Some folks are quite pleased with this brief but clear point opening today’s Morning Jolt:
Who Is Surprised that the Pope Isn’t a First Amendment Absolutist?
What guides us morally — and God’s desire for how we treat each other — is sometimes distinct from what guides us in this rough-and-tumble world, dealing with other human beings. “Turn the other cheek” is a very noble personal policy for dealing with others who wrong you. It doesn’t work as national-security policy — at least, not for long.
The people who insist that what is morally right and what is legal in a free society must be one and the same will make a lot of hay about this:
Pope Francis suggested there are limits to freedom of expression, saying in response to the Charlie Hebdo terror attack that “one cannot make fun of faith.”
The pontiff said that both freedom of faith and freedom of speech were fundamental human rights and that “every religion has its dignity.”
“One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith,” he said. “There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity . . . in freedom of expression there are limits.”
The pope was speaking to reporters on a plane as he flew from Sri Lanka to the Philippines on his tour of Asia.
What’s frustrating — and inevitable — is that people will cite Pope Francis’s remarks in an effort to conflate the two, or to somehow drive a wedge between the Catholic Church as a whole and the United States and American traditions.
Pope Francis’ point that “one cannot provoke” and “there is a limit” will be cited — incorrectly, I would argue — as papal approval for speech codes, censorship, and government-enforced limitations on speech. (Those surprised by his remarks ought to contemplate how he would align the traditional sense of blasphemy — i.e, certain words, phrases, or ideas that insult or show contempt for God — with First Amendment absolutist approach.) Similarly, the argument will be made that the pope’s approach to these issues is somehow incompatible with the Constitution — as if there were no difference between declaring “you shouldn’t say that, it is provocative and insulting and harms the dignity of others” and “you should be put in jail for saying that.”