Every Fourth of July, Americans celebrate freedom. We shoot fireworks into the sky, grill burgers, wave flags, and proudly recall the Declaration of Independence. And rightly so: our Founding Fathers fought and bled for liberty, declaring that every man has been endowed by his Creator with unalienable rights.
But in recent years, the word “freedom” has become increasingly unrecognizable. In fact, we’ve reached a point where most Americans talk about freedom while denying its foundation: truth, virtue, and God. So this Independence Day, Catholics should be asking: what are we actually celebrating? And what does true freedom mean in light of our faith?
If freedom now means the right to redefine marriage, to kill the unborn, to divorce and remarry as we please, to mutilate healthy bodies in the name of “identity,” and to mock the moral law with impunity, then it’s time to admit that our national understanding of liberty is not only distorted; it’s dangerous.
The good news is, the Catholic Church has always been the world’s most faithful defender of true freedom. But real freedom isn’t what the modern world thinks it is.
The Founders Were Right
The Declaration of Independence rightly states that freedom comes from God, not government. That’s a deeply Catholic idea: our dignity and liberty are rooted in our creation in the image of God. But here’s where modern culture departs from that vision: it wants the liberty without the Lord. We kept the language of the Founders but stripped it of the metaphysics. As G.K. Chesterton quipped, “the modern world is full of Christian virtues gone mad.”
What began as “freedom under God” has slowly mutated into “freedom from God.” Today, the word has been co-opted by those who use it to justify abortion, gender ideology, moral relativism, pornography, and euthanasia.
This is not what the Church is talking about. And it’s not what Christ came to give us.
Freedom Is Not Doing Whatever You Want
The popular notion of freedom today is this: I can do whatever I want, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But that’s license—a distortion of freedom, and the first step toward enslavement.
The Catechism teaches us that “freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act . . . so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility” (1731). “By free will, man is capable of directing himself toward his true good” (1704).
Notice that freedom is not the capacity to follow one’s whims, but to choose what is truly good. Freedom is always ordered toward truth. Otherwise, it self-destructs. A train is most “free” not when it jumps the tracks, but when it runs on them. The same is true of the human soul.
When someone says, “It’s my choice,” a Catholic must ask: Is it a good one? Is it morally true? Is it ordered toward God or away from him?
Without those questions, “freedom” becomes a golden calf.
Free Will: A Gift That Must Be Directed
God gave us free will so that we might seek him, know him, and love him—not so we could become little gods unto ourselves. That’s what Satan wanted. The Church teaches that man was created with a rational soul precisely so that, by his own free will, he might come to love God (CCC 1730).
But that also means we are accountable. With free will comes moral responsibility. We are not robots. And our choices carry eternal consequences. That’s why the Catechism also warns that misusing our freedom leads not to independence, but to slavery:
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 (1739).
In the name of freedom, many today have become utterly enslaved: to lust, to ideology, to social validation, to rage, to self-harm, to envy, to addictions of every kind. But Christ offers something infinitely better.
True Freedom Is Found in Christ
This is why Scripture insists, “For freedom Christ has set us free; do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). Christ came not to affirm our choices, but to liberate us from sin. His truth does not limit our freedom; it unleashes it.
Modern America has forgotten this. We’ve turned away from Christ and then wondered why our society feels increasingly unfree. But the more we ignore objective truth and divine law, the more fractured, chaotic, and authoritarian our public life becomes. The Founders never imagined a free republic without moral virtue. That’s because you can’t have authentic liberty without ordered souls.
The Protestant Confusion on Freedom
To make matters more confusing, some Protestant theologies further distort the issue. The Reformation, especially in the Calvinist tradition, introduced the idea that human free will was entirely destroyed by the Fall. This leads to a troubling view: that God predestines some to heaven and others to hell, and man has no real say in the matter. That’s not freedom. That’s fatalism.
Catholic doctrine, by contrast, holds both truths in harmony: grace is primary and necessary, but our response is real and free. God desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but he does not force us. He respects our free will, even when we use it to reject him. That’s why salvation requires cooperation—our fiat, like Mary’s.
If America’s founding motto is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Catholic response is that such happiness can be found only by freely choosing the good, in communion with Christ.
Are We Still Independent?
This Independence Day, we should ask the hard question: are we still a nation that knows what freedom is?
Many Americans believe they’re free—but they are in bondage to sin, enslaved to false ideologies, and captive to passions they no longer control. We’ve confused liberation from tyranny with liberation from virtue. We’ve mistaken rebellion for freedom and autonomy for excellence.
But there’s hope.
The Church still holds the keys to true liberty. The saints are proof that real freedom is not found in breaking rules, but in being conformed to Christ. St. Maximilian Kolbe died in Auschwitz, but his soul was free. St. Thomas More was executed for defying a tyrant king, but he went to his death joyfully free. These are the men who truly embodied “independence”—not from God, but from sin, fear, and falsehood.
A Call to Catholic Patriots
If you love your country, then help its people remember what freedom really is. That won’t come through slogans, parades, or partisan slogans. It will come through conversion, repentance, and truth.
Celebrate the Fourth of July—but use it as a moment to proclaim that the highest liberty isn’t political independence. It’s the freedom to say “yes” to God. The freedom to obey when the world rebels. The freedom to choose virtue when sin looks easy. The freedom to become holy.
Because Christ didn’t die to make you autonomous. He died to make you free.
“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). This Independence Day, don’t just wave the flag. Choose the truth. Choose Christ. Choose real freedom.