We’ve all been duped, from time to
time, by Hollywood’s magic. We
sit mesmerized by palaces and monuments, spaceships and ships at sea, ancient
villages and frontier towns, and even places that exist only on another planet.
Sometimes they’re only background pictures, or miniature models—but often
they’re full-size sets, mere facades of buildings propped up from behind,
beautiful balconies that beckon the hero through an elaborate doorway leading
nowhere.
Falling for such facades is part of the
make-believe pleasure movies give us, but real life is different. In life, we
need to know if an attractive image has any inner life beyond the entryway.
Lately we’ve been hearing “freedom”
ringing over our airwaves as repeatedly and rhythmically as the “Hail Mary” at
a Rosary meeting. For Americans the word has the sound of sacred truth—who can
be against freedom? And when “freedom” is linked to "democracy,” another
sacred sound, the call to arms can be irresistible.
So maybe it’s time for some straight talk
about freedom. It is an idea that was at the core of Christian faith from the
very start. Its meaning and importance have evolved and expanded enormously
over the course of Christian history. That history involves Christian theology,
ancient and Christian and modern philosophy, varied moral theories, as well as
a wide range of political philosophies emerging in recent centuries. That’s all
too much to sort through here, but several key points should help get past the
rhetoric to the reality:
Freedom is Not an Absolute Value. If everyone does whatever they want, they may be
free—but chaos and anarchy are the result. As the old saying goes, my freedom
to swing my arms ends at the tip of your nose. Total freedom may be impossible
if people are to live together, so restraints are always needed. Iraq offers
the perfect current example: until native police can ensure civil order, the
freedom people have to commit mayhem and murder will collide with other values:
the security and stability Iraq needs.
Freedom is not the Only Value. The American tradition links freedom to the Bill of
Rights. But our founders aimed at more than freedom: their slogan “Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” reminds us that securing the rights of
all is a balancing act among several sacred values. 
The French Revolution touted freedom too,
which is why the Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor as our oldest
ally’s gift to us. But the French balanced “Liberté” with “Egalité” and
"Fraternité,” and for more than 200 years the world has acknowledged that
all of these, not just liberty, are the “passwords to democracy.” And sometimes
those passwords conflict, and then freedom must be compromised. That’s why the
pro-life movement knows “freedom to choose” cannot be the only value, if life
is thereby jeopardized.
Elections do not produce Freedom. People choosing their own leaders is a good thing,
but freedom requires more than that. After all, Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union and Iraq under Saddam all had elections too. If democratic freedom lies
in “the consent of the governed,” then people are free only to the extent that
they have a voice in all the decisions that govern them: in public
policy, in corporate decisions, in the workplace and schools and social
organizations and the family and even in the Church.
Choosing which leaders to hire is only a
first step toward a real voice in all these areas. Even in America, we have a
long way to go before we extend freedom to all areas of our lives—and we’ve
been choosing our leaders for a long time (though male landowners have been
voting much longer than other males, or females, or blacks).
“Freedom” Can Isolate Us. Often our modern secular culture has redefined
“freedom” as a synonym for individual autonomy. To be “free” in this sense
means to be left alone, to be unrestrained, to be independent of any
obligations, to be subject to no authority except my own. To be “free” means to
escape all outside interference—it’s what people mean when they talk about
“getting government off our backs.” Carried to the extreme, of course, a “free
world” would be a world full of unencumbered individuals who submit to no
outside authority and owe each other nothing. This may be “rugged
individualism” in its purest form, but it is a far cry from the Christian
vision of a world where the golden rule binds us all together as our brothers’
and sisters’ keepers.
Freedom is not just a right. The rise of
modern democratic politics (since England’s Glorious Revolution in 1689) has
tended to reduce “Freedom” down to the idea of a human right—the right not to
be oppressed. Such “freedom” is merely an external condition that can be
legislated by public declarations, and constitutions, and Bills of Rights. In
Christian history, this external condition has often been called “formal
freedom.”
But Christians have traditionally believed
in another kind of freedom, often called “real freedom.” Real freedom isn’t
just an external condition or right that can be formally declared, it is
a capacity we find within us. Specifically, it is the power to act for
the good—not only our own good, but also the good of others.
This goes way beyond freedom from
oppression to define a freedom for facing up to life’s tough
choices. The very idea of “sin” depends on the recognition that we don’t always
make the right choices, even though we are free to do so. Christians have
generally believed, in fact, that we humans are incapable of consistently doing
the right thing without the help of God. On our own, we haven’t the power, the
“freedom for” the choices we should make. But God’s grace is, in Christian
faith, the force in our lives that supplies the power we need to do good.
That’s why St. Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free,” and “where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
All this means two things. First, true freedom is much more than we’re led to
believe by public leaders. It’s not just something you can produce, like
a rabbit from a hat, simply by holding an election or writing a constitution or
winning a war. Freedom is not merely a social and political condition we
humans create by public acts. It is a moral and spiritual capacity that
god creates within each of us.
Second, as people of faith, we cannot sell
freedom short, even if others do. Our first instincts are right—freedom is
a sacred truth. But God doesn’t offer us freedom for nothing, or just so we can
be independent from others. God expects us to respond to his grace, to
cooperate with the power he’s given us, to use our power to do his will. If we
treat freedom as mere independence or autonomy, we squander that gift and
insult its divine giver.
How do we honor the giver? By seeing past
the political facade of freedom to its spiritual interior. Popes Leo XIII and
Pius XII taught that our mission to re-form the world according to God's plan
relies on three spiritual forces: truth, justice, and love. In the early 1960s,
John XXIII added a fourth spiritual force: freedom.
So, as Americans we should see freedom as
the partner of “Life” and “The Pursuit of Happiness.” As democratic people, we
should set Freedom alongside “Equality” and “Fraternity.” And as people of faith,
we should embrace freedom as one of the forces the world needs—along with
Truth, Justice, and above all Love—if we are to make our world the kind of
place God wills it to become. Then we’ve found the fullness of freedom, well
beyond its façade.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2005
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