The Liberal Illusion
The Liberal Illusion By LOUIS VEUILLOT (1866) Translated by RT. REV. MSGR. GEORGE BARRY O’TOOLE, PH. D., S. T. D. Professor of Philosophy in The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. With Biographical Foreword by REV. IGNATIUS KELLY, S. T. D., Professor of Romance Languages in De Sales College, Toledo, Ohio Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve. — Jer. 2:20. BIOGRAPHICAL FOREWORD PALADIN, and not a mere fighter,” says Paul Claudel of Louis A Veuillot. “He fought, not for the pleasure of fighting, but in defense of a holy cause, that of the Holy City and the Temple of God.” It is just one hundred years ago, 1838, that Louis Veuillot first dedicated himself to this holy cause. “I was at Rome,” he wrote as an old man recalling that dedication. “At the parting of a road, I met God. He beckoned to me, and as I hesitated to follow, He took me by the hand and I was saved. There was nothing else; no sermons, no miracles, no learned debates. A few recollections of my unlettered father, of my untutored mother, of my brother and little sisters.” This was Louis Veuillot’s conversion, the beginning of his apostolate of the pen which was to merit him the title of “Lay Father of the Church” from Leo XIII; “Model of them who fight for sacred causes” from Pius X; and from Jules Le Maitre the epithet “le grand catholique.” In the days of the Revolution, the maternal grandmother of Veuillot, Marianne Adam, a hatchet in her hand, had defended the cross of the church of Boynes in old Gatinais.
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