THINKING ABOUT FREEDOM (PART 2) - FREEDOM AND TRUTH
I recall a conversation some years back with a "free-thinker” friend. Her notion of freedom was very clear to her: “to be able to do what I like when I like”.
Such is the culture of society. Today's culture says we have a right to be free - in speech, thoughts and actions - and we increasingly push away control and authority.
The culture says we are free to pursue our own experience, pleasure and self interest. The culture also indulges in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Rev Fr Al Lauer (1947-2002) summarised it so well in a recorded homily:
"Many misconceive that freedom means being able to do our own thing: to do what we want, when we want.
There is no such thing as "our own thing". It's just what the devil likes to promote/ manipulate.
But there is such a thing as freedom to do the right things.
True freedom is freedom to do Gods will.
That is the greatest thing human beings can possibly do...that is the ultimate dignity of the human person.
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Pope Benedict XVI said in Truth and Freedom: "Karl Marx expressed his own dream of freedom this way: 'to do one thing today and another tomorrow; to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, breed cattle in the evening and criticize after dinner, just as I please'...This is exactly the sense in which average opinion spontaneously understands freedom: as the right and the opportunity to do just what we wish and not to have to do anything which we do not wish to do."
Are we really free if we give in to doing what we like to do whenever we want to do it?
Or are we really held bondage by our inordinate passion, desires, lust, greed, self interests, pleasure….
The Pope continued, "Freedom in this sense would mean that our own will is the sole norm of our action and that the will not only can desire anything but also has the chance to carry out its desire. At this point, however, questions begin to arise: how free is the will after all? And how reasonable is it? Is an unreasonable will truly a free will? Is an unreasonable freedom truly freedom? Is it really a good?... This notion itself narrowly restricts freedom to the rights of individual liberty, and has thus been robbed of its human truth."
The question "what is freedom?" is in the end no less complicated than the question "what is truth?"
Rev Fr James Yeo taught at his Catholic Moral Theology class:
“When freedom is seen as an absolute, moral chaos, relativism, subjectivism arise. And consequently, human conscience become the creator of what is good and evil. The human conscience becomes the creator of truth.
Instead of building a conscience based upon truth, society today has conscience invent what is truth, what is good and what is evil. And this leads to the disappearance of objective truth. And one then goes about looking for solutions that gives one peace, feel at ease, be happy with and we foolishly take these as truth."
St John Paul II said in his encyclical Veritatis Splendour [The Splendour of Truth]
"Certainly people today have a particularly strong sense of freedom…there is the insistent demand that people be permitted to "enjoy the use of their own responsible judgment and freedom, and decide on their actions on grounds of duty and conscience, without external pressure or coercion”…..
Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil…the notion of freedom must be tied to a measure of reality - to the truth."
And truth cannot be what we create. The world changes but truth is unchanging and it is absolute. 'I am the truth, the way and the life" John 4:16. Jesus is the truth. He was, He is and He will ever be.
He said in John 8:31-33 "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
If we live by the Word of God, we live in freedom, free to enjoy the fullness of life, The precepts of the Lord gives us freedom and enable us to live in the fullness of our human dignity as true heirs of the heavenly Kingdom. Only the truth makes us free.
May the Lord have mercy, open our hearts and give us wisdom.
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