Freedom and a Critical conscience today

Joo Batista Libnio

I. Conscience and freedom. In the wonderful process of evolution, life reaches its summit in the human being who is characterized by conscience and freedom. By consciousness we become present to our self. We know who we are; that we exist and are the subject and living source of decisions. We do not confuse our self with any other being. We are simply fully identified with our own self. Everything else appears different from who we are. We are an unmistakable, unique identity. Our consciousness maintains this self awareness it keeps the flame burning. When that flame goes out, we slide into the night of madness or into an infirm unconsciousness. At death, consciousness will cease and we will open up to the infinity of God. Until then we are always becoming, that is, we keep coming into being. Together with consciousness of our becoming present to our selves, there is the perception that we are autodeterminant. We make choices for which we perceive ourselves as ultimately responsible. Our action of yesterday remains on the horizon of our existence beyond that moment of time. We are free. The instant of clarity about that decision is very self evident to us. If someone should ask us who is the subject of a certain action we would answer: I am. This is where our axis of freedom becomes evident. We make a decision not simply about something, but about our very selves. All this sounds quite obvious. We would be moving from clarity to clarity. Our decisions would be being made with complete transparency of freedom of conscience and assumption of responsibility. For scholastic philosophers that is how angels act: they can never repent after a decision; their complete being is oriented to a determined direction: without cracks or seams. But we are different. Our presence to our self is not in fullness. The difficulty comes from the fact that we are spirit bound by matter to time and space. Moreover sinfulness blurs the transparency of our acting and concupiscence splits our integrity. We lack total clarity about our self. We have to reflect on our self so that in a second moment we can acquire an increasing perception of our self and of our decisions. We call this process a critical conscience. II. Barriers for a critical conscience. 1 Lack of clarity about interiority. Conscience
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Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

is blocked by both the lack of clarity about interiority as well as by the failure to distinguish clearly between what results from human freedom and what comes from nature. We easily attribute actions to nature which actually and ultimately arise from human freedom, and vice versa. Even more, sometimes we attribute to God that which simply is part of the laws of nature. Not discerning between human actions, the forces of nature and Gods activity can block critical awareness and the exercise of freedom. Such confusion comes sometimes from a literal interpretation of Sacred Scripture which reflects a different cultural moment. It is not uncommon that instead of analyzing the natural causes, we wonder whether an accident occurred as Gods punishment for our sins. 2. The family situation. The macho patriarchal conception of family also can block a critical conscience. The fathers authority can prevent other members of the family from developing their own critical conscience and exercising their freedom. They become prisoners of fear and end up simply following the rules and orders of the father. Where patriarchy reigns, there is no forming of a critical conscience. Vertical authority restricts the field of freedom and autonomy which form the absolutely necessary base for a critical conscience. 3. A traditional magical religious vision. To the influence of nature and family must be added magical religious traditions. They attribute our day to day happenings to the continual actions of God, Our Lady, the angels, to saints and or to demons. These traditions are not infrequently confirmed by the preaching of the clergy and other leaders who exploit popular credibility. What happens to people is frequently interpreted as either a punishment or blessing by God upon those who follow or breach regulations of some religious institution. Religious imagining ends up destroying human liberty. 4. An ideological closed circle. Theory and practice grow stronger without critical questioning. The difficulty of developing a critical conscience often results from living within an ideological closed circle. Our actions are strengthened by motivations, arguments and reasons that we have been taught to accept as normal, like actions that politically free us from making a commitment to transform reality and nevertheless justify us and save our conscience. For example: our having done an act of charity, even though we allow the structural

Translation by Justiniano Liebl

exploitation to keep on existing. Paulo Freire developed the method of conscience raising precisely to help people become aware of their rights and dignity when faced with being subjected to a situation of oppression hidden beneath an alienating discourse. Without this warning through conscientization, we simply confirm the dominant ideology fed to us. Freedom must become part and parcel of our ideological fabric. 5. The obstacles of the unconscious. Freudian psychoanalysis and other psychological approaches study the human person and the depth of its decisions. They call attention to the unconscious drives, sometimes terribly powerful, obscuring conscience and impelling a person to actions beyond its freedom. The person believes that it is acting conscientiously, with freedom and responsibility, but technical therapeutic resources uncover unconscious mechanisms that reduce or even nullify its freedom. Neurotic acts diminish freedom and conscience, and psychotic wounds can even void them completely. III. Between extremes, Most people live between two extremes: unconscious and purely mechanical procedures on one hand, and on the other hand transparent lucidity of our freedom of conscience. This means we live within the gap between awareness and unconsciousness, freedom and determinism. So it is worth our while to ask ourselves how to achieve greater clarity of conscience and freedom. 1. Recourse to science. Science frees us from cultural backwardness and blind linkage to nature. Happenings that we had thought were supernatural are now explained perfectly by scientific laws: for example attributing rain to a religious procession. Science teaches us to distinguish explanations of phenomena from any religious meaning that we might assign to them. Science helps free ourselves from much guilt. Previously consciences of people were weighed down with guilt from actions that we now recognize as resulting from unconscious determinism or uncontrollable conditioning. 2. God created us free. The road to freedom begins with the realization that freedom is found to an absolute and infinite degree first in God. God makes us free to live in grace and so we love God. Without freedom we could not relate to anyone; we would just live immersed in external or internal constraints. The freedom with which God created us makes us able to offer our complete availability to Him. It goes beyond a freedom to choose between things, which is what the capitalist system so strongly promotes. Godgiven freedom has a double aspect: free from and free to.

3. Freedom from. Freedom from has no limits when faced with creation. Jesus demonstrated this with his life and Paul put it into words. Nothing was more sacred to the Jew than The Law. Faced with The Law Jesus felt free. He cured on The Sabbath. He went up to and touched lepers. He didnt carry out the prescribed ritual hand washings. He spoke publicly with women. He permitted a prostitute to touch him. In his preaching he downplayed their strict requirements and used strong invective against the legalistic spirit of the Pharisees. In short, His freedom came first, whenever at stake was a human value like health, acceptance, forgiveness, or the carrying out of His mission. Saint Paul, strongly influenced by his experience of the Risen Christ, carries out his experience of this freedom to the very extreme. Christ set us free, so that we should remain free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be fastened again to the yoke of slavery. (Gal. 5:1) Yes, brothers, you were called to be free. (Gal 5:13). You are living not under law, but under race.(Rom 6:14). 4. Freedom to. Freedom from is not self-orientated. It exists in order to have freedom to. This is not self-seeking nor aimed at a life without order. We are free for God and for the welfare of our brothers. Thats how our freedom reaches fulfillment; in one word, our freedom exists so that we can love. Peter and Paul round it up this way: You are slaves of no one except God, so behave like free people, and never use your freedom as a cover for wickedness. (I Peter, 2:16) Do not use your freedom as an opening for self-indulgence, but be servants to one another in love. (Gal. 5: 13) 5. Critical awareness and freedom: greatness and limitations. Critical awareness helps us to perceive the greatness of the gift of freedom and also its limits. Freedom is difficult for us because of the responsibility involved for us and for others. We have been formed for liberty. It definitely shapes our existence. It exceeds the here and now. It has a dimension that is absolute, and which is manifested in the relativity of its decisions Its limits arise from our inherent imperfections in knowing, loving and making decisions. Created freedom is oriented towards its final end. Its greatness comes from being fulfilled in God and eternity, and continuing to move in that direction by means of achievements in our concrete history.It is only by balancing our critical conscience with our liberty that we can move forward in a way that is clearly in accord with our human intelligence. q
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