One of the most important encyclicals we need to rediscover is Pope Leo XIII's Libertas (1888), on the true nature of human liberty. This encyclical explains what true liberty consists of, followed by a lengthy exposition of the Church's condemnation of liberalism, in the Enlightenment/classical sense rather than today's narrower use of the word. Most people who call themselves conservative now would, in certain ways, fall into the category of liberalism as defined by Leo.

Prophetically warning of the evil consequences of political liberalism, Leo also takes aim at various false liberties in which modern people take such pride: freedom of speech, writing, thought, and worship. In each of these instances, liberals fail to recognize that freedom is not the right to do and say what one wants, but to do justice and to speak truth. As starting as Leo's teaching may be to modern Catholics, his fundamental principle is the one that Pope St. John Paul II enunciated when he said that "freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

Pope Leo XIII: "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.

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas.html

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A number of doctrinal ruptures occurred in Catholic life after Vatican II – not in the sense that the Church’s magisterium contradicted its previous teachings, but that the vast majority of Catholics, even conservative ones, tend to get these topics wrong. One of the worst examples is how the Church’s traditional teaching on the Jewish people has been forgotten, with many people under the false impression that Vatican II changed Catholic teaching.

Gideon Lazar, theologian and Jewish convert to Catholicism, joins the podcast to discuss some widely misunderstood and controversial points about the relationship between the Church and the Jews.

(The views Gideon expresses in this interview are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the St. Basil Institute, where he is institute coordinator.)

Links

Part 1 of Thomas’s four-part essay, “The Church and the Jews: Beyond the Platitudes” https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/church-and-jews-1-beyond-platitudes/

Gideon Lazar on Substack (a good article to start with) https://gideonlazar.substack.com/p/rex-iudaeorum-st-john-the-evangelist

Gideon on X https://x.com/ByzCat

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Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong joins the podcast to tell the inspiring story of her older brother, Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, the heroic Vietnamese Cardinal who was imprisoned by the Communists for 13 years, 8 of those in solitary confinement. Thuan was descended from a line of Vietnamese martyrs, and his uncle was the devout Catholic President and Prime Minister of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, who himself was something of a martyr.

Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan: Man of Joy and Hope https://ignatius.com/cardinal-nguyen-van-thuan-cfntp/

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