The liberalism of the RCC is probably rooted in it's historic relation to the state ...
The Catholic Church is a LOT older than the nation-state, or even than the idea of the nation state. Some rulers have made martyrs of Catholic clergy. Rulers wanted to be able to appoint bishops, and in some places they got what they wanted. In some places the Church was able to cow rulers and in others to persuade them. In some places, like Inquisitorial Spain, the courts of the Inquisition were so much more merciful (not every court, not all the time) than those of the king that suspects would claim to be heretics in hopes that they would be tried by "the Inquisition" rathern that the King's judges.
I really think that there's a lot of anachronistic thought here, and a lot of bragging because others made the mistakes from which we have learned, thereby saving us the trouble of making the mistakes, but not excusing us for thinking we are so much wiser than they.
There's lots of horror (much of it just by the far more humane standards of our age) over the 13th century massacre of the Cathars by Simon de Montfort. It is hard (for me at least) to think that Simon was all about serving the Church. I have a feeling that the real estate of the Albigensian Nobility may have had its own entirely secular charms.
Compare and contrast the US tendency to have the Feds invovle themselves more and more with public edumication, and the Hillarious desire for single-payer (hah hah) health care administered by the same folks who brought you the IRS to the principle of subsidiarity, as mentioned in this post contrasting the Catholic Church with the liberal welfare state:
One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”
In spite of this clear warning, the United States Catholic Bishops remain staunch defenders of a statist approach to social problems. ...
(emphasis blah blah)
Liberalism always seeks to subordinate the individual in the name of the group. Conservatism seeks to free the individual and only have the state exercise it's power to protect those freedoms.
But even Conservatism realizes that the best way to protect individual freedoms is NOT a loose-knit agglomeration of small groups but something more federal, with local interests in tension with federation interests. It seems to be that subsidiarity provides that kind of thing in the RC Church and that it also explains the otherwise inexplicable toleration of some bishops.
Being supreme authority does not, cannot mean having control over every little thing. And it would be a foolish autocrat who would try to micro-manage a group of 1 billion souls spread all over the world.
All of which is to suggest that perhaps there is some misunderstanding of what a Pope MAY control and of what Pope CAN control.
Good observation, WM. The hierarchy of the Church teaches that it has a Divine right to lead all Christians. Therefore, all Christians should submit. That is liberalism, just as you said.
So I disagree with the imprecision of this statement, as I see it, as well as with it's loose relationship with reality on the ground.
The Pope may, after the bulk of Protestant Christendom has changed its mind, persist in asserting that the use of artificial Birth control is wrong. The Pope may also know that a lot of US clergy (to their shame) do not comport with this teaching, and some even use the rejected notion of "the fundamental option" to encourage those who come to them for permission uh, I mean, counsel to use birth control.
When a bishop hereabouts started sounding too much like an Episcopalian around 15 years ago, the then Pope read him the riot act and then sent him an "assistant" bishop for a few years. If he had the control some of you seem to suggest that bishop would just have disappeared quietly into the cellars of the Vatican.
As I suggested to someone, check out the history of the astonishing Catherine of Siena. I bet at least one Pope had some fantasies about what he would do if he had absolute power. But St. Catherine, while maybe not politically tactful, seriously yanked the papal chain, and in so doing gave the rest of us permission to do the same and gave wise Popes warning that foolish exercises of power are simply NOT a good idea.
It may make sense to use derogatory neologisms to describe the Catholic Church, and sometimes it does seem like a bureaucracy with the wait-time meter set to "stun". But it really is far more like a barely functional family with daddy down at the See City and Big Daddy up in the big house in the Vatican, and us kids out here running wild.
YES, many bishops, being innerleckshuals, are liberals. And NO I don't think the Vatican really "gets" the idea of the United States or has freed itself from European "big-state" liberalism. So the RC Church, sociologically speaking, has some pressure toward what I would consider 'Statist' paradigms, in which the state is sovereign, as opposed to the original (but imperilled) US paradigm in which the individual is sovereign and the state are our ministers and street sweepers. But there's enough room even in the explicitly social doctrine for me to be able to say with the vigor of a clear conscience, "No, Father," or "No, Bishop, I do NOT agree that the state needs to do the things you think it should do." He may harrumph at me, but I'm within my rights as a Catholic to do so.
Well, there's the rub. On ALL matters of faith and morals, my understanding is that the Catholic view is that the ONLY ones fit are the "larger and more complex organization". On anything we discuss around here, like going to Heaven or hell, isn't that pretty much everything? :)