself becomes a form of complicity with error.
Leo XIII drives this point home by turning to the moral reality of sin. Liberalism assumes that moral autonomy increases freedom. The Pope responds by invoking the words of Christ: “Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34), a passage he explicitly cites (§7). He explains that when the will chooses what is contrary to reason, “it abuses its freedom and corrupts its very essence” (§7). Sin is not merely the violation of an external rule; it is an internal disorder that enslaves the will. Habitual sin weakens freedom, narrows choice, and binds man ever more tightly to disordered desires. A society that celebrates unrestricted moral choice does not become freer; it becomes increasingly incapable of freedom in any meaningful sense. Until it collapses under the oppression of man’s sinful self-will which has an appetite that is insatiable.
This inversion of liberty lies at the heart of modern political and cultural decay. The modern world calls vice freedom and obedience oppression. Leo XIII restores the proper order by showing that liberty must be guided and perfected by law. Contrary to the liberal assumption that law is an enemy of freedom, Leo insists that law is its necessary condition. “Law is nothing else but an ordinance of reason promulgated for the common good” (§9). Because law flows from reason and is directed toward the good, it does not stifle liberty but safeguards it. “So far from being a hindrance to liberty, law is its safeguard and support” (§9).
From this it follows that resistance to just law is not an assertion of freedom but its negation. Leo states without ambiguity: “To refuse obedience to law is not liberty but license” (§10). This sentence alone dismantles the modern obsession with rights detached from duties. There can be no right to act against reason, no right to do evil, no right to reject the moral order established by God. Where law is rejected in the name of freedom, freedom itself is ultimately destroyed.
Leo XIII then situates all human law within its proper metaphysical context by recalling the doctrine of eternal law. “The natural law is the eternal law implanted in rational creatures” (§11). Human freedom is not self-originating; it is a participation in the divine order. To obey the natural law is to act in harmony with one’s own nature and with the wisdom of the Creator. To reject it is not an act of liberation but an act of rebellion—one that necessarily ends in disorder.
At this point Leo exposes the deepest error of liberalism: its denial of divine authority. “Those who deny the existence of God or His authority… make themselves the supreme rule of right and wrong” (§12). This is the philosophical core of liberal freedom: man enthroned as his own lawgiver, accountable to nothing beyond his own will. The liberal state, in excluding God from public life, does not remain neutral; it actively enshrines this false anthropology. It teaches citizens, implicitly and explicitly, that there is no higher authority than the self or the collective will.
Leo therefore rejects liberalism not merely as a flawed political theory but as a false philosophy of man. “The liberty of which the Liberal party boasts is not liberty but license” (§14). Liberalism claims that freedom consists in exemption from all restraint, divine and human alike. “They contend that man is free by nature in such wise that he is subject to no law, whether human or divine” (§15). Such a claim, Leo makes clear, is incompatible with reason, revelation, and the Catholic faith. Authority does not arise from individual autonomy; it comes from God. Any social order built on the denial of this truth rests on falsehood and will inevitably collapse.
Nowhere is this collapse more evident than in the modern doctrine of religious liberty. Leo XIII carefully distinguishes between toleration of error and a supposed natural right to error. He observes that many understand liberty of worship to mean “that every man is free to profess whatever religion he pleases” (§18). This, Leo insists, cannot be a natural right, for “it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights” (§18). Truth alone has rights; error may be tolerated only for grave reasons.
At the same time, Leo allows for prudential toleration in civil society. “The Church does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding greater evils” (§19). This toleration, however, is not an endorsement. It is a concession to weakness, not a recognition of a right. Modern religious liberty, which enshrines error as a positive good and treats all religions as equally legitimate, is utterly foreign to Leo XIII’s teaching.
The relevance of Libertas praestantissimum today cannot be overstated. Catholics now routinely speak the language of liberalism without reflection: autonomy, neutrality, pluralism, rights without reference to truth. These concepts are often assumed to be compatible with the Faith, even required by charity or justice. Leo XIII exposes them as philosophical errors rooted in a false understanding of man and freedom. A Catholic who believes that freedom means self-definition has already abandoned Catholic anthropology. A Catholic who believes the state must be neutral toward God has implicitly denied the social kingship of Christ. A Catholic who believes error has rights has rejected the objective moral order.
