Skip to content
Deacon Keith Fournier Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you. Help Now >

Becoming What We Choose

Free World Class Education
FREE Catholic Classes

(C) Third Millennium, LLC
By Deacon Keith Fournier Founder/President, "Common Good"

The "right to choose" has been subverted causing a new bondage in the lives of countless millions.

_______________________________________________

"Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself"
Catholic Catechism, Paragraph 1861

_______________________________________________

"Now, human life is always subject to change: it needs to be born ever anew...but here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is the case with bodily beings, it is the result of a free choice. Thus we are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by our decisions."
St. Gregory of Nyssa

_______________________________________________

It seems no matter where you turn these days someone is demanding a "right to choose."

There are the new libertines who mistake "freedom" with the right to do anything that "feels good." Then, there are the self-deluded champions of new "rights"-which are not rights at all-such as requiring that consensual prolonged sexual acts between practicing homosexuals (or unmarried heterosexuals) be afforded the same treatment as a marriage by the State.

The clamor for these mistaken notions of "choice", and others, grows louder every day.

What does all of this tell us about ourselves? What are we choosing, and who are we becoming in the process?

Tragically, we are all too often making the wrong choices and becoming corrupted, individually and collectively, in the process. Why? Because we have lost the foundational philosophical and moral understanding of the true obligations which authentic freedom entails and the effect of the "reflexive" nature of our choices on who we become, both as individuals and as a nation.

Like the Biblical son of Isaac, Esau, we have sold our birthright for a bowl of stew.

This story is told in the first book of the Bible, Genesis (see Genesis 25:29-34). Esau came in from hunting one day famished. Unable to control his own appetites, he, the firstborn who stood to inherit his fathers' estate, sold that birthright for a bowl of red stew made from wild game.

He made a wrong choice.

That was why he would later be called Edom, which means "red". That choice defined him and literally changed his "name", which in biblical terms entails character and identity. His wrong choice not only lost him a future but also changed his very identity.

As a nation, America was birthed in an understanding of freedom that implied both a "freedom from" intrusive government but also a "freedom for" responsible and virtuous living. Our founders understood the obligations of social solidarity.

Birthed from the Western tradition, the American idea of "ordered liberty" contained within it the deeper understanding of the person as a responsible agent whose choices defined his or her character. Additionally, the framework our founders structured for national self-government was dependent upon- and subordinated to- the existence of self-government on a personal, family and local level.

Though not explicitly uttered by the American founders, the following insight is implied in many of the enabling documents of the experiment in "ordered liberty" which they authored:

"we may be 'free to choose' but we are not free to make the objects of our choice good or evil, right or wrong."

That is God's prerogative.

In a real sense our choices make us--- we actually become what we choose! In other words our choices not only affect the "outside" world but the "inside" world as well. In the very act of choosing we change ourselves-we become what we choose!

That's right- we become what we choose! Think about it. There is a self- determining character to our exercise of free choice.

The ancient Christian Father, Gregory of Nyssa expressed this so well in reminding us "... we are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by our own decisions."

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Our own American literature is laced with the truth concerning the reflexive nature of human choice. Most children, at some point in their formal education, read the "Portrait of Dorian Gray." The story revolves around a young artist who is painting a self-portrait. He keeps it hidden away and works on it throughout his life.

As his life proceeds he "pays his money and he makes his choices"-- most of which proceed from his narcissistic worldview. To the onlooker, he is living the life of sensual and professional "success"-but he knows what the portrait reveals when he is home alone.

When the artist is eventually found dead, his self-portrait is also found. It revealed the interior truth of what his life choices had made him to become on the inside. The figure on the canvas is hideous, corrupt and lecherous.

It is interesting to note that the author of the book, Oscar Wilde, was for much of his life, a practicing homosexual. He later converted to Catholicism and died in a state of grace. The choices we make determine not only our character but also pave the road to our eternal destiny.

Many other biblical narratives capture this poignant insight about human choice.

