In Italy, says Nicholas Farrell, in Taki’s Magazine,

Catholics and fascists are both keen on intervention by totalitarian higher bodies such as the state in both life and work, and they are hostile to individual freedom and the free market.

And maybe not only there, if there. It goes with my tentative observations in the past about the church and political freedom — here, for instance:

I have in mind [when discussing “backward thinking”] the American church’s ambivalence toward governmental interference in people’s lives.

In 1919, for instance, Monsignor John A. Ryan issued the Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction, a virtual blueprint for the New Deal.

For 20 years [Ryan] reigned supreme as the bishops’ spokesman on social and political matters, even endorsing Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 for his second term. In the years since then, leading up to the bishops’ acquiescence in the passage of Obama care, official Catholic statements have consistently favored liberal positions in regard to governmental interference.

More recently, of course, they have objected to the HHS requirement that Catholic schools and hospitals offer birth control, but it took such an obvious interference in church activity to get them to do so.

The church has not been a champion of political freedom (I tentatively reiterate), being overly concerned about the mistakes and bad things people can commit and insufficiently confident or at least trustful when it comes to use by them of God-given (by whom else, pray tell?) free will, not to mention reliance on divine grace, mercy, and all that.

Is this where libertarianism meets Divine Providence? Just asking.