Zenit: Papal Address to Civil Leaders of Milan, Lombardy
"Freedom is Not a Privilege for Some, but a Right for All"

Some notes:

There is another element that we can find in St. Ambrose’s teaching. Justice is the first quality of those who rule. Justice is the public virtue par excellence, because it has to do with the good of the whole community. [This would correspond to the legal justice of Aristotle and St. Thomas. Is this how it is defined by St. Ambrose?] And yet it is not enough. Ambrose sets another quality alongside it: love of freedom, which he considers a criterion for discerning between good and bad rulers, since, as we read in another of this letters: “the good love freedom, the wicked love servitude” (Epistula 40, 2). [The classical or Roman conception of liberty?] Freedom is not a privilege for some, but a right for all, a precious right that civil authority must guarantee. Nevertheless, freedom does not mean the arbitrary choice of the individual, but implies rather responsibility of everyone. Here we find one of the principal elements of the secularity of the state: assure freedom so that everyone can propose their vision of common life, always, however, with respect for the other and in the context of laws that aim at the good of all. [This is rather bizarre - how many different visions of the common life can there be? There is only the good of community, living together. What may be disputed are the means (or the laws) by which this is to be preserved or enhanced. Or is the Holy Father thinking of the modern nation-state, which is arguably not a community? It would seem so --]


On the other hand, the extent to which the conception of a confessional state is left behind, it appears clear that, in any case, the laws must find their justification and force in natural law, which is order adequate to the dignity of the human person, overcoming a merely positivist conception from which it is not possible to derive precepts that are, in some way, of an ethical character (cf. Speech to the German Parliament, Sept. 22, 2011). The state is at the service of and protects the person and his “well-being” in its multiple aspects, beginning with the right to life, the deliberate suppression of which is never permissible. Everyone can see then how legislation and the work of state institutions must be especially in the service of the family, founded on marriage and open to life, and how there must be a recognition of the primary right of the parents to freely educate and form their children, according to the educational plan that they judge valid and pertinent. The family is not treated justly if the state does not support the freedom of education for the common good of society as a whole. [So is the modern conception of the "state" problematic? How does it expand upon the notions of government and authority? We can say government should serve the common good, the community and its members. Personalist formulations of political science are not irreconcilable with earlier formulations. One must examine what a personalist says about the good of community and whether it is higher than the private good of the individual. While the "modern" notion of the state may have been formulated by certain writers during the 16th and 17th centuries, their definition(s) may not apply to every instance of the word. It depends on the author's intention, which should be made clear in the text or in his corpus of writings at least.]