The Eden story of the fall is all about the errant exercise of freedom, the making of a wrong choice, at that tree in the garden. An invitation to love from a God who cherishes our capacity for freedom was rebuffed and the whole human race, collectively, through our first parents, chose a counterfeit notion of freedom as a raw power to do as we choose, regardless of truth, over an invitation into an ongoing relationship with God.

That choice gets repeated throughout our personal and collective histories to this very hour!

The Sacred texts of the New Testament are also filled with the insight. We "become" adulterers when we look at a woman with lust (Mt. 5:28); what comes out of our "heart" (The "heart" is the biblical center where freedom is exercised, human choices are made and character formed) is what makes us "unclean" (Mk 7:14-23).

There is a self-determining character to our exercise of choice. In that sense, freedom is not free... it always costs. Our wrong choices corrupt us.

In this age in which we have collectively chosen to worship the golden calf of unencumbered "choice" we should stop and ask ourselves some very serious questions. Who are we making ourselves to be---as individuals and as a nation--in the choices we are making?

Deacon Keith Fournier Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you. Help Now >

We choose to discard "unwanted" children who are not even allowed the freedom to be born; we choose to kill those who have killed, when bloodless means of punishment and protection of the common good are available, for vengeance; we choose to denigrate women (and now men) as sexual objects and defame the beauty of sexual intimacy; we choose to ignore the cry of the widow, the orphan, the poor and the oppressed while we chase the golden ring of consumerism and self-ism--- and we call of these choices "rights" and an exercise of our "freedom"?

On the national level, we are making ourselves a nation of killers, harlots, and gluttons. That imprinted character, which we have painted on our national self portrait, can only be changed when we make a contrary choice to hear the cry of the poor, respect again every human life from conception to natural death, and rededicate ourselves to a true understanding of equal justice.

On the personal level we are dangerously close to the fate of the young artist of American novel or the first born in the biblical account. There is a real choice to be made by everyone of us... and we will make ourselves in making it-- it is the choice to truly love.

Those of us who are Christians understand the heart of that choice because Love became a Person and made the ultimate choice on the second tree where He emptied Himself so that we might live (see Phil 2:5-11). Because of that we have a higher obligation to continue His choice through our poured out lives.

Now it is our turn to choose to become what He has invited the whole human race to become. In that choice we also choose to conform our lives, and our choices, to His.

Then we can help to reverse the downward cultural spiral and set the captives of this age of "choice" and counterfeit freedom truly free- by inviting them back to a relationship with the God who made them.

That choice is the path to true freedom.

______________________________________________

Rev. Mr. Keith A Fournier, the founder and president of "Common Good", is a constitutional lawyer. Long active in political participation, Fournier was a founder of Catholic Alliance and served as its first President. He is a pro-life and pro-family lobbyist. He was the first Executive Director of the ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice). He also served as an advisor to the presidential campaign of Steve Forbes. Fournier holds a Bachelors degree (B.A.) from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Philosophy and Theology, a Masters Degree (M.T.S.) in Sacred Theology from the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University, a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Pittsburgh and an Honorary Doctor of Laws (L.L.D.) from St. Thomas University. Fournier is the author of seven books on issues concerning life, faith, evangelization, ecumenism, family, political participation, public policy and cultural issues. He is a features editor for Catholic Online and the Co-Director of "Your Catholic Voice"

Light Your Free Payer Candle for a departed loved one

What is Palm Sunday?

Live on March 20, 2024 @ 10am PDT

Contact

Common Good
http://www.commongoodonline.com VA, US
Deacon Keith Fournier - Founder/President, 757 546-9580

Email

keithfournier@cox.net

Keywords

Choice

More Catholic PRWire

Showing 1 - 50 of 4,716

A Recession Antidote
Randy Hain

Monaco & The Vatican: Monaco's Grace Kelly Exhibit to Rome--A Review of Monegasque-Holy See Diplomatic History
Dna. Maria St. Catherine Sharpe, t.o.s.m., T.O.SS.T.

