Liberalism and Personal Polemics – Fr. Sarda refutes a Myth

Refuting a popular misconception…

Liberalism and Personal Polemics:
Can We Only Attack an Argument and Never a Person?

Some readers of our web site, though happy with the content in general, may be somewhat displeased with our rhetorical attacks on certain individuals, specifically (our favorite targets) members of the bogus Vatican II hierarchy, but also subscribers to the false “recognize-and-resist” opposition, including Michael Voris, John Vennari, Michael Matt, John Salza, and Christopher Ferrara. Is it really necessary – or even permissible – to criticize people and not just their views?

Oh yes!

The following is an excerpt from the 1886 book Liberalism is a Sin by Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany. It was endorsed and praised by the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of the Index under Pope Leo XIII. The book exposes the ideas and tactics of the Modernists, called Liberals at the time, and we cannot recommend it highly enough. In fact, one may say that this book completely destroys many fundamental ideas of the bogus Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the new religion it engendered (which we call the Novus Ordo Religion). The excerpt below is Chapter 21 of the book, which specifically addresses the objection that while it is licit to attack and refute a person’s argument, it is forbidden to also attack the person who makes the argument. Not so, as Fr. Sarda explains with eloquence and persuasiveness.

[Begin Excerpt]

CHAPTER 21 Personal Polemics and Liberalism

“It is all well enough to make war on abstract doctrines” some may say, “but in combating error, be it ever so evident, is it so proper to make an attack upon the persons of those who uphold it?” We reply that very often it is, and not only proper, but at times even indispensable and meritorious before God and men.

The accusation of indulging in personalities is not spared to Catholic apologists, and when Liberals and those tainted with Liberalism have hurled it at our heads, they imagine that we are overwhelmed by the charge. But they deceive themselves. We are not so easily thrust into the background. We have reason–and substantial reason–on our side. In order to combat and discredit false ideas, we must inspire contempt and horror in the hearts of the multitude for those who seek to seduce and debauch them. A disease is inseparable from the persons of the diseased. 

The cholera threatening a country comes in the persons of the infected. If we wish to exclude it, we must exclude them. Now ideas do not in any case go about in the abstract; they neither spread nor propagate of themselves. Left to themselves–if it be possible to imagine them apart from those who conceive them–they would never produce all the evil from which society suffers. It is only in the concrete that they are effective, when they are the personal product of those who conceive them. They are like the arrows and the balls which would hurt no one if they were not shot from the bow or the gun. It is the archer and the gunner to whom we should give our first attention; save for them, the fire would not be murderous. Any other method of warfare might be Liberal, if you please, but it would not be common sense.

The authors and propagators of heretical doctrines are soldiers with poisoned weapons in their bands. Their arms are the book, the journal, the lecture, their personal influence. Is it sufficient to dodge their blows? Not at all; the first thing necessary is to demolish the combatant himself. When he is hors de combat [“out of the fight”], he can do no more mischief. 

It is therefore perfectly proper not only to discredit any book, journal or discourse of the enemy, but it is also proper, in certain cases, even to discredit his person; for in warfare, beyond question, the principal element is the person engaged, as the gunner is the principal factor in an artillery fight and not the cannon, the powder, and the bomb. It is thus lawful, in certain cases, to expose the infamy of a Liberal opponent, to bring his habits into contempt and to drag his name in the mire. Yes, this is permissible, permissible in prose, in verse, in caricature, in a serious vein or in badinage, by every means and method within reach. The only restriction is not to employ a lie in the service of justice. This never. Under no pretext may we sully the truth, even to the dotting of an “i'” As a French writer says: “Truth is the only charity allowed in history,” and, we may add, in the defense of religion and society.

The Fathers of the Church support this thesis. The very titles of their works clearly show that, in their contests with heresy, their first blows were at the heresiarchs. The works of St. Augustine almost always bear the name of the author of the heresy against which they are written: Contra Fortunatum Manichoeum, Adversus Adamanctum, Contra Felicem, Contra Secundinum, Quis fuerit Petiamus, De gestis Pelagii, Quis fuerit julianus, etc. Thus, the greater part of the polemics of this great Father and Doctor of the Church was personal, aggressive, biographical, as well as doctrinal–a hand-to-hand struggle with heretics, as well as with heresy. What we here say of St. Augustine we can say of the other Fathers.

Whence do the Liberals derive their power to impose upon us the new obligation of fighting error only in the abstract and of lavishing smiles and flattery upon them? We, the Ultramontanes, will fight our battles according to Christian tradition and defend the Faith as it has always been defended in the Church of God. When it strikes, let the sword of the Catholic polemist wound, and when it wounds, wound mortally. This is the only real and efficacious means of waging war.

[End of Excerpt – bold print added for emphasis, with slight adaptations.]
[Source: http://www.sedevacantist.com/liberalism.htm]