Freedom

Venerable Pope John Paul II of happy memory and others have written that freedom is not the right to do whatever you necessarily want to do, but the ability to do what you ought to do (and what we ought to do is the good). That is, freedom is not and cannot be the right to destroy your freedom, it is not the right to be not-free, because then you would no longer have that freedom, which means that you do not have a right to do wrong because wrong, i.e. error and sin, always has the result of enslaving us to further error and sin. Rather, freedom is the ability to do good, which is what you ought to do.

And sometimes it is so that paradoxically, the man in prison might be more free than the one at large in society.

Living as we do, here in the “land of the free,” are we free? We are freer than many other countries, (and certainly freer than Nazi Germany), but are we truly free (in the realm of action if not thought)? Do we have the ability to do what we ought, to do the good, or does society or government set up barriers or even work against that ability? Or has grossly obese government so interjected itself into every aspect of life, and usurped our own personal obligations, that we no longer have any breathing room or ability to move in order to do the good? Do we have the ability to think and believe as we ought, to believe what is good, i.e. the truth, or has society and government been destructive of truth as well?

So long as we allow ourselves to be so caught up in society and/or government, in worldly things, then we can never be truly free. It is only by detaching ourselves from those chains and attaching ourselves to the good of love and truth (God) that we are set free.

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