Freedom is a Choice and a Responsibility

We sometimes use the term “freedom” when we actually mean “liberty.” According to one definition, “Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.” ¹ For example, you could be deprived of your liberty by being imprisoned, but you have the freedom to choose how you respond to your imprisonment. Or, a vehicle suddenly cuts in front of you while you are driving, not causing any physical injury or damage, but evoking within you emotions of fear and anger. You have the freedom to choose whether to allow your anger to control you and to retaliate, or to choose a different and better response.

Freedom is an act of reason and the will. It is part of our human nature as to how we voluntarily choose to respond to stimuli, whether it be external to us or arising from our own senses, thoughts, emotions or feelings. We are each responsible for the voluntary choices we make. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to “the slavery of sin."

1734 Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis [self-discipline] enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.

As Viktor E. Frankl, a psychiatrist and a survivor of Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War II states, “Everything can be taken from a [human being] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (Man's Search for Meaning).

Reflect on those occasions during your life where you have blamed events or others for the wrong or inappropriate choices you have made. Do you acknowledge and accept responsibility for your choices? Do you allow the Holy Spirit to guide your life? What virtues do you have and follow? What practices or other resources do you think could help you to make better and more reasoned choices?

1. Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Linberg (eds.), New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd ed.), (Oxford University Press, 2010).