FREEDOM CANNOT BE DIVORCED FROM TRUTH by Gary L. Morella
reedom separated from truth becomes license with anarchy the inevitable
result. Consider just what happens when A's rights conflict with
B's in the absence of universal, immutable, absolute truths. Just how is
this situation resolved?
It isn't because it ignores the existence of the natural law written on the
hearts of mankind. It isn't because it ignores the fact that authentic freedom
is a function of informed consciences which subordinate man and his activity to
God Who is Perfect Truth. It isn't because freedom is exalted to such an
extent that it becomes an absolute which would then be the source of values as
opposed to the Creator. It isn't because this is the direction taken by
doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent which are explicitly
atheist. It isn't because these doctrines would grant to individuals or social
groups the right to determine what is good or evil in a purely moral
relativistic sense. It isn't because it is a denial of the fact that the
natural moral law has God as its author, and that man, by the use of reason,
participates in the eternal law, which is not for him to establish. It isn't
because it embraces a false concept of the autonomy of earthly realities, one
which would maintain that created things are independent of God with man using
them without reference to his Creator - such a bogus concept of autonomy
producing baneful effects leading to atheism. It isn't because it ignores that
human freedom and God's law meet and are called to intersect, in the sense of
man's free obedience to God and of God's completely gratuitous benevolence
towards man. It isn't because man no longer has the ability to distinguish
between good and evil as students today are taught that there is no such thing
as right or wrong. It isn't because freedom is made self-defining and a
phenomenon creative of itself and its values taking nature away from man as he
becomes his own personal life-project being nothing more than his own freedom.
The practical judgment of conscience imposes on the person the
obligation to perform a given act making the link between freedom and truth
clear. Conscience expresses itself in acts of judgment which reflect the truth
and the good, and not in arbitrary decisions of a situational ethics nature
which makes truth relative. One needs to be guided by an insistent search for
truth in regard to actions performed, not on an alleged autonomy in personal
decisions where man is reduced to freedom with no soul.