St. Alphonsus Liguori

St. Alphonsus Liguori was an Italian lawyer, priest, bishop and moral theologian who lived from 1696 to 1787 and founded the Redemptorists in 1732. He wrote the most widely used manual of moral theology of the following two centuries, and he wrote it to rescue ordinary Catholics from confessors who were either too harsh or too careless. Pius IX declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1871, and Pius XII named him patron of confessors and moral theologians in 1950.

His feast is 1 August. He is best known outside specialist circles for the maxim that those who pray are saved and those who do not pray are lost, and for The Glories of Mary, and his life ended in a long humiliation that his admirers usually leave out.

The Doctor of Moral Theology

St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) was an Italian bishop, legal scholar, and founder of the Redemptorists (Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer). He is the patron saint of confessors and moral theologians. A brilliant lawyer who never lost a case for 8 years, he left the legal profession after seeing its corruption and dedicated his life to God.

He was deeply concerned for the spiritual neglect of the poor living in the countryside around Naples, who often had no one to preach the Gospel to them.

His Moral Theology, first published in 1748 and revised repeatedly across his lifetime, was written for confessors rather than for professors. The question it keeps asking is practical: when a penitent kneels down and describes what he has done, what is the priest to tell him. Alphonsus wrote it because he had heard the answers being given, and he judged that many of them were driving people away from the sacraments altogether.

The book worked. It became the standard reference for the training of confessors across the Latin Church for the next two hundred years, and its author's judgment on a disputed question came to be treated as safe to follow by definition. That is an unusual achievement for a man who spent most of his working life preaching in villages.

Who Alphonsus Liguori Was

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori was born on 27 September 1696 at Marianella, just outside Naples, the eldest son of a naval officer of the minor nobility. The family had money, standing and expectations, and his father intended a distinguished public career for him.

He was educated at home by tutors and was formidably quick. He took his doctorate in civil and canon law at the University of Naples at sixteen, which required a dispensation because of his age, and he was practising in the courts as a very young man. He also painted, played the harpsichord well, and was taken to the opera by his father, who was also arranging marriages for him that Alphonsus declined.

Naples at the time was one of the largest cities in Europe and one of the poorest. The lazzaroni, the city's destitute, lived in the streets in numbers that shocked visitors, and the countryside beyond was worse: villages where no priest came, where the sacraments were unavailable for months and where nobody had heard the catechism explained. That contrast, between a cultivated legal career and a population with no religious instruction at all, is the shape of his life.

The Lawyer Who Left the Courts

Alphonsus practised law for about eight years with a reputation for winning. The end came in 1723, in a major case involving a disputed estate, when he argued brilliantly and was then shown a document in the record that destroyed his case and that he had not read carefully. He is reported to have said in open court that the world could have his services no longer, and he walked out.

He did not become a priest that afternoon. What followed was a period of visiting the sick in the Hospital for Incurables and of prayer, against strong opposition from his father, who regarded the priesthood as a waste of the family's investment. Alphonsus gave up his sword at the altar of Our Lady of Ransom, began studies, and was ordained in 1726 at the age of thirty.

His first work in Naples was with the working poor. He supported the Evening Chapels, groups of labourers and tradesmen who met after work in shops and yards for prayer, catechism and mutual support, led by laymen. The movement grew to dozens of groups in the city. It is worth noticing that his first pastoral instinct was to build something the participants ran themselves.

The Redemptorists and the Country Missions

In 1730, preaching in the mountains near Amalfi, Alphonsus found goatherds and villagers who were, in his own description, more abandoned than the poor of Naples. Nobody came to them. That discovery produced the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, founded at Scala in 1732, with the specific purpose of preaching missions to the country people whom the existing structures did not reach.

A Redemptorist mission was a two-week campaign in a village: preaching morning and evening, catechism for children and adults, confessions heard all day, disputes reconciled, and a plan left behind so that the parish could keep something going. The preaching style Alphonsus insisted on was plain. He required his men to preach so that the least educated person present could follow, and he is said to have had a lay brother sit in and tell him afterwards whether he had understood every word.

The early years were difficult. The first companions left, the Kingdom of Naples was suspicious of new religious bodies, and approval from Rome came slowly, in 1749. The women's branch, the Redemptoristines, had been founded a year before the men, at Scala in 1731, around the visions of Sister Maria Celeste Crostarosa.

Balanced Virtue

In his time, a rigid heresy called Jansenism was prevalent, which made people terrified of God and discouraged frequent Communion. Alphonsus fought this by preaching the infinite mercy of God and encouraging frequent prayer and the sacraments. He struck a perfect balance in moral theology between laxity (anything goes) and rigorism (everything is a mortal sin), emphasizing the primacy of conscience formed by truth.

