What is Freedom?

What is Freedom?  That is an easy question to answer but a difficult one to exercise.  Fortunately, the same God who granted us life granted us freedom and free will as well and He provides guidance to us in how to exercise that freedom.  

 
Freedom is directly related to free will. If you do not have free will, then you do not have freedom.   If you do not have the ability to exercise free will, then you do not have freedom.  You can have free will but not have the ability to exercise that free will, and thus you do not have true freedom.  

 
When God created humans, He also empowered them with free will, that is the ability to make choices.  “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions,” declares The Catechism of the Catholic Church (see paragraph 1730).    God did not create humans as mindless automatons under His complete dominance and control.  He created us with the ability to make our own decisions.  He wants us to make the right choices and he is disappointed when we do not make the right choices but He respects our ability to choose, even when we do not choose wisely or make the right choice.  

 
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines what human freedom is and is not.  In paragraph 1731, The Catechism states:  "Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude."

 
Fortunately, God also gave us a number of means to assist us and guide us in our decision-making and the exercise of our free will and freedom.  He gave us His Word. He gave us His Only Begotten Son as a teacher and as an example.   He gave us His Holy Spirit.  He gave us Sacred Scripture.  He gave us the Church. He gave us the example, witness, and intercession of Mary the Mother of God and the saints.   Of great importance, He gives us access to Him through prayer.  

 
There are different kinds of freedom, which are determined by how freedom is exercised.  There is absolute freedom, in which an individual does whatever, whenever, and wherever the individual so desires without regard for others and the Creator who bestowed free will upon said individual.  There is responsible freedom, in which an individual exercises his/her free will with regard for others and the reasonable limitations placed upon freedom by God and society. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, “Man's life comes from God; it is his gift, his image and imprint, a sharing in his breath of life. God therefore is the sole Lord of this life: man cannot do with it as he wills.”  (See paragraph 39).  

 
Freedom can be and often is destructive.  Invariably in society, the exercise of one individual’s freedom can come in conflict with the exercise of another’s freedom.  That is why it is necessary for reasonable limitations upon freedom so as to best protect the freedom of all of society’s members, and most especially the most vulnerable members such as the pre-born, children, the elderly and the infirmed.   Because freedom can be destructive to both the individual and society, there is a legitimate need for reasonable limitations upon freedom.

 
In Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II warned about the potential consequences of freedom that is exercised without truth:

There is an even more profound aspect which needs to be emphasized: freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim.  (See paragraph 19).  

Truth is that gift from God to us all which helps us to exercise our free will and our freedom in the best way that respects the free will of others and honors and serves the God who created us.  

 
Freedom and free will are most threatened by totalitarian regimes such as those perpetrated by the Nazis in 1930/40s Germany, Communist states, Sharia-based Islamic states like Iran, and the absolutist European monarchies of the 16th and 17th Centuries.  In such states, the individual exists to serve the state and the ruling elite.  The individual can only exercise his/her free will to limited extent that the state allows it.  Thus an individual in a totalitarian state has free will but does not have freedom because he/she cannot exercise his/her freedom.  

In certain cases, it is necessary for the state to deny or deprive an individual of his or her freedom because the exercise of that individual’s free will has caused harm to others.  Our nation’s penitential facilities are loaded with individuals’ who used their free will to harm others and thus they have been denied their freedom in the interests of justice and the need to protect society from them.

 
Even in a democracy, freedom can be destructive.  Through their democratic institutions, the majority enact laws to regulate human conduct.  Yet the majority can and oftentimes does enact laws which unreasonably restrict and even oppress the freedom of the minority.  For this, I can offer two examples.  First, our nation’s Constitution as first adopted did not fully respect the rights of women and enabled the legal holding of blacks as slaves.   Fortunately, in time, these defects of our Constitution have been remedied through the amendment process.  

 
Second, there is the issue of abortion.  It is claimed that a mother has a Constitutional right to have her pre-born child killed in her womb. Such advocates obfuscate the true reality of abortion with a smokescreen of “individual rights” and “choice.”  For nearly fifty years, the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion across the nation.  This decision was finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022 in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.   With Dobbs, decision-making for whether to legalize abortion or not was placed with the state governments.  Currently abortion is legal in most states and the District of Columbia, and banned in only 13 states.  Here is an example where the democratic process is being used to enact laws which destroy the freedom and very existence of an entire class of people…pre-born children. 

 
Our God loves us.  He created us with free will. He provides us with various aids in exercising that free will responsibly.    It is up to us to exercise our free will responsibly.