European Prayer Breakfast, 4 December 2024, European Parliament in Brussels:

Keynote address by Dr. Christiaan Alting von Geusau,

“The meaning of freedom – and how to live it today”
What is freedom?

 

I would like to start quoting the words of a man whom I consider as one of the finest political leaders in modern history: Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish diplomat and devout Christian who was the second Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953 till 1961 and a peacebuilder like few others:

“The purer the eye of her attention, the more power the soul finds within herself. But it is very rare to find a soul who is entirely free, whose purity is not soiled by the stain of some secret desire of her own. Strive, then, constantly to purify the eye of your attention until it becomes utterly simple and direct.”

(Roger Lipsey, Politics & Conscience)

These powerful words bring us right away to the challenge of understanding freedom. We think we do, but we mostly don’t. We tend to get confused and carried away by ideology.

Let us first tackle what freedom is not:

Freedom is not that I can do what I want, how I want it, and when I want it all the time. That is in fact slavery, slavery to our human passions.

Freedom is also not that I am free from suffering, pain, uncertainty or risks. That is in fact what I call ‘safetyism’, much in vogue today in the halls of power, but a dangerous illusion that in truth undermines freedom. Living is always risky and often painful; it has always been so.

What then, is freedom?

It is the uninhibited and real ability to choose to do what is right and to choose not to do what is wrong. Or: to be able to act justly and reject what is unjust.
Pope John Paul II phrased freedom as follows:

“freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

(Encyclical Veritatis Splendor)

This freedom, then has two components, an inner one and an outer one:

 

Inner freedom

During the past years, I have had the privilege to be introduced to the works of three great writers who are real authorities beyond reproach on the question of what true freedom is in practice. They are the Jewish Holocaust survivors Victor E. Frankl (Austria) and Edith Eger (Hungary), and the Catholic priest Fr. Walter J. Ciszek SJ, a survivor of the Soviet Union’s Gulag system of concentration camps and forced labor.

In each of their books describing their horrific ordeals and confrontation with suffering and death amidst unspeakable injustice, they come – independently of each other – to the same startling conclusion:
Fr. Ciszek writes, after spending 15 years in the Communist Gulag prison system:

“The body can be confined, but nothing can destroy the deepest freedom in man, the freedom of the soul, and the freedom of mind and will. These are the highest and noblest faculties in man, they are what make him the sort of man he is, and they cannot be constrained.”

(He Leadeth Me)

What wisdom and insight – this is not some high-flying philosophical theory – it is spoken from harsh practical reality. This is what we call ‘inner freedom’, a prerequisite for a human being to also live ‘outer freedom’ in society and the community.

Edith Eger, in her book (The Choice), writes:
“We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light – (..) Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Each moment is a choice. Every day.
Freedom, therefore, is a choice. A response.
We can always choose how we respond.

(paraphrased from Edith Eger)

This is true inner freedom, and it is guided by our continuously to be formed human conscience. The human conscience being the most inner realm where the voice of God speaks to us, allowing us to discern between good and evil, just and unjust.

This then also presents us with the challenge often experienced in political society, where the state and human conscience collide. This is especially the case in our modern technology-driven world. A clear illustration of this is the example of China as a full-fledge surveillance state, a bad example that also many Western countries and institutions at times have the temptation to follow. Totalitarian tendencies and totalitarianism are always a real risk.

 

Outer freedom

Without a carefully cultivated inner freedom – the willingness to choose one’s attitude toward any situation – true ‘outer’ freedom, or: freedom lived in society, is not possible. Freedom is a verb, not a claim.So how do we live that freedom, every day in society, and where do we see it challenged? How does lived freedom work?

First, we have to understand that our outer freedom as lived in society should be in reality an expression of our inner freedom, and thus in coherence with it. This is called the ‘unity of life’. Hence, conscience and religion can never be a merely private affair, relegated to the sidelines, as they should inform our whole life and everything we do.

Let me return for a moment to Fr. Walter Ciszek, the Soviet concentration camp survivor:
“Even in prison a man retains his free will, his freedom of choice. Even in prison, a man can choose to do good or evil, to fight for survival or to despair, to serve God and others or to turn inward and selfish.”

Thus, our outer freedom – when challenged for us Europeans for example by war, by the pandemic, or by a growing cancel culture – can best be invigorated and defended by the way in which we choose to respond to it:

This means concretely that we again have to learn to act as truly free and autonomous human beings that have a real love for freedom. We need

– to think for oneself and not to allow my favorite news outlet, social media bubble or leader and party to dictate my conscience, instead always keep asking questions and studying.

– to take full responsibility for my actions: my failures, my errors of judgment and my successes. I am not a victim stuck in victimhood, unless I choose to. This we have learned from Frankl, Eger and Ciszek.

– to engage and make real and consistent efforts of true encounter with my fellow human being, especially those with whom I deeply disagree. My political opponent is not my enemy, also not here in the European Parliament.

 

This is what Jesus would do and asks us today. His spirit brings us freedom because he teaches us to think by looking into our own soul, to take responsibility by acknowledging our brokenness and gifts, and to genuinely encounter the other as his or her human dignity requires.

A powerful example that brings together these three points in the Gospel, is John 8; 1- 12:

“Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.

They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.
Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”

They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.
But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him.

Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin anymore.”

Here we are being taught the spirit of freedom that allows us to act right and just in society: to think and form our conscience constantly, to be responsible for our own actions first, and to see the other person with eyes of mercy and love.

This is then how we build a free society: a war might then be solved by other means that we have not yet seen, a pandemic can then be dealt with less destructively, and censorship and cancel culture are then replaced by sharing and debate amongst citizens and their leaders, genuinely searching for the truth and wishing to understand those they do not agree with and walk with them.

This brings me, finally, to the greatest danger to freedom I see in today’s Europe, in light of the challenges I have described here. It is the attitude in society that allows what could be a manageable crisis to turn into a full-fledged existential crisis of democracy and the rule of law, thus eroding the essential external framework for living freedom in society.

This danger is lukewarmness and indifference.

 

Again, I would like to allow a real expert of experience speak here, the Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, who writes (Yes to Life in Spite of Everything):

“Fighting a losing battle’… this expression cannot be allowed to exist within our worldview! Fighting is the only thing that matters.”

 

It is my heartfelt hope and prayer here today that we might fully revive our love for freedom as Europeans and citizens of its individual member States and beyond, and that in Europe we might fully recover this fighting spirit.

This fighting spirit is above all spiritual and intellectual in nature. It will allow us to see and experience in everyday life that

“Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Then Europe will be free and prosperous and a continent of peacebuilders for generations to come.

Thank you.