The Why of Jesus' Death: A Pauline Perspective
Jerom Paul

A Royal Betrayal: Catholic Monaco Liberalizes Abortion
Dna. Maria St.Catherine De Grace Sharpe, t.o.s.m., T.O.SS.T.

Embrace every moment as sacred time
Mary Regina Morrell

My Dad
JoMarie Grinkiewicz

Letting go is simple wisdom with divine potential
Mary Regina Morrell

Father Lombardi's Address on Catholic Media
Catholic Online

Pope's Words to Pontifical Latin American College
Catholic Online

Prelate: Genetics Needs a Conscience
Catholic Online

State Aid for Catholic Schools: Help or Hindrance?
Catholic Online

Scorsese Planning Movie on Japanese Martyrs
Catholic Online

2 Nuns Kidnapped in Kenya Set Free
Catholic Online

Holy See-Israel Negotiation Moves Forward
Catholic Online

Franchising to Evangelize
Catholic Online

Catholics Decry Anti-Christianity in Israel
Catholic Online

Pope and Gordon Brown Meet About Development Aid
Catholic Online

Pontiff Backs Latin America's Continental Mission
Catholic Online

Cardinal Warns Against Anti-Catholic Education
Catholic Online

Full Circle
Robert Gieb

Three words to a deeper faith
Paul Sposite

Relections for Lent 2009
chris anthony

Wisdom lies beyond the surface of life
Mary Regina Morrell

World Food Program Director on Lent
Catholic Online

Moral Clarity
DAN SHEA

Pope's Lenten Message for 2009
Catholic Online

A Prayer for Monaco: Remembering the Faith Legacy of Prince Rainier III & Princess Grace and Contemplating the Moral Challenges of Prince Albert II
Dna. Maria St. Catherine Sharpe

Keeping a Lid on Permissiveness
Sally Connolly

Glimpse of Me
Sarah Reinhard

The 3 stages of life
Michele Szekely

Sex and the Married Woman
Cheryl Dickow

A Catholic Woman Returns to the Church
Cheryl Dickow

Modernity & Morality
Dan Shea

Just a Minute
Sarah Reinhard

Catholic identity ... triumphant reemergence!
Hugh McNichol

Edging God Out
Paul Sposite

Burying a St. Joseph Statue
Cheryl Dickow

George Bush Speaks on Papal Visit
Catholic Online

Sometimes moving forward means moving the canoe
Mary Regina Morrell

Action Changes Things: Teaching our Kids about Community Service
Lisa Hendey

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Easter... A Way of Life
Paul Spoisite

Papal initiative...peace and harmony!
Hugh McNichol

Proclaim the mysteries of the Resurrection!
Hugh McNichol

Jerusalem Patriarch's Easter Message
Catholic Online

Good Friday Sermon of Father Cantalamessa
Catholic Online

Papal Address at the End of the Way of the Cross
Catholic Online

Cardinal Zen's Meditations for Via Crucis
Catholic Online

Interview With Vatican Aide on Jewish-Catholic Relations
Catholic Online

Pope Benedict XVI On the Easter Triduum
Catholic Online

Holy Saturday...anticipation!
Hugh McNichol

Join the Movement
When you sign up below, you don't just join an email list - you're joining an entire movement for Free world class Catholic education.

Lent logo
Saint of the Day logo

Catholic Online Logo

Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. All materials contained on this site, whether written, audible or visual are the exclusive property of Catholic Online and are protected under U.S. and International copyright laws, © Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. Any unauthorized use, without prior written consent of Catholic Online is strictly forbidden and prohibited.

Catholic Online is a Project of Your Catholic Voice Foundation, a Not-for-Profit Corporation. Your Catholic Voice Foundation has been granted a recognition of tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Federal Tax Identification Number: 81-0596847. Your gift is tax-deductible as allowed by law.