Reflections on America’s 250th Part III: Cost of Freedom

In part III of the Reflection series on America’s 250th, we take a closer look at the cost of freedom. It can also be looked at differently, as Catholics see it through the lens of faith.

 For a recap of Part I, click here

For a recap on Part II, click here

Freedom. What does it mean? Freedom is defined as the power or right to act, speak, and live without hindrance, restraint, or external coercion.

In the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment laid out the freedoms every American has when it comes to the press, speech, religion, peaceful assembly, and petition.

The Catechism defined freedom as “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” (CCC 1731). Freedom comes from God. He gives us the freedom to choose him.

In 1979, St. John Paul the Great made a visit to Philadelphia. It is during his visit that he offered his reflections on freedom as he recalled what took place in the city more than 200 years ago.

“When the Liberty Bell rang for the first time in 1776, it was to announce the freedom of your nation, the beginning of the pursuit of a common destiny independent of any outside coercion. This principle of freedom is paramount in the political and social order…. However, man’s life is also lived in another order of reality: in the order of his relationship to what is objectively true and morally good…. Christ himself linked freedom with the knowledge of truth: You will know the truth and the truth will make you free (Jn 8:32). This great son of the church reminds us that when we know God and his truth, we are free. God wants us to be free to follow him in this life and into the next.

Some freedoms that have surfaced in America don’t come from God. In my previous reflection, I shared about the scourge of abortion and how it attacks the first inalienable right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. One such freedom is the so-called “Freedom of Choice”. The choice that women can murder their own baby.

This so-called “freedom of choice” doesn’t teach us to be free when we encounter Christ’s truth. Instead, it enslaves us into following what is not of God but that of the devil.

St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, “The greatest light comes from the commandment to love God and neighbor. In this commandment, human freedom finds its complete realization.”

The great Dominican philosopher tells us that human freedom exists through our love for God and neighbor. Abortion doesn’t teach love; it teaches the opposite. It is not freedom; it is enslavement of the soul.

Some of us struggle to understand what freedom is. Yet, we seek its definition from all the wrong places.

St. John Paul the Great reminds us that true freedom “Consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

Freedom from God helps us to do what is pleasing to him, not of the world. This is the freedom that every American must know.

Abraham Lincoln offered a stern warning about the absence of freedom. He warns, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Lincoln foresaw the problems of the 20th and 21st centuries. It will get much worse if Americans don’t defend their freedom now. It has been preserved by the blood of those who were willing to lay down their lives for future Americans to live freely. 

Freedom is worthy of protection. It is a practice to help us let God make us free to follow him and do what is pleasing to him.