Proemium (§§1-2): The purpose of the encyclical is to refute the charge that the Church is against human liberty, by showing the true nature of liberty, and by distinguishing what is good from what is bad in so-called “modern liberties.”
Tractatus (§§3-46):
I. The nature of liberty (§§3-6): the distinction between natural and moral liberty.
- Natural liberty (§§3-5): Natural liberty is free will, rooted in the spiritual power of reason (§3). The Catholic Church has always defended natural liberty against fatalism (§4). Natural liberty is the faculty of choosing among means to the final end. It chooses everything under the aspect of good and is dependent on the intellect’s recognition of the good (§5).
- Moral liberty (§6): Just as reason can err about the truth, the will can err about the good, choosing something contrary to right reason. Moral liberty is the freedom from such error. Sin is slavery, because it means acting against right reason, which is our nature. The sinner cannot therefore act without impediment in the way natural to him. Moral liberty is granted by training “in justice and virtue,” because this enables us to act easily in accordance with right reason.
II. Helps to attaining moral liberty (§§ 7-13): We need light and strength to attain moral liberty.
- Law is the first help to moral liberty. Law teaches what is in accordance with right reason and trains us to live in accordance with it by reward and punishment (§7).
- Natural law is our reason commanding us to do right and avoid evil. It has the force of law because it interprets the eternal law of God for us (§8).
- God’s grace strengthens us inwardly so that we can obey the law (§8).
- Civil law helps the political community to be morally free, directing it to the true common good. Some of its precepts are direct applications of the natural law, others are more remote applications. The liberty of human society consists in all being led by the injunctions of civil law to conform more easily to eternal law (§§9-11).
- Natural law is our reason commanding us to do right and avoid evil. It has the force of law because it interprets the eternal law of God for us (§8).
- The Church aids us in attaining moral liberty by her teaching and influence (§12). Moreover, her witness to the higher authority of God is an effectual barrier against the tyranny of the state (§13).
III. What is bad and what is good in so called “Modern liberties” (§§14-46):
- The doctrine of [hard] Liberalism (§15): Hard Liberalism teaches the supremacy of human reason. Human reason determines what is good and evil, without reference to God’s eternal law. The state is seen as deriving its authority from the people rather than God. The results of liberalism (§16) are that the true distinction between good and evil is lost, disordered passion runs riot, religion is despised, and socialists and anarchists are encouraged to revolution.
- The doctrine of [soft] Liberalism (§17): Soft liberals hold that human reason is not absolutely supreme. Man is bound by God’s eternal law, but only insofar as it is promulgated to his reason as natural law. Even softer liberals (§18) hold that while individuals are bound by revealed law, politics can only be guided by natural law. Hence they teach the fatal theory of Separation of Church and State.
- The various “modern liberties” promoted by liberalism (§§19-46):
- Liberty of Worship (§§19-22) for individuals as for states is contrary to the virtue of religion and harmful to the true liberty of rulers and subjects.
- Liberty of speech and of the press (§23) and liberty of teaching (§§24-29) are dangerous, because they are indifferent to the distinction between truth and falsehood and are contrary to the public duty of defending both natural and revealed truth.
- Liberty of conscience (§§30-42) is good if understood as liberty to obey God, but bad if understood as liberty to obey or not obey him as they will. The liberals, while pretending to support liberty of conscience, actually persecute the Church, which they see as a barrier to the omnipotence of the liberal state. The Church, mindful of human weakness, does allow the state to tolerate certain evils for the sake of averting worse evils or preserving some good, but this does not concede that man has a right to do evil.
- Political liberty (§§43-46) is good if it means lawful change of government to remove unjust oppression. The Church does not oppose democratic government or independence from foreign powers.
Exhortation, prayer, and blessing (§47): Pope Leo hopes that the bishops will help him spread the teaching of this encyclical, and prays to God that he will give his light to men, so that they will understand his wisdom. He ends with the Apostolic benediction.