Liberal Catholicism

Liberal Catholicism was a current of thought within the Catholic Church. It was influential in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, especially in France.

Being predominantly political in nature, Liberal Catholicism was distinct from the contemporary theological movement of Modernism. It is also distinct from both the attitude of Catholics who are described as theologically "progressive" or "liberal".

Liberal Catholicism has been defined as "in essence a trend among sincere Catholics to exalt freedom as a primary value and to draw from this consequences in social, political, and religious life, seeking to reconcile the principles on which Christian France was founded with those that derived from the French Revolution".

The movement of Liberal Catholicism was initiated in France by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais with the support of Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, Charles Forbes René de Montalembert and Olympe-Philippe Gerbet, Bishop of Perpignan, while a parallel movement arose in Belgium, led by François Antoine Marie Constantin de Méan et de Beaurieux, Archbishop of Mechelen, and his vicar general Engelbert Sterckx.

Lamennais founded the newspaper L'Ami de l'Ordre (precursor of today's L'Avenir), the first issue of which appeared on 16 October 1830, with the motto "God and Liberty". The paper was aggressively democratic, demanding rights of local administration, an enlarged suffrage, separation of church and state, universal freedom of conscience, freedom of education, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. Styles of worship were to be criticized, improved or abolished in absolute submission to the spiritual, not to the temporal authority.

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