Article 3: Man's Freedom

Catechism of the Catholic Church · Part Three › Section One › Chapter One · Article 3 (§§1730–1748)

Paragraphs · 19

The Catechism's text is under copyright, so each paragraph is quoted briefly here with a link to the full text at vatican.va.

§1730 — God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek…vatican.va

§1731 — Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility.vatican.va
§1732 — As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning.vatican.va
§1733 — The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just.vatican.va
§1734 — Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.vatican.va
§1735 — Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.vatican.va
§1736 — Every act directly willed is imputable to its author:vatican.va
§1737 — An effect can be tolerated without being willed by its agent; for instance, a mother's exhaustion from tending her sick child. , a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger.vatican.va
§1738 — Freedom is exercised in relationships between human beings. Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being.vatican.va

§1739 — Freedom and sin. Man's freedom is limited and fallible. In fact, man failed. He freely sinned. By refusing God's plan of love, he deceived himself and became a slave to sin.vatican.va
§1740 — Threats to freedom. the exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything. It is false to maintain that man, "the subject of this freedom," is "an individual who is fully self-sufficient and whose finality is the satisfaction of his own interests in the enjoyment of earthly goods."vatican.va
§1741 — Liberation and salvation. By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage.vatican.va
§1742 — Freedom and grace. the grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart.vatican.va

§1743 — "God willed that man should be left in the hand of his own counsel (cf Sir 15:14), so that he might of his own accord seek his creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him" (GS 17 # 1).vatican.va
§1744 — 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.vatican.va
§1745 — 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.vatican.va
§1746 — The imputability or responsibility for an action can be diminished or nullified by ignorance, duress, fear, and other psychological or social factors.vatican.va
§1747 — 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.vatican.va
§1748 — "For freedom Christ has set us free" (Gal 5:1).vatican.va