What’s Wrong with the World

As far as remarks go, this was one of his least troubling. Seeing it in print is different from hearing it first hand, but I suspect his point was simply that, even though the retaliation was completely out of proportion and not justified, you can't say it was unexpected. Particularly given the specific group involved.

Maybe it's just me, but I found this statement personally to be very troubling because it is such a striking contrast with the words of Jesus. The thing is, nobody needs to be told that the natural human response to an insult is to lash back at the other person (and punching someone is also out of proportion and not justified in response to them saying something you don't like). Everybody knows that already. What we do need to be told is that the right and proper response is to turn the other cheek and leave vengeance to God. At best this was a missed opportunity in which the Pontiff could have taught Christians what Jesus said about being insulted. But maybe it's just me.

Even if I did have a son who came home from school and admitted he got in a fight with someone who was insulting his mother, there's really no comparison between my son's action and a Muslim terrorist murdering people, including completely unrelated innocents. So the quote is disturbing in that respect too.

I don’t know what to say about the Pope’s comments except that they are extremely disappointing.

John, what has this (ahem) pope done or said in the past that could ever justify your being "disappointed" in what he continues to do and say in the present?

Elephant - yes, that is also very true. It seems like a very mixed message to be sending.

George - I wasn't thinking of this Pope in particular, I would be disappointed in any Pope who said it because I think it falls short of what the leader of a church - any church - should say. Let alone a church of a billion people. But you seem to be implying that you aren't expecting anything better from Francis if I am correctly reading between the lines.

I'm not so sure I agree with this. Did not Our Lord use violence against the moneychangers? He wasn't a pacifist, but obviously violence was something to be considered in only very grave situations and in proper proportion. For some people, Pope Francis seems to damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He constantly is charged with being too liberal, but when he says something illiberal and in counter to our elites making secular martyrs of blasphemers, that's wrong too.

If we take our perspective back to 500A.D., or 1300A.D., if someone blasphemed and attacked the Christian Faith, Catholics would have beaten them up. Now, in the OT, some twenty young boys made fun of a prophet, and the prophet prayed and a bear attacked them and killed them all. Blasphemy is condemned in the Bible. What Charlie Hebbdo was engaging in was blasphemy. 600 years ago, Catholics would have killed as well. Any Catholic Monarch would have jailed these jerks a long time ago. There is no free speech for blasphemy. The Commandment is "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain". I believe this also encompasses blasphemy and anything directed as satire or anything derogatory about God.

The charge of blasphemy is death. That the Islamists still have the balls and their religious authorities have the righteousness to approve the punishment for blasphemy against their god.

I totally agree. That is the Old teaching of the Faith. Too bad Catholics and their religious leaders are all effeminized liberal weanies. We will stand by while an artist dumps a crucifix in a glass of urine.

At least the Muslims stand up for their faith. Catholics now, lean over backwards and let themselves get walked all over. It is because the leadership of the Catholic Church are all liberals and bought that Enlightenment junk.

The death penalty, swift and sure, is the response for blasphemy.

"Zeal for Your house consumes me" says the Pslamist. Amen. Amen.

John,

Great post -- I'm with you in finding this comment disappointing and particularly ill-timed (or disturbing -- given the recent deaths at the hands of Muslims who were insulted!) I would only say, in partial defense of DeGaulle, that I do think you might be stretching your point when you say:

"In fact everything Jesus ever said about being insulted and being attacked and persecuted was – get this – not to do likewise in return."

This statement suggests that Christians must be pacifists, which I don't think is true. Nothing Jesus said seems to me to suggest we can't defend ourselves (or our families) against harm from an attacker (e.g. a violent Islamic jihadi!)

Unlike DeGaulle, however, I am willing to turn the blasphemous staff of Charlie Hebdo into secular martyrs -- when it comes to Islam I think we need more blasphemers.

Just to clarify, I am not taking Jesus as a pacifist, nor am I a pacifist. Specifically I was thinking of how we are to respond to insults and mockery, and perhaps I should have included the references in the o.p. I was being a bit lazy I guess.