Jansenism took its name from Cornelius Jansen, a Flemish bishop whose posthumous book on Augustine set off the controversy, and it took hold above all in France. Its practical effect was a spirituality of fear: an emphasis on the small number of the saved, a demand for a purity of motive almost nobody could reach before approaching Communion, and long delays in absolution. The Holy See condemned propositions drawn from the movement more than once in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its pastoral damage outlived the condemnations, because a habit of dread is harder to remove than a proposition.

Alphonsus's technical answer is called equiprobabilism, and it is simpler than the word suggests. Where there is genuine doubt whether a moral obligation exists, and the arguments on either side are of roughly equal weight, a person may follow the opinion in favour of liberty, because a doubtful law does not bind. Where the case for the obligation is clearly stronger, it must be followed. That position sits between a rigorism that treats every doubt as a bond and a laxism that treats any excuse as sufficient.

The pastoral consequence was the one he cared about. A confessor formed on Alphonsus does not turn people away, does not multiply mortal sins, and does not leave a penitent uncertain whether he has been forgiven. Our page on confession and how the sacrament works sets out the Church's practice today, which is largely his.

Bishop of Sant'Agata dei Goti

In 1762 Alphonsus was appointed bishop of Sant'Agata dei Goti, a small and poor diocese north-east of Naples. He was sixty-six and did not want it, and he accepted only when it was made clear that refusal was not open to him.

He governed for thirteen years. He conducted a visitation of every parish, reformed the seminary, dealt with clergy who were negligent or absent, preached missions across the diocese, and sold what he had, including the fittings of his own house, during the famine of 1764, when he organised relief and was reported to have kept people alive on his own credit.

Illness ended it. Rheumatic arthritis had been deforming him for years, and in 1775 Pius VI accepted his resignation and let him return to the congregation. He was seventy-nine and had twelve years to live.

Writer and Musician

Alphonsus was a prolific writer. His masterpiece, The Glories of Mary, defends devotion to the Blessed Mother. He also wrote The Way of Salvation and composed many hymns, including the famous Italian Christmas carol "Tu scendi dalle stelle" (You come down from the stars).

In his later years, he suffered terribly from arthritis which deformed his spine, bending his head so sharply forward that his chin caused a wound on his chest. He bore this suffering with great patience.

The scale of the writing is worth stating. He produced over a hundred works, and they were translated and reprinted more than almost any Catholic author of the period. Four beyond the Moral Theology matter most.

• The Glories of Mary (1750), a defence and exposition of Marian devotion built around the Salve Regina, and the most influential Marian book of its century.
• Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, thirty-one short visits, one for each day of the month, which put a simple practice of Eucharistic prayer within reach of laypeople.
• Preparation for Death, a set of blunt meditations on mortality and judgment, and evidence that his opposition to Jansenist fear was not softness.
• The Great Means of Prayer, his treatise arguing that prayer is necessary for salvation, which he said he wished he could distribute to every Catholic alive.

The music is not incidental. "Tu scendi dalle stelle" is still sung in Italy every Christmas, and Alphonsus wrote hymns for the same reason he wrote plain sermons: a villager who cannot read can carry a tune home.

The Last Years: Exclusion and Darkness

The end of his life is the part usually omitted, and leaving it out makes him less useful rather than more.

In 1780, in the course of negotiations with the government of Naples over the legal recognition of the congregation, Alphonsus, aged eighty-four, nearly blind and deaf, signed a version of the rule that had been altered from the one Rome had approved. He had been told it was the original. When the substitution came to light, Rome ruled against the version he had signed, and the effect was a split: the houses in the Papal States were recognised as the true congregation, and Alphonsus, with the houses in the Kingdom of Naples, was outside it. The founder was excluded from his own order by the authority he had spent his life serving.

He accepted the decision. The years that followed brought physical collapse, scruples, and a period of spiritual darkness in which he was tormented by fear about his own salvation and by temptations against faith. Those who cared for him recorded it. The man who had written the definitive attack on religious terror spent his last years fighting it in himself, and he was later reported to have come out into peace before his death on 1 August 1787.

He was ninety. The congregation was reunited after his death.

Doctor of the Church, Patron of Confessors, Feast Day

Alphonsus was beatified by Pius VII in 1816 and canonised by Gregory XVI in 1839. Pius IX declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1871, and Pius XII named him patron of confessors and moral theologians in 1950. His feast is kept on 1 August as a memorial in the Roman calendar.

The Redemptorists continue as an international congregation preaching missions and retreats. Readers who want the best known Redemptorist saint after the founder will find him in St. Gerard Majella, a lay brother of the congregation who died at twenty-nine.

