5 . 13 . 21
Peter Leithart’s recent contribution to the failure-of-liberalism genre opens with an arresting claim: “Liberalism is centrally an alternate, anti-catholic ecclesiology.” This assertion strikes me as correct, although too cryptic. We need to be more precise: Liberalism functions as an “ism” insofar as its proponents insist upon its magisterial authority, asserting that liberal principles—and only liberal principles—offer a full, perfect, and sufficient basis for the ordering of common life.
Leithart directs us to “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” where we find John Locke at his most extreme. The key conceptual move comes in his definition of our “civic interests.” They concern “life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.”