
released 8/15/2024
In a 2013 lecture at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute, D. C. Schindler relies on two Thomistic axioms to illustrate why liberalism — which claims to offer a minimalist conception of the common good — is ultimately incompatible with a Catholic understanding of religious freedom. For Catholics, both freedom and faith are essentially common goods; in other words, they are only considered as possible “options” to be chosen if they exist as real common goods already defined within a community. Schindler argues that liberalism, by definition and the principle of self-limitation, refuses to make reference to a comprehensive human good, to a whole in relation to which it is a part. While it claims to be neutral toward and incompetent in metaphysical (religious) questions, liberalism inverts the part-whole relationship, becoming an incontrovertible authority over every sphere. Since giving this lecture, Dr. Schindler has developed these ideas more fully in his book The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism (New Polity Press, 2021).
This lecture is provided courtesy of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family.
34 minutes
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