“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge history lecturer John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, a.k.a., the First Lord Acton, Catholic godfather of classical liberalism. Where Acton’s critics identify classical liberalism as a theory incompatible with the Catholic faith, and point to the man’s anxieties about papal infallibility and the First Vatican Council, his supporters note that Acton explicitly sought to root his political vision in theological concepts, and was himself willing to criticize even liberals when he thought them to be getting out of hand.
“[P]olitical Rights proceed directly from religious duties,” he affirmed, “and hold this to be the true basis of Liberalism.” Some might even argue that his affinity for “the securities of medieval freedom” put him a little closer than we might have at first thought to Dante and other iconic thinkers of the Middle Ages.
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