Human beings are created free. How we choose to think about and treat one another reflects how we think and feel about ourselves, about the meaning and purpose of life and about God (Bell, 2007). The Christian vision of the human person promotes and protects the dignity of the human person; interpersonal relationships characterized by integrity and justice; and physical, emotional, relational and spiritual health and safety. It does so because these protections are necessary if we are to realise the fullness of our freedom. The sexual ethics that arises from the Catholic perspective helps us to discern what is good and bad, and what is morally right and wrong, in the wider culture, so that we freely choose to direct our moral responsibility to human flourishing.

Issues of sexuality and intimacy are closely tied to issues of power and justice (Ferder & Heagle, 2007). When channelled in life-giving ways, sexuality contributes to human flourishing, joy and the sense of belonging for which each of us yearns. In this way, healthy sexual relations overcome distortions of power, seek equality and mutuality, and are visible signs of the Good News preached by Jesus. Good relationships set us free. However, the freedom such relationships give is not a freedom to do as we please, a freedom from all obstacles to our own desires. Rather, by restricting our freedom in a certain sense, we are liberated to take responsibility for our own and others flourishing. Good relationships help us to truly taste the goodness of life.

Because human beings are created free, the gift of human sexuality can also be abused. Sometimes this abuse occurs through immaturity or ignorance and through external pressure. On other occasions the abuse is intentional, brought about through selfishness or some other malicious aim. Avoiding such abuse and living a healthy sexuality requires emotional and intellectual maturity. These emotional and intellectual dimensions are important for relational and sexual wellbeing. It has to be acknowledged, however, that intellectual and emotional growth is a gradual process. We need time and practice to learn how to be free.

The Christian tradition calls this process of learning how to be free the formation of conscience. 'Conscience is the interior space of our relationship with God, who speaks to our heart and helps us to discern, to understand the path we ought to take, and once the decision is made, to move forward, to remain faithful' (Pope Francis, 2013). Formation of conscience involves learning how to make free and responsible moral decisions based on compassion, sound knowledge and moral reasoning. Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia (2016) paragraphs 259-279 writes insightfully and comprehensively about the ethical formation of children.

Sin, as action, means willingly and freely choosing to do something that we know is bad or wrong. Paradoxically, sin commonly involves choosing to do something that we somehow think is good. In his letter to the Romans, St Paul wrote, 'For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… . For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing' (Romans 7:15-19). Like St Paul, we too are basically good, created in the image of a loving God who wants us to live wholeheartedly and who invites us to freely return that love in the way we relate to God and others. With the capacities of reason, free choice and love, we are capable of freely returning God's love for us. Yet we are also flawed. We experience our own faults and weaknesses as well as the faults and weaknesses of others. We can find ourselves knowing what is good and right yet struggling to do what is good and right. When we know what is right and good and nonetheless choose to do something other than that, then we sin.

Another way to think about sin is to think about it in terms of our relationship with God. God wants us to flourish, to live whole-heartedly. God has created the world in a way that makes it possible for us to flourish provided we choose to do the morally right thing in line with the way God has intended. Consequently, when we choose to do the morally wrong thing, we are not simply choosing something which is less good for our own flourishing and the flourishing of others, but we are choosing something which is against the good that God wants for us and for everybody else. Consequently, we are choosing against God. As Ronald Rolheiser (1999, p. 202) notes, 'All sin is irreverence.'

With freedom comes responsibility. We are responsible for our moral behaviour because we are made in God's image as rational beings, capable of knowing what the morally right and good thing to do is and as free beings, capable of choosing to do the morally right and good thing. These two capacities, to know and to choose, together form what is called conscience. Loosely translated, conscience means 'with knowledge'. In other words, when we make moral choices, we make them based on what we know about the goals we want to achieve, the ways or means to achieve them, the circumstances in which we need to achieve them and the consequences of both the means we choose and the outcomes we achieve. When we have weighed all these things, we make a judgment based on our knowledge of what the morally right thing to do is. We are then obliged to follow our conscience and do the morally right thing, taking responsibility for our decision.