I am translating a book for CMRI and I want to know if this strikes anyone as Americanist, because if it is I'm not going to be able to go on translating.

I will give the French just in case anyone reads French, then my translation:  "Ce n'est pas la foi seule qui prouve que nous sommes libres, mais encore le sens commun, l'expérience, la raison.  La société ne repose que sur cette idée de liberté."  

"It's not only the faith which proves that we are free, but common sense, experience, reason.  Society has no other basis but this idea of liberty."

It sounds worse out of context, because he isn't talking about abstract "liberty" the way Americans do, but about free will.  The context is that we have a penchant to sin, we need grace, but we also have free will -- in other words, it's not political.

He also says that society rests on "this idea" of free will, meaning a specific kind.  Surely not the Vatican II kind.  He spoke against the French Revolution before.  So this is okay, correct?  I just need someone to help me through my scruples.

"As the state is of a moral nature, it also belongs to the order of freedom. Freedom of self-determination is necessary to form a society (community). Otherwise, man would be nothing else than a colony of bees, which has no selfdetermination. A slave-state would be the only reasonable consequence..." (Johannes Messner, Kompendium der Gesamtethik, Vienna 1955)


It would be better if we knew the whole text and context, but the sentence you cited seems to be orthodox if seen from the right, Catholic angle. While possible false interpretations can be very dangerous, we also should not try to obscure the truths of philosophy and theology (like the "problems" we have with NFP or BoB/BoD).

Telesphorus said:  

Are there any theological authorities cited to back up those statements?

No, he says right afterwards that there are numerous theological sources but never says who they are, then says it's beyond the scope of his book, etc.

I can sort of imagine Bellarmine saying something in the abstract about a certain kind of free will being the basis of society.  I vaguely remember having heard serious theologians praising a certain kind of freedom -- which they found even in Catholic societies that to Americans today would seem repressive.  

Yes, Pyrrhos, that he says "NO OTHER basis" is alarming, but I think it's moderated by the use of "this idea of liberty" ( which I translated as "this idea of free will," and that really is what he's talking about ).  He doesn't say society is built on liberty in general, but only on this limited idea of liberty he had just explained; which is simple free will.

In context he's only talking about the free will we have to correspond or reject grace.  I don't think any Catholic has ever said that society is built on totally repressing every aspect of free will and forcing everyone to be perfect Catholics, which is impossible anyway.  Clearly God intends us to have freedom, to a certain extent.  That doesn't mean we should be able to do anything and everything we want and that it should be condoned by the state, but I don't think I can extrapolate from his statement to full-blown Americanism like that, especially since he criticized the French Revolution.

But yeah, it would seem preferable to say "Society is built on following Catholic principles" rather than "society is built on this idea of free will."  I don't mind if he has an opinion I don't share.  I'm just trying to figure out if this is so bad, heretical or erroneous that I can't do this translation project anymore.

I thought the state was the manifestation of the Will of God and part of the created order?

I don't see how the free exercise of human volition is the basis of the state.

That does not compute.  It seems like an Enlightenment idea.