Even some of the most intelligent critics of liberalism sometimes do not make a clear enough distinction between the terms in which the question arose in the the 19th century, and the terms in which it arises today.
In the 19th century, "liberalism" operated in the context of secularized Christianity (e.g. Kantian ethics) and attempted to separate morality from metaphysics and religion. As such it led to relativism, subjectivism and various other ills.
But after 1917 we have entered the stage of the expansion of political atheism which rejects classical (Aristotelian and Christian) ethics in favor of the "ethics of the direction of history" (Del Noce), which in turn leads inevitably to various forms of totalitarianism.
In this context the question of liberalism changes radically. By the very fact of being anti-totalitarian, Christian political thought cannot help being in some sense "liberal." The question is to define precisely what this means.
Inevitably, this definition will require a critical assessment of various modern "liberal" strands (there is more than one), to sort out the aspects that are worth preserving and can be used to find political common ground.
This critical work is necessary but hard, and seems to have just started. But one should at least recognize that there is an open question which is not the question people faced in the 19th century.
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