In Brief

“God willed that man should be left in the hand of his own counsel,1 so that he might of his own accord seek his creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”2

Freedom is the power to act or not to act, and so to perform deliberate acts of one’s own. Freedom attains perfection in its acts when directed toward God, the sovereign Good.

Freedom characterizes properly human acts. It makes the human being responsible for acts of which he is the voluntary agent. His deliberate acts properly belong to him.

The imputability or responsibility for an action can be diminished or nullified by ignorance, duress, fear, and other psychological or social factors.

The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in religious and moral matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of man. But the exercise of freedom does not entail the putative right to say or do anything.

“For freedom Christ has set us free.”3