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Remarks by His Eminence Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

There is nothing more central to our life as a nation than the ideal of liberty. In our patriotic songs we hail our country as the “land of the free” and the “sweet land of liberty.” The American Constitution was composed, by its own account, “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Among our national monuments few are so prominent as the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, and the Freedom Statue on the dome
of the Capitol here in Washington. Abraham Lincoln, after describing our nation as one conceived in liberty, called for a new birth of freedom in his day. Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 proclaimed four essential freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

But when we reflect on the meaning of the word “freedom” we discover troubling disagreements and deviations. Perhaps because our nation was founded in protest against tyranny, we Americans have traditionally emphasized what may be called the negative pole of freedom: freedom from rather than freedom for. We speak as though it meant just the absence of external control. The
term thus becomes almost a synonym for independence or autonomy; the capacity of individuals to decide for themselves what they will think, what they will do, and what they will be.

Alan Wolfe, in a recent book (Moral Freedom, 2001), argues that human freedom has passed through several stages in its development. The eighteenth century, he writes, saw the triumph of economic freedom over the controlled economies of the previous century. The nineteenth century witnessed the victory of political freedom throughout the West. Monarchies were toppled and democracies established in most nations of Europe and North America. But even the founders of the American republic, according to Wolfe, stopped short. They did not have the audacity to break with the traditions of morality that had been handed down. They still lived in a moral universe dominated by virtue and restraint.

The twenty-first century, Wolfe predicts, will be the age of moral freedom. Rejecting any subservience to higher authority, men and women will take morality into their own hands and choose the norms by which they will be bound. The advent of the new age of moral freedom, he believes, is inevitable. Once people have the economic freedom to choose their cars and the political freedom to choose their candidates, they will not long be satisfied with letting others determine for them how they ought to live.

As a piece of reporting, Wolfe’s book does not lack merit. An increasing number of Americans, confused about the nature and scope of freedom, come perilously close to accepting the advice of the serpent to Eve: “If you disobey the commandment of God, you will not die. You and Adam will become like gods, masters of good and evil.” Consider the Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). The majority opinion, seeking to support abortion as a right, declared: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of human life.”

The idea that each individual should be free to decide who shall be treated as human without reference to objective norms is truly alarming. Could not Hitler have claimed the right to define human existence in a way that denied Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals the right to life? Would not Stalin and Mao Tse-tung have been delighted to hear that they could redefine morality to coincide with the interests of the Communist Party? Where will this process end?

Once freedom operates in a moral vacuum, it becomes meaningless. If each choice is as good as every other, there is nothing worth living or striving for. In such a situation, society decays. Many keen observers comment that the moral level of American society has been sinking. There have been alarming increases in murders, bank robberies, embezzlement, graft, cheating, sexual profligacy, divorce, abortion, and domestic violence. The prison population is soaring, the court dockets are overcrowded, and no end seems to be in sight. Our civilization seems to be gravitating toward hedonism and moral chaos. There are, of course, outstanding exceptions, as is evidenced by this distinguished gathering.

Our nation, to its credit, has helped to overthrow tyrannous regimes abroad. But it seems unable to create anything more than a moral vacuum, which is hastily filled by the demons of fraud, drugs, and violence. In post-Communist and post- Taliban societies too many citizens begin to hanker for a return of the ousted rulers, who provided a least a minimum of order and security.

The basic error, I suggest, is the practice of defining freedom in terms of its negative pole alone. To be free from coercion would be pointless unless we were free for something. Every choice requires that the will be actuated by an object that is, or appears to be, good. As rational beings we are required to discern what is truly and abidingly good. Positively defined, freedom is the quality of choices that are made responsibly with a view to goodness and truth.

Freedom, therefore, cannot be divorced from truth. Where truth appears in all its radiant beauty, we can embrace it with the fullness of freedom. In heaven the saints will look upon God in all his infinite beauty and be so attracted to him that they could not, even if they wished, turn away. Their love of God, while necessary, is preeminently free.

At a prayer breakfast we are invited to reflect on the religious dimension of freedom. Jesus Christ, who is truth itself, teaches us that the truth will make us free (John 8:32). To be truly free we must liberate ourselves from illusions and unruly desires. The supreme paragon of freedom is Jesus himself, who freely laid down his life for the redemption of the world because the Father had so commanded him. In the Gospel we heard at Mass this morning, Jesus asserts that he came not to do his own will, but the will of the Father, who sent him. If his obedience could be free, so can ours.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote: “Man was born free but everywhere he is in chains.” He might better have written: Born with a cauldron of seething passions, we progressively enslave ourselves giving in to our weaknesses, our bad habits, and eventually our addictions. Christ alone can set us free. By welcoming him into our lives, we can enjoy the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Nothing is so liberating as the love of God. Most human beings, driven as they are by the attractions of ease and comfort, can easily be manipulated by threats and by torture. But the martyrs, with their hearts set on God alone, are able to stand up against every human adversary. Except for Christ, the saints are the freest persons on earth.

St. James, in the text I have chosen for this talk, speaks of the “perfect law of liberty.” The phrase is a conundrum to anyone who thinks that freedom is the opposite of law. But for the Christian, just laws mark out paths by which freedom can grow to its full stature. James is speaking of the law of God, which he also calls the “royal law” (James 2:8). He is no doubt consciously echoing the nineteenth Psalm, in which we read: “The law of God is perfect, refreshing the soul. The decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple.” James, of course, does not stop with the Law of the Old Testament. He makes it clear that God’s law is most perfectly revealed in the Son of God, the “Lord of Glory” who has prepared an eternal Kingdom for those who love him (James 2:1, 5).

We Americans, blessed as we are with a great heritage of freedom, have a special responsibility to keep the torch of freedom burning and prevent it from being veiled by a cloud of misinterpretation. Freedom can be a great blessing when it is enlightened by a sense of responsibility and a love of truth. If we as individuals and as a nation can regain the authentic concept, we shall have a source of deep interior satisfaction and a precious gift to be shared with others still in search of it. There is hardly any concept, I submit, that is so necessary for our personal lives, for our national welfare, and for the leadership that our nation is called to give in the contemporary world.