Freedom And Responsibility
“Where is Abel your brother?” Can be interpreted as “ I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”(Gen: 4:9). Yes, everyman is his ‘brother’s keeper’, because God entrusts us to one another. And it is also in view of this entrusting that God gives everyone freedom, a freedom which posses an inherently relational dimension. This is a great gift of the Creator, placed as it is at the service of the person and of his fulfillment through the gift of self and openness to others; but when freedom is made absolute in its original content, and its very meaning and dignity are contradicted.
There is an even more profound aspect which needs to be emphasized: freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objectives and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of references for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim.
“Where is Abel your brother?” Can be interpreted as “ I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”(Gen: 4:9). Yes, everyman is his ‘brother’s keeper’, because God entrusts us to one another. And it is also in view of this entrusting that God gives everyone freedom, a freedom which posses an inherently relational dimension. This is a great gift of the Creator, placed as it is at the service of the person and of his fulfillment through the gift of self and openness to others; but when freedom is made absolute in its original content, and its very meaning and dignity are contradicted.
There is an even more profound aspect which needs to be emphasized: freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objectives and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of references for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim.
Courtesy to "Evangelium Vitae" (19)
ENCYCLICAL LETTER BY POPE JOHN PAUL II
posted by PRIESTS OF THE SACRED HEART, ELURU at 3:08 pm
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