The plight of modern man and the divorce between freedom and truth

“There is no ideal for which we can sacrifice ourselves, because we know the lie behind them all, we who do not know what truth is.” André Malraux’s bitter observation, which denounces the existential hesitation in modern man caused by the divorce between freedom and truth, is borne out by various social indicators: falling birth rates in Western countries, a sign of mistrust in the future; rising rates of mental health disorders and suicides, increased use of psychotropic substances, incidents of violence, school drop-out rates and unemployment – all indicative of youth distress; a lack of long-term planning and difficulty in forming lasting bonds, indicative of emotional precariousness.

In this scenario, where truth is denied and freedom is asserted as unlimited power, in accordance with the Nietzschean ideal of the will to power (Wille zur Macht), which reveals the nihilistic concept of freedom without truth, every opinion appears equally plausible and action is subject to immediate reaction. The ‘emotivist self’ (A. MacIntyre) emerges, adopting feeling and experience as the criteria for choice, thereby illustrating the psychological contraction of moral conscience, which is the victim of an emotional regression. This concerns the private sphere, defined in emotional terms and fuelled by the ‘cult of emotions’ (M. Lacroix), as well as the public sphere, where new rights – in the fields of bioethics and sexuality – are gaining ground, interpreting the fundamental experiences of being born, loving and dying in a subjectivist light, subordinating the law to individual inclinations and tastes: “This approach trivialises fundamental rights within a hedonistic, consumerist and relativistic framework, whereas these rights ought to correspond to profound needs (if not objective, then at least intersubjective, and generally stable over time and universal across space)” (A. Spadaro).

The experimentalist approach, which conceives of ‘experiencing’ as the accumulation of experiences – whether in the rationalist sense of conducting controllable experiments or the irrationalist sense of emotional experimentation – is, however, marred by two critical flaws. It fails to satisfy the concept of freedom, in that one is truly free only when one chooses and decides for oneself with regard to what one recognises as true: the power of choice does not constitute the ontological foundation of freedom; rather, it is an expression of its exercise within a context, which is realised through adherence to the truth. It reduces the act of experiencing to the realm of immediacy, whereas experience denotes lived experience insofar as it is meaningful: one gains experience when one reflects on one’s lived experience and brings it back to a unity of meaning. It is therefore urgent to reclaim freedom from the notion that it is reducible to the capacity for autonomous choice, free from constraints (libertas indifferentiae), and to understand it as the harmonious collaboration of intellect and will oriented towards the truth about the good, enabling the subject to decide on the basis of valid reasons (libertas electionis). This enables a transition from the moment of action in which the act is an experiment—through which the subject seeks themselves—to the moment in which the act is a promise, through which the subject commits themselves to that which they recognise as imbued with value and worthy of dedication. The lesson of John Henry Newman Freedom is capable of self-determination (autexousion), but it possesses neither its own foundation nor its own realisation, which can only be found beyond itself. This is why freedom, deprived of truth, remains without reference points and becomes subservient to individual interests and desires. In this context, in which human action appears unfounded and arbitrary, conscience loses its original role as a witness to the truth and becomes an unquestionable subjective opinion. This is what modern indifferentism preaches: it denies any reference point superior to the individual and distorts conscience, reducing it to a personal opinion.

John Henry Newman stands against this misrepresentation. In his ‘Letter to the Duke of Norfolk’, he emphasises that ‘conscience has rights because it has duties’: to seek out and submit to the truth. Conscience judges and distinguishes commendable actions from reprehensible ones, not as the proponent of the norm, according to the modern immanentist principle, but by virtue of the divine law in which it shares: “This law, insofar as it is perceived by the minds of individual men, is called conscience”. Far from being reducible to subjective whim, conscience represents transcendence within the person: “Conscience is the voice of God, whilst today it is fashionable to regard it as a creation of man […] When people appeal to the rights of conscience, they mean the right to think, speak, write and act according to their own judgement and whim, without giving God a second thought’. ‘Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ, prophetic’, in that it speaks through the mouth of God and enables us to learn the divine law, commanding good and forbidding evil. As an echo of God’s voice, it must be heeded before any other voice; which is why, “if I were obliged to introduce religion into toasts after a meal (which, in truth, does not strike me as the best idea), I shall toast, if you please, the Pope; yet first to Conscience, then to the Pope”. Of course, the individual must be open to the formation of conscience, which does not exercise its judgement automatically, as rationalist innatism maintains. The orientation towards the good develops through an educational process, aimed at refining the moral principles that the conscience possesses in a nascent form: “Conscience is a principle inscribed within us before we have received any education, although education and experience are necessary for its vigour, its growth and its proper formation”.

