Good For One and All

Saint John XXIII wrote in Pacem in Terris, “Also among man’s rights is that of being able to worship God in accordance with the right dictates of his own conscience, and to profess his religion both in private and in public.”

The US Bishops echoed this statement in 2012, “That is our American heritage, our most cherished freedom. It is the first freedom because if we are not free in our conscience and our practice of religion, all other freedoms are fragile. If citizens are not free in their own consciences, how can they be free in relation to others, or to the state?”

Religious freedom means that we seek the truth about God and respond to that truth, which is a natural desire proper to all human persons. Such freedom is in the interest of the common good since communities flourish when they live in accord with the truth.