We Americans have a thing about freedom. We didn’t invent freedom – even in the limited sense of political freedom – though we sometimes like to think (and occasionally act) as though we have an unbreakable monopoly on it. Land of the free, and all that.
Still, the American difference where freedom is concerned is not a difference in human nature. The deepest wellsprings of American freedom are not ours by virtue of being American but by virtue of our being human. And if there is a genius in our political traditions, it lies in a remarkable political system that we have not devised ourselves but only inherited.
Citizenship always has a custodial character to it. We are responsible for the maintenance and transmission of something precious we did not create. For most Americans, our citizenship is not even something we chose; we were born to it. You might even say that, for most Americans, the rights and responsibilities of citizenship were imposed upon us at birth. Not all impositions are unjust; some impositions are tremendous gifts.
Gifts can be taken for granted. Complacency and entitlement can slowly, even imperceptibly, choke out the virtues necessary for self-government. For a people to be free, they must be willing and capable of living freely.
And so the Church has always insisted that true freedom is more than the unfettered exercise of the will. Such freedom is not worthy of the name. It is a false freedom, which the ancients knew to be slavishness, however veiled by power it may be. This same false freedom, a disobedient freedom, alienates us from one another and from God as the third chapter of Genesis makes clear.
The Christian faith insists on another way to freedom, not through power, pride or mastery, but through obedience. Jesus himself lays this out plainly in the Gospel of John:
Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”
Many modern popes have warned about the consequences of divorcing freedom from truth, making it one of the perennial themes of Catholic social teaching, from Pope Leo XIII right through to today. As John Paul II wrote in 1991, the teachings of Leo XIII:
called attention to the essential bond between human freedom and truth, so that freedom which refused to be bound to the truth would fall into arbitrariness and end up submitting itself to the vilest of passions, to the point of self-destruction. Indeed, what is the origin of all the evils to which Rerum novarum wished to respond, if not a kind of freedom which, in the area of economic and social activity, cuts itself off from the truth about man?”
It goes without saying that this “truth about man,” to which our freedom is so intimately tied, has implications that extend far beyond questions of how we ought to order our economic, political, or social activity. Indeed, it has implications that go well beyond what we might ordinarily think of as ethical or moral considerations.
The “truth about man” proclaimed by the Church includes innumerable fundamental realities: that we are created and loved by God; that we exist as a union of mortal body and immortal soul; that we share a nature with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity who suffered and died to save us from sin; that we exist within and experience time and space; that we are both dependent upon and responsible to others; that we are contingent beings who are profoundly shaped by both our surroundings and our own actions; and so on.
Some of these truths, like the Incarnation, are known through revelation. Some of them are so plainly obvious through ordinary experience that it is almost impossible to imagine how they might be otherwise (e.g., existing within time). Some seem to extend the horizon of human possibilities (we have rational souls, immortal souls), and some seem to limit or confine us (we are mortal, contingent, and dependent).
Some of the most important truths about man have to do with the ordinary shape of human life. How we come into existence through the union of a man and a woman, how we are raised and nurtured, how we live together, and how we come to know and worship God.
It is sometimes difficult, even painful, to live within a family, responsible for, or dependent upon, persons to whom we are bound but whom we did not choose. Sometimes it is not easy to live in society, with its conventions and expectations of conformity, which can range from the tiresome and silly to perverse and violent. And even life within the Church can seem strained and discouraging at times, filled with sinners as it is.
At times, it may seem good to be free of all of these constraints. But here is another “truth about man”: the ties that bind us – to our families, to society, to the Church – are not constraints on our freedom; they are necessary to it. They are the very means, however distorted by sin, of our perfection.
Aristotle famously wrote that the one who is unable to live in society, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is either a beast or a god. Sever the ties that bind us to one another, and we will not become like gods – we have heard that lie before, and not from Aristotle. Sever the ties that bind, and what we are left with, if Aristotle is right, is to be less than what we were made to be: less perfect, less fully human, less free.
Thank God for the ties that bind us, and for the freedom they bring.