In his "Grammar of Assent", Newman distinguishes between the ‘moral sense’ – which is reason’s judgement on the goodness or badness of an action – and the ‘sense of duty’ – which is the command to perform the action recognised as good whilst avoiding the bad one: ‘The feeling of conscience … is twofold: it is at once a moral sense and a sense of duty; a judgement expressed by reason and an authoritative dictate’. This means that, being “imperious and binding, unlike any other command we have experience of … conscience directly influences our affections and emotions”. Newman then notes that following the command of conscience produces joy and peace, whilst transgressing the dictates of conscience produces shame and fear. This reveals the nature of conscience, the place where we encounter God: “All this implies that there is a Being to whom we are accountable.”

Newman’s analysis helps to resolve the modern controversy over conscience, which pits the liberal principle – according to which conscience is a personal opinion capable of determining what is good and evil, over which no one has the authority to judge – against the dogmatic principle, according to which conscience is a faculty that judges what is good and evil, enlightened by the light of Truth. In the "Sermons" we read: ‘As for the moral conscience, there are two ways in which man may conceive of it. In the first, the conscience is merely a form of intuition regarding what is appropriate, a tendency that inclines one towards one thing or another. In the second, it is the echo of God’s voice. Now everything depends on this difference. The first way is not that of faith; the second is that of faith’. In the “Letter-Speech” addressed to Pope Leo XIII on the occasion of his creation as a cardinal, Newman states that he has always opposed the liberal principle, which denies any positive truth and reduces diverse expressions to equivalent opinions, setting against it the dogmatic principle, according to which there is but one truth which all must seek and accept. Newman thus preaches the binding force of truth, which demands that freedom listen to and obey it, as he writes in "The Development of Christian Doctrine": ‘There is but one truth; religious error is by its very nature immoral; the followers of error, unless they are unaware of it, are guilty of being its supporters … our spirit is subject to the truth; it is therefore not superior to it and is bound not so much to discourse upon it as to revere it’.

Martyr-like attitude The human soul is driven by a search for meaning, to which the Augustinian inspiration gives voice: ‘Quid enim fortius desiderat anima quam veritatem?’. The question that has always troubled humankind is whether there exists a truth to which one must submit, a good worthy of the effort of living, a cause to which one might dedicate one’s existence. Indeed, life is not wasted provided it is dedicated to that which transcends it and gives it meaning, in the words of the poet: “Is the purpose of life merely to live? Not to live, but to die and joyfully give away what we have! Herein lies joy, freedom, grace, eternal youth … What is life worth if not to be given away?” (P. Claudel).

The answer to this question is provided by the figure of the martyr, who upholds the absoluteness of the moral order and obeys the truth usque ad sanguinem. Several figures stand out in Scripture. Susanna, who rejects the advances of two unjust judges, concluding, ‘It is better to fall innocent into your hands than to sin before the Lord’ (Dan 13:23). Seven brothers who, faced with the Hellenisation of customs imposed by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, decided to “die rather than transgress the laws of their country” (2 Maccabees 7:2). John the Baptist, who shunned all compromise, proclaimed the law of God and taught that to give one’s life for the truth is to give it for Christ: “There is no doubt that John suffered as a witness to our Redeemer, for he was to prepare the way for him. He gave his life for him, even though he was not commanded to deny Christ, but only to keep silent about the truth. Nevertheless, he died for Christ. Christ said, ‘I am the truth’; therefore, he shed his blood for Christ, for he shed it for the truth” (the Venerable Bede). Stephen, who, before being stoned to death, entrusts himself to Jesus and prays that He may not hold any sin against his tormentors. In this way, he epitomises the figure of the martyr, who gives himself in obedience to Jesus for the good of his neighbour—including his own executioner—in imitation of Christ, who gives his life to the very end, placing it in the Father’s hands and imploring Him to forgive his persecutors.

The Church also holds up the example of numerous figures of holiness who, throughout history, have been prepared to ‘forfeit their possessions, their homeland and even their lives, rather than swear against their conscience’ (T. More). They defended the truth to the point of martyrdom, sustained by the virtue of fortitude, which is excellence in the ability to overcome obstacles in order to do good. Its integral parts are magnanimity, which is the capacity to decide with readiness of spirit; magnificence, which is the capacity to accomplish great deeds; patience, which is the capacity to endure adversity; and perseverance, which is the capacity to persist in virtuous tasks and works. The call to place oneself at the feet of the martyrs stems from the fact that ‘such a witness makes a contribution of extraordinary value so that, not only in civil society but also within the ecclesial communities themselves, we do not fall into the most dangerous crisis that can afflict humankind: the confusion between good and evil, which makes it impossible to build and preserve the moral order of individuals and communities’ (Veritatis splendor, no. 93).

