Pope Benedict XVI on Freedom/HHS Mandate

Pope Benedict XVI on Freedom/ HHS Mandate
In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Birth of Mary, Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012

25 years ago, the Cardinal spoke his mind in his classic book, Co-Workers of the Truth, with the September 6th Meditation as follows:

Freedom has become almost a magic word. The cry for freedom that is heard throughout the world arises from a situation in which people have, perhaps, had a taste of freedom but feel, at the same time, that freedom is threatened and hemmed in on all sides.

We must, in fact, admit that, to a large extent, man had cast off the bonds of custom and tradition that, in the class-ordered society of former times, often circumscribed the possibilities of shaping his existence.

What practical conclusions can we draw from all this for the question of freedom in the deepest sense of the word, of opening up the possibility of sharing in the Divine Being. The fundamental organization of the Church’s freedom must therefore be to see that the faith and the sacraments, in which this sharing in the Divine Being is mediated, are accessible without diminution or adulteration.

The fundamental right of the Christian is the right to the whole Faith. The fundamental obligation that stems therefrom is the allegiance of all, especially of Church’s ministers, to the totality of the unadulterated Faith.

Only thus can the fundamental right of the faithful be preserved - the right to receive the Faith, to celebrate the liturgy of the Faith, and not to be exposed to the private opinions of the Church’s ministers. All other freedoms in the Church are subject to this basic freedom.

As for the world, the Church must defend the right to freedom of religion in a double sense: on the other hand, as the right to choose one’s religion freely in the sense of Vatican Council II’s statement on religious freedom; on the other hand, positively as the right to believe and to live as a believing Christian.

In this context belongs also the classic theme of the libertas ecclesiae, THE CHURCH’S RIGHT TO BE CHURCH AND TO EXIST IN HER OWN WAY.

The right to believe is at the heart of human freedom; where this right is lacking, it is only logical that all the other rights of freedom will also founder. This right is, at the same time, the true gift of freedom that the Christian Faith has brought into the world.

It was the Church that first severed the identification of state and religion, thus depriving the state of its totality, and, by separating faith from the political sphere, ensured to us that privacy of our own being with God and before God in which God calls us by a name that no one else knows (Rev 3:17).

FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE IS THE CORE OF ALL FREEDOM. Church authorities have, ultimately, no other task than to facilitate the ready perception of the divine will in conscience; to make conscience audible, pure, and free, and so to lead man to himself by leading him to God. Where ecclesial authority performs its task well and conscience is pure, the antimony of freedom and constraint will no longer exist.

George H. Kubeck