America, GK Chesterton once said, is the only country that was founded upon a creed. This founding creed, while uniquely American in its articulation, was based, not on anything unique about America, but on what was common to all mankind. Jefferson captured this creed succinctly when he demanded of King George III that he recognize certain self-evident truths, namely, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Ever since then liberty has become an American buzzword, often cited but hardly ever defined and so making it prone to abuse. Such a foundation must be firm however or else the house that has been built upon it will collapse under its own weight. The Church has long recognized that a proper understanding of liberty was vital for the life of any society. It was in this spirit that Pope Leo XIII devoted an entire Encyclical, aptly entitled Libertas to explaining it.
In order to properly grasp the notion of liberty we must first discuss some related terms, the first of which is freedom. The modern idea of freedom is that it means a man can do what he wants. This makes freedom into an end rather than a means since the emphasis is merely on willing and not on the thing that is willed. So, while we may have the physical power to choose what we want, freedom is only truly itself when it is treated as the means of choosing what is good. Freedom is therefore a moral power.
Liberty and Ought
As soon as we enter the moral realm, we enter the world of ought. Freedom is related then to responsibility. This is a second important factor, especially in an age cluttered by rights language. We only have rights because we have responsibilities. We only have responsibilities because we have freedom that is oriented towards choosing those responsibilities. And we only have responsibilities because there are objectively good things that we must choose. Freedom is necessarily wedded to law as well.
Leo XIII summarizes the connection between freedom, responsibility and law in the already mentioned encyclical, Libertas (7)
“In man’s free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man’s actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.”
Summarizing we can say that although a man is master of his own actions because he has the power to choose between many alternatives, he is only free when he chooses what is good. If freedom has to do with our internal power, then liberty has to do with the external conditions related to the exercise of that internal power. Liberty clears the way for each man to fulfill his responsibility. Because liberty is connected to freedom which is connected to responsibility which is connected to what is truly good, “liberty is to be regarded as legitimate in so far only as it affords a greater facility for doing good, but no farther” (Leo XIII, Libertas 42).
Liberty should be limited only to that which is necessary for one to fulfill his responsibility. To go any further than that cause liberty to evolve into license. Those who go beyond responsibility “substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license” and therefore “follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry: ‘I will not serve’.” The devil is the author of license and he uses it to drag people into hell.
A Few Examples
A couple of examples that Leo XIII uses will help illustrate the point. Liberty of conscience must always be protected and promoted because each man has a responsibility to follow the will of God. He must have every obstacle removed from his path in fulfilling this duty. A man can never be forced to do what is evil. Liberty of conscience then must always and everywhere be protected to the point where it is treated as the supreme individual liberty. This liberty becomes especially important in our own day and age when there is a progressive movement towards State absolutism. Man must always have the liberty to disobey evil precepts. This liberty is usually the first one that is removed in the progression towards a regime that suppresses all true liberty.
A second liberty that he discusses is free speech. Although often treated in an absolute manner, it cannot be indifferent to truth and falsehood. Man has a responsibility to both know the truth and communicate only what is true. Therefore there must a liberty that protects this responsibility. As Leo puts it, “Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State” (Libertas, 23). There is no right to speak falsehood nor to speak (or display) that which corrupts morals. If this were better understood then we would not have the pornography problem that is protected by free speech.