The Sunday homily usually reflects on the readings for that day. Typically, that means the Gospel and maybe the First Reading, which often is linked to the Gospel. The Second Reading is usually odd man out since in their wisdom the designers of the new Lectionary decided on a continual reading through St. Paul’s letters, not necessarily connected to the other two readings. But last Sunday, I wished the homily might have focused on the Opening Prayer (Collect). In it, we prayed “that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.”

What is “true freedom”? And if there’s “true freedom,” that suggests there’s also a “false freedom.”

“True freedom” is a problem of modern Western man, and especially Americans. This deserves exploration. I tackle the issue through the question: What is freedom for? Does freedom exist for something else? Or is freedom an end-in-itself?

Does freedom exist to enable something else or is freedom the goal of it all? That raises a further question: Is freedom an end or a means?

From a Catholic perspective, the answer is clear: freedom is a means that exists for the service of the good. Freedom exists because there is real good and real evil out in the world and I, as a moral actor, have to take sides. Freedom lets me choose good or evil and, in that choosing, freedom makes the good or the evil my good or my evil. Freedom makes the moral choice I make mine. Without freedom, I would be a robot, programmed to choose good or evil. But when freedom enters the picture, the moral choice no longer remains “out there.” It also comes “in here” — into me, into the person I choose to be: good or evil.

Note, however, that freedom and good/evil are two separate things. Freedom makes the good mine. It doesn’t make X good (or evil). That moral quality exists independently of freedom. Freedom creates responsibility, not morality.

That is “true freedom.” But, in American society at least, it often conflicts with a false notion of freedom, one that treats freedom as an end rather than a means. What matters is that I do what I do freely. That makes me “authentic,” “true to myself.”

Well, no.

If I freely choose to steal something, does that freedom sanitize the theft? Every robber breaking into your house presumably has freely chosen to pry your door open. Few breakers and enterers do so out of sheer compulsion. So, yes, the theft is free but nobody would say it’s good. Same with murder. Killing somebody doesn’t become “good” because you freely chose to cut someone’s throat. Lying isn’t less odious because you chose to lie through your teeth. If these examples sound tendentious, bear with me, because in our modern American society we are supposed to believe that this idea — freedom makes something good — suddenly applies when it comes to sex.

It’s the thinking behind the “ethic of choice,” the defense of abortion that pretends whether one chooses to have an abortion or not is simply a matter of “freedom,” the free choice making it a “good [for you] choice.” (The same line of thinking is also invoked when it comes to, say, artificial methods of reproduction, sex outside of wedlock, and to homosexual behavior. Adulterers usually also invoke it but generally don’t manage to find as receptive an audience.)

As I’ve shown, this line of thinking works in no other aspect of life. So, why do we pretend differently here? Because it is often more convenient for us.

This is not to say that treating freedom as an end-in-itself is just an excuse for moral evasion. It is, but not just an excuse. This exaltation of freedom was very much the mindset of secular existentialists, people like Albert Camus, for example. They very much paved the way for “free” and “authentic” choices right after World War II that played into the lifestyle libertinism born of the Sexual Revolution in the 1960s and later.

It is a false notion to imagine that “freedom” somehow puts us in a position of moral neutrality between good and evil, either being a “legitimate” choice for our freedom to choose. No — evil remains evil, good, good. “Freedom” that thinks it can stand indifferently before evil misunderstands itself. Freedom is not just inherently biased towards the good, it requires it: Choosing evil is to choose a false and destructive “freedom.” In a world where people regularly choose evil, have everybody’s choices become freer or less free? Ask the elderly person locked behind five deadbolts in a rundown part of town how free he is in that environment.

God gave us freedom not to make the good but to make the good our own. God already defined the boundaries of good and evil, boundaries man has been tempted to transgress in the name of a false idea of “freedom” since the beginning (“did God really say that you would die if…”). It’s why praying for the gift of “true freedom” that leads to “an everlasting inheritance” presupposes an awareness of what freedom is and isn’t. Because only “true freedom,” freedom at the service of the good, can enable us to receive the “everlasting inheritance” of our Highest Good, God. Unless we link freedom to that true good, we have neither.