There are many examples of this mistaken idea of freedom, such as the elimination of human life by legalized or generally accepted abortion.
Interpretation
This quote underscores the misconception of freedom as the absence of restraints, particularly in matters of life and ethical decisions.
Pope John Paul II highlights the danger of interpreting freedom in a way that permits actions like abortion, which can undermine the sanctity of human life. He suggests that true freedom should not lead to the disregard for life, and warns against societal acceptance of practices that contradict moral and ethical standards.
In practice
During a lecture on ethics, one might cite this quote to discuss the moral implications of personal freedom.
True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.
Like so many pilgrims before us, we kneel in wonder and adoration before the ineffable mystery which. was accomplished here... In This Child - the Son who is given to us - we find rest for our souls and the true bread that never fails - the Eucharistic Bread foreshadowed even in the name of this town: Bethlehem, the house of bread. God lies hidden in the Child; divinity lies hidden in the Bread of Life
And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential except this: father, child, and love. And then, looking at the simplest things, we will all say, Could we have not learned this long ago? Has this not always been embedded in everything that is?
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
Man matures through work which inspires him to difficult good.
United with the angels and saints of the heavenly Church, let us adore the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Prostrate, we adore this great mystery that contains God's new and definitive covenant with humankind in Christ.
Earth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.
Your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view to emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country; but I despair of seeing it.
Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.