People tend to disparage the Catholic Church as being legalistic, obsessed with strict, burdensome rules. Critics proclaim that “all those rules” rob people of their fun, making life tedious and boring. The rules are seen as either arbitrary, irrelevant to people’s real lives, or worse still intentionally limiting, opposing people’s ability to thrive.
This criticism results from confusion, a misunderstanding of both freedom and the purpose of laws. God’ laws, revealed both in Sacred Scripture through things like the commandants and in Sacred Tradition in the form of Church teaching, are rooted in love. God gave us his laws, his commandments, as a gift. They are rooted in the reality of who we are, and they serve to safeguard for us the path to happiness. God did not want us to live in darkness and confusion, grasping for meaning, stumbling blindly, with a vain hope that we might strike upon the path that leads to life. Rather he poured out his light upon, the light of revelation, making known to us how we are to live.
Each of the commandments is a manifestation of God’s great love for us. We were created to be in relationship with him. He wants us to know that we can trust in him, in his providence, that we do not have to rely on our strength or abilities. Therefore, he gives us commandments that protect that relationship, reminding us of the truth of who he is, acknowledging the goodness and power of his name, and providing time for us both to worship and to rest.
Likewise, God gave us commandments to safeguard our relationships with one another. We are created in his image and likeness, the image and likeness of a God who by his nature is in relationship. It is in our nature to be in relationship with one another, and in order for those relationships to be rightly ordered we need to treat one another with dignity and respect, refraining from violations like violence, deceit, and envy.
None of those commandments are burdensome and none of them restrict our freedom. They only seem to restrict our freedom because we have come to confuse the concept of freedom with that of license. License, or licentiousness, means a complete disregard for the law, for what is morally good. It means doing whatever pleases you in the moment. Many people now define freedom in the same way, reducing it to simply being able to act however they want without restraint.
In reality freedom is so much greater than simply doing whatever I please. Freedom is a faculty of soul created in the image of God. God is a free being and he created us to be free like him. Freedom is ordered towards the good; truly free acts are those that lead us closer to God, acts of virtue that make us more like him and more fully who we were created to be. We do have the ability to choose sin, but doing so is an abuse, a misuse use of our capacity and rather than enhancing our freedom, leaves us enslaved.
God, who by his nature is a free, loving, and relational being, created us for life, for the fullness of joy. Through the gift of the law, commandments, and moral teaching, he lovingly marks out for us the path that leads to life. He saves us from slavery to self and spares us the fear and confusion of floundering directionless in the dark. The law flows from love and leads to freedom. The Church, promulgating precepts, does her sacred duty, passing on to us the loving revealed path of life entrusted to her for just that purpose.
Prose for the sake of Poetry 