Fortnight For Freedom - Day 3

     The reflection for this third day of the Fortnight For Freedom continues to be taken from the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty) from 1965.  The Fathers of the Council make a statement that leads to a great disconnect from our society - namely that truth is derived from the divine law - eternal, objective, and universal.  Through that law and the truth it conveys, God orders, directs and governs the entire universe and all of the ways of human community.  We have been made by God to participate in this law and to search after that universal truth.  In our secular society with its unqualified emphasis on "self", on the individual, on our self acknowledged right to govern ourselves, of our ability to be self sufficient, the dependence upon a higher power, upon God and an eternal truth, upon a law of love that is other directed, is incomprehensible and foolish.  The freedom to seek such truth and the freedom to be dependent upon something or someone greater than ourselves is a threat to the prevailing way of life in our nation and in the world community.  It is for the unenlightened, the superstitious, the weak.  The challenges to that freedom, whether subtle or blatant, are very real and are growing.  To pretend that they do not touch our lives is to be blinded to the reality of the times.