Liberalism Is A Sin

Salvany believed that liberalism is the “burning issue of our century” : it is the “radical and absolute negation of the sovereignty of God”. It is all the more dangerous because it became an official legal error, introduced into the government of princes by powerful figures.

The pamphlet was written in a period that was favourable to anti-liberalism and Catholic integralism in the history of Spain: the First Spanish Republic had been overthrown in 1874 and the Bourbon dynasty had been restored to the throne. The writing had considerable success among the Carlist and Integrist movements.

Salvany drew heavily from the papal encyclicals Traditi humilitati of Pope Pius VIII (1829), Mirari vos of Pope Gregory XVI (1832) and Quanta cura of Pope Pius IX (1864, uncluding the attached Syllabus Errorum).