All of us have been shaken by the attack in Paris. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of many European cities to protest against killing in the name of Islam. However, the media claim that the demonstrators defended freedom of the press. This is actually a good time to return to the debate on unlimited freedom of the press, which, after all, many great Popes have been opposed to.
The barbaric assassination carried out by Islamists on the staff of Charlie Hebdo, a magazine describing itself as satirical, sparked a heated media discussion about freedom of the press. Headlines, including Polish ones, even inform that “Islamists attacked freedom.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed the Islamists, in their own sinister and ruthless manner, attacked a group of people who decided to gain fame and money by means of ugly drawings. Is offending anyone an example of liberty? Especially in the today’s painfully tolerant world where because of an alleged insult of a homosexual or a Jew one can be cast out from good company or even go to jail?
Wesprzyj nas już teraz!
Therefore, the Islamists did not attack freedom, even in its contemporary, distorted meaning. It comes as a surprise that the leftist media do not see it. Some claimed that the Islamic fanatics attacked Europe and its values. That is a lie, too. Because Europe is not defined by the content of Charlie Hebdo covers. However, Muslims who actually arrived here quite recently can perceive Europe in that way. Let us pass over the caricatures of Muhammad popularized by terrorists, but the magazine offended what is sacred in Catholicism in the most shameful manner one can imagine. There were disgusting cartoons showing, for example, the Holy Trinity in a threesome and absolutely indescribable pictures depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary, newborn Lord Jesus Christ, saints of the Lord, and subsequent Popes. These are “European values?” This is supposed to be the image of liberty?
Freedom of the press is not an idea that we should accept uncritically. Undoubtedly, it is difficult to demand its restricting in times when the Catholic media almost work in the underground and often face many hindrances. On the other hand, we do know that freedom of the press is not unlimited. Therefore, we do not publish obscene pictures or drawings on our news website. Not to mention our everyday self-censorship in the words used to write published texts.
After the attack in Paris, Pope Francis said: “Lethal violence is always abhorrent and can never be justified.” It is hard not to agree with the Holy Father on this. Citing the words of previous Popes, one should also remember the great predecessors of Francis. Pius IX had condemned unlimited freedom of the press in his work Syllabus.
What is more, Mirari vos by Pope Gregory XVI says that the freedom of the press is “the most fatal of liberties.” According to this respectable Pope, unrestricted freedom of the press “is a hideous freedom, which could never be sufficiently abhorred, yet some people dare to demand it with so great a clamor and persistence and disseminate everywhere. We tremble, Venerable Brothers, to see what monstrous doctrines, or rather what prodigious errors we are inundated with, errors disseminated far and in all directions by a vast multitude of books, pamphlets, and other writings – though small in volume, great in perversion – hence the plague that proceeds over the face of the earth and is the cause of our tears.”
Gregory XVI explained that liberty of blasphemy cannot be justified by anything, even the fact that one may publish rectification of the blasphemies within this liberty. He called people of such an opinion “impudent.”
If there was a Polish state worthy of Catholics’ acceptance, it should limit freedom of the press. That was also pointed out by Pope Leo XIII, when he wrote that “a responsibility of the state is to justly limit freedom of the press,” in accordance with what the truth requires. He preached: “ The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions. If unbridled license of speech and of writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail.”
Over the next few days we will witness a heated debate on Islam and freedom of the press. Let us leave the question of Islam to the followers of Mohammad. However, we cannot allow blasphemers insulting Jesus Christ in the most disgusting manner to become lay martyrs for freedom of the press.
Krystian Kratiuk
