A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Pope Francis, blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, and the punch January 15, 2015

So Pope Francis gave another in his interminable series of impromptu interviews while on an airplane flight yesterday.  He was asked about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other attacks in France recently.  I haven’t spoken about Charlie Hebdo, because there has been nothing edifying in the whole affair.  A blasphemous, cretinous publication enraged muslims and suffered brutally for the privilege.  They had previously published cartoons and text as offensive against the Church and God as any I have ever seen.  I have no sympathy for them. But I also have no sympathy for the muslim murderers.  The reason I have no sympathy is because their religion is a demonstrably false one, deranged and diabolical.

The Church used to know these truths: you cannot blaspheme against the Church and the Lord, because both are true.  The second is, error has no rights.  Thus, both Charlie Hebdo and the islamic maniacs who attacked them are both violently wrong and to be repudiated. I, for one, have been sickened by this outpouring of support for a magazine few had heard of and few cared about. Our modern culture likes to pretend that freedom of speech is a sacred right, but when the knife comes to the throat, vague notions about liberty are not enough to sustain a person in resistance.  Liberals will inevitably fall before religious conviction, and that is why the West is in collapse: the West has rejected the religion that built her.  Dark ages seem to loom ahead.

Before I get to Pope Francis’ comments on Charlie Hebdo and the conflict between the rights of religion and the highly dubious “rights” invented in the endarkenment, I should add that I am not so much criticizing his comments, as I am using his comments as a hook on which to hang examinations of broader problems in the Church and culture:

I believe that they are both fundamental human rights: religious freedom and freedom of speech. [This acceptance of the “Declarations of the Rights of Man” stands in stark contrast to the approach the Church took towards the revolutionary novelties unleashed by the “enlightenment” for a looong time] We cannot…you are French, right? Well, then, let’s go Paris, let’s speak clearly. We cannot hide a truth today: each one has the right to practice his religion, without causing offense, freely, and we all wish to do this.

Secondly, we cannot offend, make war, kill, in the name of religion, that is, in the name of God. [Again, this is very different from what the Church knew and practiced for most of Her history.  And it reveals a hugely significant shift in thinking.  If the Church is the only One True Church, the only valid religion, and all others are false, erroneous, etc., then the Church possesses unique rights AND duties that other religions do not have. One of the most sacred duties is to oppose error and to assert those same rights.  When error arises, the Church has the duty to crush it, and when false religions wage war on the Church, She certainly has the right and many from times past believed the DUTY to engage in martial combat to defend the Body Christ established on earth.  And so there are many many Saints whose sanctity is associated with their martial prowess.  I also have to think how this kind of comment really besmirches the reputations of great popes like St. Pius V and Urban II.]

That which is happening today surprises us, but let us always think of our history: how many wars of religion have we known! Think only of the Night of Saint Bartholomew [St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre]! How can we understand that. We also have had our sinners regarding this, but we cannot murder in the name of God, it’s an aberration. To murder in the name of God is an aberration……. [Well, murder is very very different from waging just war in defense of the Faith.  It seems Pope Francis conflates warfare – even just warfare – with murder. That is a common line on the political left]

…..Freedom of speech…Each person has not only the freedom, the right but also the obligation to say what he thinks to aid the common good: the obligation! If we think that what a member of parliament or a Senator says – and not only they, but so many others – is not the good path, that he does not collaborate with the common good, we have the obligation of saying it openly. This freedom is necessary, but without offending. Because it is true that one should not react violently, but if Mr. Gasbarri [note: voyage planner, standing beside the pope], who is a great friend, says a swear word about my mother, he can expect to receive a punch! It’s normal… We cannot provoke, we cannot insult the faith of others, we cannot mock faith. [this is the comment that is causing exasperation among liberals. It does seem a bit inconsistent. On the one hand, Pope Francis is saying that violence in the name of religion is always and everywhere evil. On the other, he is saying that if you blaspheme someone, you can expect a punch, like 17 Parisians got punched recently, I guess.  It could just be a recognition of human nature, I suppose: perhaps these things are bad, but we know people are going to react that way, so maybe expect it?]

……There are so many people who speak ill of religions, who mock them, who play with the religion of others. They provoke…and it can happen that which could happen to Mr. Gasbarri if he said anything about my mother. There is a limit! Each religion has dignity, each religion that respects human life and man, and I cannot mock it…it’s a limit. I take the example of the limit to say that, in the matter of the freedom of speech, there are limits, as in the case of my mother. [It’s gratifying to see that Pope Francis does recognize free speech has limits.  For many supporters of Charlie Hebdo these days, freedom of speech is treated almost like a cult, like an absolute that can never be constrained for any reason at any time. So it is a bit comforting to see Pope Francis recognize these limits, but at the same time, now I think there is even more inconsistency, because Pope Francis said violence in the name of religion is terrible, but now seems to be excusing it a bit.  Or at least that blasphemy is wrong, which is certainly reasonable.]

The Church long recognized manifest problems with the radical thinking of the endarkenment. At some level, absolute freedom of speech will crush the rights of religion. We see this all the time with how sodomites and their allies are using their made up “freedoms” to cavort around to silence the Church. And we see how the federal government does the same in things like the HHS Mandate.

This is why the Church recognized the radicalism of the endarkenment ideals, and the threat to right religion they posed. And they are deadly threats.  More and more we are seeing freedom of speech and its amorphous twin, “freedom of expression,” to force the Church out of the public square.  I get back to the original points, there is only One True Faith, and error has no rights.  Thus, there can be no freedom of speech for error, because the duty to shield souls from error and blasphemy and all the other assaults on virtue and right religion are paramount for the good of souls.  Unfortunately, the modernist/progressive influence in the Church has deeply imbibed the humanism of the “rights of man,” rights which trump the rights of God.  We have been told that Guadium Et Spes was a “counter-Syllabus” to confirm this, because that great Syllabus of Blessed Pius IX was aimed primarily at refuting the errors of the endarkenment.

Accepting the ideas of the enlightenment leaves the Church almost unable to defend itself against the onslaught of secularism and militant islam.  You have to believe, really believe, your Faith is the only one and true one in order to fight threats of this magnitude, and very, very few Catholics – especially among our leadership – believe that today.  And so they will be swept aside by the tides of history, because liberal ideas are false chimeras that will not stand against convinced faith.