Leo XIII concludes by reaffirming the true role of the Church as the guardian, not the enemy, of liberty. “The Church… is the most faithful guardian of liberty” (§30). Not the liberty of rebellion, but the liberty of truth. Not the liberty of appetite, but the liberty of virtue. Not the liberty that ends in chaos, but the liberty that leads man toward his proper end in God.
For Catholics who wish to think with the True Church founded by Christ rather than with the modern world, Libertas praestantissimum is not a historical curiosity but an urgent corrective. It teaches us that liberty must be rescued from liberalism and restored to its rightful place—under reason, under law, and under God. Only then does liberty become worthy of man, and only then does it lead not to enslavement, but to true freedom in time and in eternity.
I leave you with a few more quotations from this powerful encyclical, but encourage you to study it yourself as it is a treasure chest of gems:
· “As to morals, the laws of the Gospel not only immeasurably surpass the wisdom of the heathen, but are an invitation and an introduction to a state of holiness unknown to the ancients; and, bringing man nearer to God, they make him at once the possessor of a more perfect liberty.”
· “For the right to command and to require obedience exists only so far as it is in accordance with the authority of God, and is within the measure that He has laid down. But when anything is commanded which is plainly at variance with the will of God, there is a wide departure from this divinely constituted order, and at the same time a direct conflict with divine authority; therefore, it is right not to obey”
· “And now to reduce for clearness’ sake to its principal heads all that has been set forth with its immediate conclusions, the summing up in this briefly: that man, by a necessity of his nature, is wholly subject to the most faithful and ever enduring power of God; and that, as a consequence, any liberty, except that which consists in submission to God and in subjection to His will, is unintelligible. To deny the existence of this authority in God, or to refuse to submit to it, means to act, not as a free man, but as one who treasonably abuses his liberty; and in such a disposition of mind the chief and deadly vice of liberalism essentially consists. The form, however, of the sin is manifold; for in more ways and degrees than one can the will depart from the obedience which is due to God or to those who share the divine power.”
· “To reject the supreme authority to God, and to cast off all obedience to Him in public matters, or even in private and domestic affairs, is the greatest perversion of liberty and the worst kind of liberalism”
· “It is quite unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, or writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.”
Our Lady, Co-redemptrix, pray for us…
Our Lady, Mediatrix of all Graces, pray for us…
Viva Christo Rey!
Also Read:
The Truth Doesn’t Need Numbers
A Beginners Guide to the Problems of the Novus Ordo Missae (Part III)
A Beginners Guide to the Problems of the Novus Ordo Missae (Part II)
A Beginners Guide to the Problems of the Novus Ordo Missae (Part I)
“Christ is a Failed Individual” and Other New Blasphemies from the Synodal Dumpster Fire
Is This the Sanest Position for Faithful Catholics to Hold Regarding Post-Conciliar Popes?
This is very dense and compact writing on freedom distorted to liberalism. I am truly thankful for this that made me respond to the call for donation. It is really great writing that everyone should read carefully with reflection. This is the truth.
I would like to suggest to understand this with the aid of imagination in the context of creation. Everything exists within creation. From the human perspective that intertwines the spiritual and the material. Nothing can exists outside of creation.
The only correct way to live is to submit to the order established in creation. Any human attempt to defy or make his own rules of manner existence, an emulation of the desire of Satan to re-order the established structure and organization of creation, hence is contrary to God’s design, and against God himself.
That is why sin is defiance to conform to God. It is a delusion for anyone to insist to to exists outside the structure and organization of creation, which results in being imprisoned within themselves, devoid of the sustaining life of God. They will suffer from lack of it in their existence. Always struggling to keep themselves together whather powers they had originally received from God.
The great Bishop Williamson is correct in his assessment of Americanism and Catholicism. One caveat these days is that the "virtue" and objective of liberty counters the tyranical behavior of many western governments. Liberty is rarely in the lexicon of godless globalists as they seek to control all facets of our lives. Liberty, properly understood, is a part of the natural law in the sense that people instinctively know what governments, corporations, etc. cannot legitimately force upon them. That is the essential difference between liberty and license. License permits me to do whatever I please without regard to God or others.