Helena Rosenblatt

To now, you're starting to say that we have to be accepting of difference.

And you start using liberal not to just define or describe an individual who's magnanimous, but a whole society.

Clubs can be liberal because they allow different types of members.

Religions can be liberal when they are tolerant.

And you can understand them.

The Catholic Church in particular gets very worried about this when you're going to be...

accepting that it's not the one religion.

Well, today we hear very much about, you know, celebrating difference and diversity is a great thing, including a religious diversity.

But what I've found, and one might find this somewhat troubling, is that these Protestants that I'm talking about, the early founders of liberalism really, did not advocate toleration for toleration's sake because they are very hostile to or disdainful towards society.

what they call superstition and dogmas.

So dogmas have held people back in their opinion.

The church, of course, in France, they were in charge of education.

They're in charge of censorship.

They basically find, and you can see this at Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which is really funny, is they believe in a free marketplace of religion.

So that if you tolerate our religions, they can then sort of fight among themselves.

And this is going to lead to a purification of

And eventually people are going to become liberal Protestants like they are or Unitarians type or deists, you know, have a religion.

They're not anti-religious, but the way you please God is by being good to your fellow citizen, by doing good to the community.

Not necessarily praying certain times of the day or doing certain rituals or believing in certain dogmas, but being good.

So you could see also that certain, not just the Catholic Church, but certain Orthodox churches would be upset by this because literally, if this is the case, what do you need churches for?