(from 'On being a Christian', Collins, London, 1977, p 482)

Liberty is both a gift and a task for the Church. In great things and in small, the Church can and should be a community of free people. If it wants to serve the cause of Jesus Christ, it can never be an institution for domination, still less the Grand Inquisition. Its members should be liberated for freedom: liberated from servitude to the letter of the law, from the burden of guilt, from dread of death; liberated for life, for a meaning to life, for service, for love. They are people subject to God alone and therefore neither to anonymous powers nor to other human beings.

Where there is no freedom, the Spirit of the Lord is not present. Although it has to be realized in the existence of the individual, this freedom cannot remain merely a moral appeal in the Church (mostly addressed to others). It must have its effect on the formation of the ecclesiastical community, on its institutions and constitutions, so that these can never have an oppressive or repressive character.

No one in the Church has any right openly or secretly to manipulate, suppress or still less to abolish the basic freedom of the children of God and, instead of the rule of God, to set up the domination of men over men. This freedom should be manifested particularly in the Church in free speech (frankness) and the free choice of action or refraining from action (liberality and magnanimity in the widest sense of the terms); and it should be evident in the Church's institutions and constitutions. The Church itself should be a realm of freedom and at the same time the advocate of freedom in the world.

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