What is true freedom?

by Fr. John Parks  |  03/03/2024  |  Weekly Reflection

As Americans, we tend to love freedom. Many of us hold dear our fundamental freedoms enshrined in the 1st Amendment—the right to free speech, to assemble, to freedom of religion, etc. But we often find today people on opposite sides of an issue invoking freedom as to why their position is correct. This begs the question—what is true freedom?

There is a long philosophical tradition that tied freedom to essence, i.e. before deciding what constituted freedom for a certain thing, one had to first establish what that thing is. In this tradition, something is most free when it is doing the thing it was created to do. It is called “freedom for excellence.” When is a train most free? When it is on its’ tracks. When is a sunflower most “free”? When it is following the sun. When I was a kid there was an anti-drug commercial in which you saw a man running down a street before a police officer entered the picture running after him while striking him with his night stick. After the man dramatically fell (and this was all done in slow-motion) you heard a deep and ominous voice say over the scene, “Nobody says I want to be a junkie when I grow up.” This is clearly in the “freedom for excellence” view, i.e. no one is created to be a slave to a chemical. We intuitively know we are not free when we are addicted to a substance that we cannot free ourselves from.

A second view of freedom has arisen called, “freedom of indifference.” In this view, freedom is simply an absence of restraint. It does not take into account “ends”, what a person is choosing but claims a person is free as long as they chose it. A person who holds this view would have to claim that the drug addict is free, after all, they have chosen it without restraint.

As Catholics, we are firmly in the “freedom for excellence” camp. As Jesus says, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). Thus, the truth is not an inhibitor to our freedom but rather is its’ fulfillment. Our freedom as persons is intimately bound up with the authority of God. Why? Because He alone made us, so He alone can tell us what we are made for. Choosing moral goodness and his will for our life is where true freedom is found.