WHAT IS A LIBERAL 

THE LIBERAL PHYSIOGNOMY 

The Annunciation, Beato Angelico

The Most Holy Theotokos was the greatest anti-liberal  

What is stated below may seem unduly negative or harsh, but the last thing traditional Catholics need is to be patted on the back. Some traditional Catholics seem to think that they are doing God a favour by being what they are supposed to be. The good Catholic knows, however, that since God is perfect (and I don’t simply refer to professional perfection), He neither needs nor wants anything out of Himself. What He requires of man is for our good, not His own. He knows that what is true and good will make man ultimately happy, i.e. the state of beatitudine, since truth and good-ness are for the soul like water for fish.  

That is because, agens agit simile sibi, God always leaves “imprints” of Himself in what He creates, just as the carpenter’s work bears traces of himself in the “being” of his handicraft. We call this ontological truth, by which a thing corresponds in its being to the idea of it in the mind of him upon whom it depends for its existence. Thus, for example, a chair is a chair, and not a table, because the carpenter conceived of it as a chair and, therefore willed to create a chair. It can, therefore, never really be nor become a table no matter how often it is used as a table.  

Generally, liberals can easily be detected by their troubled rapport with time and, therefore, a compelling fondness for “fishing expeditions;” the more liberal they are, the less obvious and more elaborate the expedition. Since they do not recognise God’s place as Creator, Centre and End of history, they attribute an undue role to man’s control of the flow of time. It does not occur to them that, as Creator of history, God does not need them to be His lieutenants tying, let alone or tidying, up the past with the present and future. We have many examples of liberals, even in the traditional world. However, the best example of the “anti-liberal” is the Most Holy Theotokos. The truly traditional Catholic is imbued with such a real spirit of humility that his sense of wonder allows him to wait, with Our Lady, whatever God will reveal through the past, in the present and for the future.  

Imagine the Theotokos, the most anti-liberal Christian in history, attempting to enquire about or and correct the past and words of the Archangel Gabriel. Imagine the Theotokos placing the Archangel’s words of salutation on the backburner, while attending to more pressing matters. No, truly traditional, Our Lady’s deep-seated sense of the kairos or God’s hour, led her to open the ear of her soul to words God spoke to her, through the Archangel, in the “present moment.” The purity of faith in the soul of the Theotokos led her to see, without fully understanding, that God’s words, conveyed by His chosen ones, are not only important in themselves, but also in the “hour” or moment in which they are spoken.  

Since God does not (normally) endow man with the angelic mode of communication, He communicates with man through and in His Church. And just as God tested the angels, He tests man by permitting the existence of many churchmen who are or seem unworthy. Nevertheless, God endows His priests and bishops (good and bad) with powers that surpass those of even the greatest angels.