Liberal Catholicism

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Liberal Catholicism was a current of thought within the Roman Catholic Church influenced by classical liberalism and promoting the separation of church and state, freedom of religion in the civic arena, expanded suffrage, and broad-based education. It was influential in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, especially in France. It is largely identified with French political theorists such as Felicité Robert de Lamennais, Henri Lacordaire, and Charles Forbes René de Montalembert influenced, in part, by a similar contemporaneous movement in Belgium.

Being predominantly political in nature, liberal Catholicism as a movement was distinct from the contemporary theological movement of modernism. The movement is also distinct from the attitude of historical and present-day Roman Catholics who are described as theologically progressive or liberal.

Elements of liberal Catholicism were repeatedly condemned by the pre-Vatican II Holy See, particularly in the encyclicals Mirari vos (1832) of Pope Gregory XVI, Quanta cura (1864) of Pope Pius IX, and the dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus (1870) of the First Vatican Council.^[1]