Martyrdom and mission: The martyr is the archetype of every believer, called to proclaim the Gospel: “Witness, the martyrion, is not so much a matter of death as a matter of life in every moment; death for Christ is merely the extreme situation of a vital, daily struggle for Christ” (H.U. von Balthasar). This is particularly evident in the present day, when anti-Christian intolerance manifests itself in overt persecution, mostly in non-Western countries, but also in covert forms, mostly in Western countries, which marginalise and deride the Church, especially its moral teaching, as Benedict XVI points out: “The real threat to the Church comes from the universal dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies, to contradict which entails exclusion from the social consensus. A hundred years ago, anyone would have considered it absurd to speak of same-sex marriage; today, those who oppose it are socially discredited. The same applies to abortion and the creation of human beings in laboratories. Modern society seeks to formulate an anti-Christian creed: those who challenge it are punished with social excommunication.”

The accuracy of this diagnosis is documented by Jérôme Lejeune, a pioneer of modern genetics, the discoverer of trisomy 21 and an internationally renowned scientist, who in the early 1970s criticised the proposed French legislation aimed at decriminalising abortion, thereby facing stigma from the scientific community. Lejeune took part in public debates, at times being treated with contempt, which is why one of his sons asked him how he managed to remain calm and not insult his detractors when they attacked him. Lejeune replied: “It is not the man I am fighting against, but his ideas.” Lejeune teaches that a Christian does not oppose anyone, but rather opposes falsehood – of which the unjust aggressor is the first victim – so that he too may be set free from it. A similar stance is found in Leandro Aletti, a gynaecologist, colleague and friend of the author’s father, with whom he worked tirelessly in defence of life in Italy. On one occasion, his son Gabriele, an anaesthetist and intensive care specialist, found himself in the operating theatre with a staunch advocate of abortion, who years earlier had opposed his father, leading to his suspension from the hospital. Upon learning that there was a doctor with the surname Aletti on the surgical team, she asked if he was related to Leandro. Gabriele replied that he was his son, whereupon she said: “You know who I am, don’t you?! I wonder what you’ve heard about me?!” Gabriele replied: “Yes, I’ve known you since I was a child. Every evening, my dad would have the whole family pray for you and your pro-abortion colleagues.” Those words were followed by silence, which lasted for the entire operation. Here is the Christian: one who, like Christ and the martyrs, fights not against people but against unjust ideas that harm the good of people, first and foremost those who advocate them: “The martyr draws the tormentor into the gift of self, sealed in advance by the forgiveness of one’s own executioner, often explicitly and in any case always implicitly” (A. Scola).

In the manner of the martyrs, “capable of defending but incapable of offending” (Ambrose of Milan), Lejeune and Aletti show that Christians are called to be distinguished witnesses to an “unarmed and disarming peace” (Leo XIV), becoming models of forgiveness and reconciliation. This is particularly urgent in contexts of war, where “redressing the consequences of conflict – hatred, fear, ‘toxic memory’ – is the specific and sublime task of the Church … Above all, the courage to forgive is the most powerful remedy, capable of bringing healing, and it is also the most authentic witness our community can offer” (Fr Pizzaballa).

Ecclesial testimony: Jesus foretells hatred and persecution for his disciples. This raises a troubling question: why are the Saviour and his followers rejected, oppressed and suppressed? The reason is that the claim to truth put forward by Jesus clashes with the anarchic vision of freedom promoted by the tempter, adopted by our first parents and rampant throughout history, which reduces it to free will, failing to recognise that it is linked to the dynamic striving for truth. This pathological aversion to the truth can also be attributed to the fact that the human condition is marred by original sin, which clouds freedom’s capacity to recognise and embrace the truth. The memory of and the striving for the truth about the good, however, continues to shine within the depths of the conscience, where the divine command to lay down one’s life for the truth resounds, as the pagan Juvenal testifies: ‘Consider it the greatest of crimes to prefer survival to honour and, for the sake of physical life, to lose the reasons for living’. Inspired by the example of the martyrs and confessors of the faith, the Church is therefore called to proclaim the Truth and to recall the moral truths which the conscience possesses in embryonic form, aware that only “truth sets the soul at rest” (W. Shakespeare).