cozcommunio

Well I disagree.

I believed in freedom before I had a firm foundation for my belief in freedom. As a teenager I was attracted to anti-authoritarian writers and anarchist. After I finished four years at a Catholic High School I rejected Catholicism and Christianity. During college I added a strong belief in the advantages of free-market economics to my anti-authoritarianism. At that time I loosely returned to considering myself a Christian but my faith was not very developed or strong.

In my early 40s after I read George Weigel’s biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope (my favorite book) I had the cornerstone to my foundation for freedom. Weigel’s book brought my religious and political beliefs in concord. As I read and study more on my Catholic faith I find it strengthens and reinforces my political beliefs in freedom. As a free-market liberal who believes in limited government, rule of law and a free market economic system that allows individuals to determine their own lives, my faith reinvigorates my desire to help build a free, flourishing and peaceful society.

I’m a Christian because I believe in our redemption through Jesus Christ. I believe in the good news of love and forgiveness of Christ. No matter what we have done in our past we always have another chance through Christ. Alex de Tocqueville once wrote, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” The freedom to act and make adjustments along the way is what makes America such a great country. Free will is about making the choice to do what is right - to make the right corrects as we go done our path in life.

To me the Catholic Church is Christ’s bridge to God. The Church teaches and believes that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. The Catholic Church almost alone stands radically in defense of man’s free will and thus man’s God given right to freedom. With free will comes personal responsibility. I believe that this free will is God’s design of man’s nature. Catholicism defends the dignity and value of every individual and is a proponent of the flourishment and love of life. The Church claims to be universal and it is. It is the most long-lived institution in the world.

Here is a paraphrase from my favorite author, George Weigel:

The Catholic Church’s steady insistence that faith involves truths and obligations, that those obligations demand certain choices can be intimidating, even repellent. Catholicism is about affirmation: the affirmation of humanity, and of every individual human life, by a God passionately in love with his creation. Everyone is of infinite value, because every human being is a player in a great comic drama with eternal consequences – a drama in which God is both playwright and protagonist.

Let me finish with a final word from Alex de Tocqueville again: “Freedom is, in truth, a sacred thing. There is only one thing else that better deserves the name: virtue. But then what is virtue if not the free choice of what is good?”

George Weigel in a recent column ask the question ” What’s right about the West, about this unique civilizational enterprise formed by the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome - biblical religion, rationality, and the idea of a law-governed polity?”

The short answer is Openness, Freedom, Knowledge, Generosity, Beauty, and Humor.

The full article is brief check it out:

http://www.archden.org/dcr/news.php?e=461&s=3&a=9710

The following are remarks made by John Paul II on December 16, 1997 on the importance of the great American experiment:

The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain “self-evident” truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by “nature’s God.” Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called “ordered liberty”: an experiment in which men and women would enjoy equality of rights and opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and in service to the common good. Reading the founding documents of the United States, one has to be impressed by the concept of freedom they enshrine: a freedom designed to enable people to fulfill their duties and responsibilities toward the family and toward the common good of the community. Their authors clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability, and no happiness without respect and support for the natural units or groupings through which people exist, develop, and seek the higher purposes of life in concert with others.

The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways. Millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic. Their commitment to build a free society with liberty and justice for all must be constantly renewed if the United States is to fulfill the destiny to which the Founders pledged their “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor.”

John Dickinson, Chairman of the Committee for the Declaration of Independence, said in 1776: “Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of preexisting rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth.” Indeed it may be asked whether the American democratic experiment would have been possible, or how well it will succeed in the future, without a deeply rooted vision of divine providence over the individual and over the fate of nations.

The Principle of Subsidiarity is a concept that the Catholic church teaches that many of my freedom loving friends would appreciate. It is also a concept that quit a number of the American Catholic Bishops don’t understand.

The following comments are from a piece David Bosnich for the Acton Institute.

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

As our founding fathers made clear in The Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution was designed to leave many issues of great importance in the hands of the states. The federal government was to do only those things which the individual states could not effectively do for themselves. The subsidiarity principle was at work in the foundation of our nation. But from the New Deal era onwards, there has been a steady growth in federal power at the expense of the states. This has sparked a renewed interest in the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or to the people.

John Paul II wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility.

Link to full essay:

http://www.acton.org/publications/randl/rl_article_200.php