True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.
Interpretation
True freedom involves moral responsibility rather than allowing any behavior under the guise of freedom.
In this quote, Pope John Paul II emphasizes that genuine freedom is not simply the absence of constraints or the freedom to behave without ethical considerations. True freedom requires a framework of moral values that guide individuals and societies, suggesting that a lack of these values ultimately undermines both freedom and peace.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about the ethical implications of freedom in political debates.
Like so many pilgrims before us, we kneel in wonder and adoration before the ineffable mystery which. was accomplished here... In This Child - the Son who is given to us - we find rest for our souls and the true bread that never fails - the Eucharistic Bread foreshadowed even in the name of this town: Bethlehem, the house of bread. God lies hidden in the Child; divinity lies hidden in the Bread of Life
And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential except this: father, child, and love. And then, looking at the simplest things, we will all say, Could we have not learned this long ago? Has this not always been embedded in everything that is?
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
Man matures through work which inspires him to difficult good.
United with the angels and saints of the heavenly Church, let us adore the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Prostrate, we adore this great mystery that contains God's new and definitive covenant with humankind in Christ.
I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.
To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage._x000D_ Minds innocent and quiet take that for a hermitage:_x000D_ If I have freedom in my love, and in my Soul I am free,_x000D_ Angels alone, that soar above, enjoy such liberty.
Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.
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