Quotable Wisdom

"He who prays is certainly saved; he who does not pray is certainly damned."

A stark reminder of the necessity of prayer for the Christian life.

The saying is quoted in the Catechism in its treatment of prayer as a battle (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2744), and it needs to be read as Alphonsus meant it. He is stating the necessity of prayer for perseverance, on the ground that grace is given to those who ask and that a person who stops asking stops receiving. Jesus told a parable to the effect that his disciples ought always to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1), and told them to ask, seek and knock (Matthew 7:7). His claim concerns the ordinary means God uses. A person who has given up speaking to God has given up the channel through which grace is asked for and received. Prayer remains a request made to a free God, and the saying makes no calculation about the destiny of any particular soul.

"The greatest glory we can give to God is to do His will in everything."

The thesis of his short treatise on uniformity with God's will, and the practical centre of his spirituality.

His rule for preachers is worth having as well: he required his men to speak so that the least educated person in the church could follow every sentence, and he tested it by asking the least educated person present.

What a Reader Can Take From St. Alphonsus

Pray badly rather than not at all. His whole argument is that continuing to ask is what matters. A short prayer said without feeling is the practice he is defending.

Do not let anyone make God sound like a trap. Alphonsus spent his career on people who had been taught to fear the sacraments. If your picture of God makes confession feel unsafe, that picture is the thing to examine.

Speak so people can follow you. He tested his sermons on the least educated listener in the room. Anyone who teaches, in a parish or a family, can adopt that test tomorrow.

Expect the end to be hard, and stay anyway. He was deceived, expelled from his own congregation and left in fear for years, and he did not leave. That is the part of his life most likely to be useful to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St. Alphonsus Liguori?

St. Alphonsus Liguori was an Italian lawyer, priest, bishop and moral theologian who lived from 1696 to 1787. He took a doctorate in civil and canon law at sixteen, practised successfully for about eight years, left the courts after losing a major case, and was ordained in 1726. He founded the Redemptorists in 1732 to preach missions to neglected country people, served as bishop of Sant'Agata dei Goti from 1762 to 1775, and wrote the most widely used manual of moral theology of the following two centuries.

What did St. Alphonsus Liguori found?

He founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists, at Scala near Amalfi in 1732. Its purpose was to preach missions to the country people around Naples who had no regular access to priests, catechism or the sacraments. A Redemptorist mission lasted about two weeks and combined plain preaching, catechism, confessions heard all day and a plan left behind for the parish to continue.

What is equiprobabilism?

Equiprobabilism is the position in moral theology developed by St. Alphonsus Liguori for cases of genuine doubt about whether a moral obligation exists. Where the arguments for and against the obligation are of roughly equal weight, a person may follow the opinion in favour of liberty, because a doubtful law does not bind, and where the case for the obligation is clearly stronger it must be followed. The position sits between rigorism, which treats every doubt as binding, and laxism, which accepts any excuse.

What did St. Alphonsus mean by saying those who pray are saved?

He was stating the necessity of prayer for perseverance, on the ground that grace is given to those who ask and that a person who stops asking stops receiving. The saying is quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church at paragraph 2744, in its treatment of prayer as a battle. He was not claiming that prayer is a technique that obliges God, and Jesus himself told a parable to the effect that his disciples ought always to pray and not lose heart in Luke 18:1.

When is the feast day of St. Alphonsus Liguori?

His feast is kept on 1 August, the day of his death in 1787, as a memorial in the Roman calendar. He was beatified by Pius VII in 1816, canonised by Gregory XVI in 1839, declared a Doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1871, and named patron of confessors and moral theologians by Pius XII in 1950.

What was Jansenism and why did St. Alphonsus oppose it?

Jansenism was a rigorist movement named after Cornelius Jansen, a Flemish bishop whose posthumous book on Augustine set off the controversy, and it took hold above all in France. Its practical effect was a spirituality of fear: emphasis on the small number of the saved, demands for a purity of motive almost nobody could reach before receiving Communion, and long delays in absolution. The Holy See condemned propositions drawn from it more than once, and Alphonsus opposed it because it was driving ordinary people away from the sacraments.

Was St. Alphonsus expelled from the Redemptorists?

In 1780, aged eighty-four and nearly blind and deaf, Alphonsus signed a version of his congregation's rule that had been altered from the text Rome had approved, having been told it was the original. When Rome ruled against the altered version, the congregation split, and the houses in the Papal States were recognised as the true congregation while Alphonsus and the houses in the Kingdom of Naples were left outside it. He accepted the decision, and the congregation was reunited after his death in 1787.