Loss of Freedom by Fulton Sheen

There is nothing the modern man prized more than freedom, but does he realize that his denial of sin is the denial of freedom? Does not freedom imply choice? Does not choice imply alternatives of good and evil?
If I do not sin when I choose the wrong alternative, then I am not responsible, but if I am not responsible then I am not free.
Cabbages, horses, adding machines, boots, ships and sealing wax cannot sin, because they have no freedom, therefore no responsibility. To deny sin is therefore to reduce man to the status of a thing.
Incidentally, this is the basic philosophical reason for Fascism, Nazism and Communism, for if man is only a thing and not a moral being, free and responsible, then why should he not be absorbed into the collectivity or totality of race as in Germany, class as in Russia, and the nation as in Italy?
We cannot have it both ways: if we are free, then we can do wrong; but if we cannot do wrong, then we are not free.
Our so-called liberal and progressive educators who denied the reality of guilt, did not, as they promised, relieve man from the shackles of "medieval morality"; but they did relieve the person of his responsibility and therefore of his freedom.
Freudian psychologists in democracies who blamed all sin or guilt on the psychical determinism of a sub-rational or even sexual factor, and the Marxian philosopher in totalitarian states who blamed sin on to the social determinism of the economic order, did not really explain away sin; but they did explain away freedom.
Men talk most about freedom when they are losing it, as they talk most about health when they are sick.
Real freedom is slipping away from the world today and the era foretold by Dostoevski is upon us: "The ages will come to pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime; there is no sin; there is only hunger. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us 'make us your slaves,' but feed us."
The denial that we could do wrong is the greatest wrong of all. The devil was wiser than modern man, for the devil tempted Adam and Eve to use their freedom falsely by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Satan was never so stupid as to think that freedom meant irresponsibility. But he has so convinced his disciples in the 20th century! He promised freedom in the beginning by inciting to evil; he takes freedom away now by denying evil. And we in our ignorance call this progress!