Dear Friends of Istituto Acton,
In what has come to be a regular occurrence, Pope Francis got himself into a bit of controversy during an interview on the papal plane. During the January 15 flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines and following the January 7 killing of Charlie Hebdo journalists by Islamic fundamentalists in Paris, a French journalist asked the pope for his views on religious freedom and the freedom of expression as fundamental human rights.
On religious liberty, the pope said religion must be practiced freely but without offending, imposing or killing, saying that killing in the name of God was “an aberration.” No modern pope would say otherwise, but it is not entirely correct to say that no true believer has ever killed in the name of God (the Old Testament is full of such acts); I wonder if any religion has ever avoided doing so. So long as religions have different understandings of God, man and the world, they will necessarily risk offending or imposing the “truth” of their beliefs on others. The easiest way to avoid these problems would be to make all religions the same, which is also known as syncretism. Those who promote syncretism usually do so in the name of peace or religious indifferentism.
In defending the freedom of expression, Francis said each person has not only the right but the “duty to say what he thinks will help the common good” but once again, without offending. He then explained that it is “normal” for someone to react violently if his mother or faith is insulted, adding that the Enlightenment sought to treat religion as something that need not be taken seriously (“poca cosa”). “Each religion has dignity, each religion that respects human life, the human person, and I cannot make fun of it,” he said to define clear limits to free speech about religion. He didn’t say whether religions that do not respect human life deserve equal respect.
Francis’s limits rankled free-speech advocates, as it should have: What good is free speech if one can’t discuss certain topics such as religion? Who’s to say what is respectful or not? Aren’t such limits used to shut down dissent rather than respect the feelings of others? It seemed as though what the pope defended was not free speech as much as the desire to keep people in their place by not questioning authority, especially his own and other religious leaders.
Perhaps, but it’s hard to describe a pope who clearly likes to rankle his own flock as a crypto-authoritarian; he may be old-fashioned in his Catholic beliefs but he’s also not afraid of an open discussion about sensitive issues, as the Synod on the Family is proving. What the pope said makes sense only if one takes seriously concepts such as God, the common good and blasphemy; concepts the modern world tries to avoid but never really can. This is a natural consequence of a world that views the individual as a self-interested rights-bearer whose only recognized duties are those that are freely chosen and can be freely renounced. Words like obligation, authority, tradition and order mean little to such an individual and Francis was absolutely correct to cite Pope Benedict XVI in calling this deprecation of religion a fruit of the Enlightenment.
Or at least a certain type of Enlightenment, namely the French one with Voltaire’s “Écrasez l'infâme” as its defining passion and whose anti-theological ire has influenced much of continental Europe to this day. It is therefore no surprise that religious leaders of all types, Muslim, Christian or Jewish, have been the targets of Charlie Hebdo, which calls itself a “journal irresponsable.” If this is Francis’s view of the Enlightenment, it is also no surprise that he has little appreciation for economic liberty and its resultant technological progress, dismissing so much of it as a “throwaway culture.” According to this reading, what the political right claims in terms of economics, the political left claims in terms of sex: absolute autonomy to do as one pleases, something which all decent people, especially those who have had to raise children, oppose.
This radically libertarian version of the Enlightenment and its rejection of concepts such as responsibility, virtue and the common good are anathema to serious believers. But this version of liberty is also bad for liberty as well, mainly because when moral concerns are suppressed in the name of liberty, they do not simply disappear but appear in perverted form elsewhere. The simply egalitarian society without any moral authority, where each lives and lets live, is a myth. Political correctness manifested in speech codes against racism, sexism and homophobia is the most obvious manifestation of the human need to impose (yes, impose) moral norms; P.C. is just a pale substitute for the blasphemy laws of old. Far from withering away, the power of the administrative State is increasing and expanding into all aspects of our daily lives. (Mary Eberstadt has written very perceptively about how our concerns over the food and sex choices of others have traded places in the last 40 years.)
Liberal society is at least ironically aware of its need for moral unanimity, as this hilarious Seinfeld clip showed in the 1990s. It’s not enough to be “against AIDS” (as if anyone is “for AIDS”), one must wear the ribbon. It’s noteworthy that once oppressed minorities gain the approval of the majority, they tolerate little dissent against their own dogmas. It seems as though majorities always impose unity, while minorities always claim liberty; it only depends on whose ox is being gored. What we believe is inextricably connected to our opinions about justice and how we ought to live together, i.e. to our politics.
Regular readers of my Letters from Rome are not unfamiliar with the theological-political aspect of these reflections, which are heavily indebted to Alexis de Tocqueville and his Democracy in America. I first encountered Tocqueville in a class taught by Walter Berns, who passed away in January at the age of 95. Berns’s works on free speech have been very much on my mind lately and continue to educate and form my own thoughts on the matter. He once recommended Harvey Mansfield’s 1983 Public Interest article, “The Forms and Formalities of Liberty”, which also takes its bearings from Tocqueville, in order to explain why he insisted on addressing his students as “Mister” and “Miss” in class. You’ll have to read the whole piece to appreciate the fullness of the argument, but it suffices to say that such understandings of liberty remain both as unpopular and as necessary as ever.
So how should a serious Catholic, Muslim or Jew think about free speech? There’s no sense in being against it or, on the other hand, to see free speech as an absolute right that bears no qualification. No one wants to see his religion mocked just as no one wants to be called a racial or ethnic slur; a liberal society ought to respect all people in the name of equality. But this is not the same as respecting all arguments, truth claims or behaviors as equal. This is why free speech is not the same as free expression. Speech requires us to make reasoned arguments and to persuade others, whereas expression is, well, whatever it wants to be, i.e., offensive, idiosyncratic, nonsensical etc. Of course truth claims can be controversial and ought to be investigated freely and rationally; this is indeed the proper aim of the university and the best defense of free speech, even if it is increasingly hard to find. Liberals as well as religious believers ought to stand united on these grounds, and not with those of Charlie Hebdo, bigots, pornographers and other false friends of human freedom. Liberty is not license. Maybe this would also help get us more love from Pope Francis about economics...
Kishore Jayabalan
Director
