Finally, I cannot but speak of the serious risks associated with the invasion, at high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools, of positions of libertarian individualism<\/i>. A common feature of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is, \u201cliving well\u201d, a \u201cgood life\u201d in the community framework, and exalts the selfish ideal that deceptively proposes a \u201cbeautiful life\u201d. If individualism affirms that it is only the individual who gives value to things and interpersonal relationships, and so it is only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad, then libertarianism, today in fashion, preaches that to establish freedom and individual responsibility, it is necessary to resort to the idea of \u201cself-causation\u201d. Thus libertarian individualism denies the validity of the common good because on the one hand it supposes that the very idea of \u201ccommon\u201d implies the constriction of at least some individuals, and the other that the notion of \u201cgood\u201d deprives freedom of its essence.<\/p>\n
The radicalization of individualism in libertarian and therefore anti-social terms leads to the conclusion that everyone has the \u201cright\u201d to expand as far as his power allows, even at the expense of the exclusion and marginalization of the most vulnerable majority<\/i>. Bonds would have to be cut inasmuch as they would limit freedom. By mistakenly matching the concept of \u201cbond\u201d to that of \u201cconstraint\u201d, one ends up confusing what may condition freedom \u2013 the constraints \u2013 with the essence of created freedom, that is, bonds or relations, family and interpersonal, with the excluded and marginalized, with the common good, and finally with God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The essential mistake of libertarianism is that it absolutizes property rights over the good of the human person. \u00a0But the law (including property law) is made for man, not man for the law. \u00a0The denial of the common good (and the reflexive habit of libertarianized thought to shout it down as \u201csocialism\u201d) is why this popular heresy will always be at odds with Catholic teaching. \u00a0To be sure, it borrows (as all heresy does) from real wellsprings of Catholic thought. \u00a0But (as all heresy does) it uses a few beloved ideas from Catholic thought in order to make war on the rest.<\/p>\n
Listen to the Holy Father, not libertarian monomanias.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Libertarian individualism: Finally, I cannot but speak of the serious risks associated with the invasion, at high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools, of positions of libertarian individualism. A common feature of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is, \u201cliving well\u201d, a \u201cgood life\u201d in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[567,374],"class_list":["post-100083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-libertarianism-is-a-heresy-for-people-with-no-children","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\n
Pope Francis Offers a Critique of a Sacred Cow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Libertarian individualism: Finally, I cannot but speak of the serious risks associated with the invasion, at high levels of culture and education in both\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/05\/pope-francis-offers-critique-sacred-cow.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Francis Offers a Critique of a Sacred Cow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Libertarian individualism: Finally, I cannot but speak of the serious risks associated with the invasion, at high levels of culture and education in both\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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