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Notably absent is any mention of punching someone who insults, mocks, and persecutes you for your faith, and I think that would be inconsistent with rejoicing and being glad.

And of course we have "But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Now I do not take this to be a statement of strict pacificism; striking someone on the cheek was an insult and not the same as a physical attack. I don't think Jesus meant you can never defend yourself from an attacker (or defend someone else), but I think it applies directly to the context of someone insulting you, your faith, or whatever. I don't think this applies to self-defense, or to a nation's military, or to the use of appropriate force by police, or anything like that. But I do think it applies to someone insulting your faith.

W. Lindsay Wheeler - Wow, I don't really know where to start with that. Maybe Catholics would have done that back in the old days, but that seems to me to be as far removed from the Gospel of Jesus as can be. I think your take on Elijah is debatable, but in any case that is the OLD Testament. We are not under Law but under grace, so there have been some changes since then. I don't think this has to do with anyone becoming "effeminized liberal weenies" either.

Do you really think Muslims are right to kill people who blaspheme Mohammad? As far as I know saying that Mohammad is not a true prophet of God would constitute blasphemy, and so if you are a Christian you would (presumably) be guilty of blasphemy. Do you really think that proves that they have "balls"? To me it just proves that they are filled with hate and wickedness. I really don't think that's the same thing.

These were indeed very disturbing comments. And one wonders where the murders of the people at the kosher market come into play in these comments from the Pope. There is no place for them even to fit in, yet we have evidence that the two attacks were planned *at the same time* and *by the same set of people*. It was a two-part attack. Yet the people buying their challah at the kosher market hadn't insulted anybody.

John, I don't know that I have exactly the right peg for this pope, but his apparently intentional modus operandi is to say things with a pre-meditated wild abandon from care, precision, nuance, etc.

Where a careful person might have distinguished between intentionally provoking and "saying something that happens to provoke", he appears not to WANT that kind of precision in his speech. Where a thoughtful person might draw out the important distinction between "what you should be prepared for in reaction" and what reaction I ought to be prepared to give, this pope seems to be prepared to confuse and ambiguate them. He was, of course, speaking off the cuff. But he LIKES to speak off the cuff and to do this without care, over and over. Maybe he thinks this kind of approach to speaking is helpful to some goal that he has in mind. Or maybe he can't even imagine another way of speaking, I don't know. Even his encyclical was chock full to bursting with gaps, ambiguities, incomplete distinctions.

I too don't think that Jesus must be taken as telling us to be pacifists. But he really did tell us to turn the other cheek, and he really did that Himself, literally unto death. One thing to note is that He said "blessed are you when they persecute you...for my sake". Our standard of how to respond is not independent of circumstance, and we can be called to refuse to accept provocation pacifically when it is, for charity's sake, for the good of those involved to respond forcefully - especially innocent victims under our charge.

W. L. Wheeler's rant above forgets that even for the sin of blasphemy, the Old Testament never gave the OK to kill the person without trial, without involving the authorities. It is one thing to pursue the criminal with rigor, it is quite another to do so outside the law. That's lawlessness. The Muslims attacking Charlie Hebdo were not pursuing the _law_ against blasphemers, they were out for violence against insults. What they did had nothing to do with REAL death penalty, which is meted out at the hands of the law at the directive of those who have been given the charge of care of the common good.

St. Peter said to "Supplement the Faith with Virtue". The Boy Scout Laws end with "Reverent". The Scout Laws are a list of virtues. Reverence is a virtue. Do you think for one minute that an ancient Republican Roman or an Athenian democrat, much less a Spartan would engage in anything close to what those childish thugs did at Charlie Hebbdo?

Absolutely NOT! If the Romans wouldn't do it, if the Athenians wouldn't do it, if the Spartans wouldn't do it--what makes anyone think this is alright in Western Culture?

Those guys were without Virtue! I pay them no respect and they deserve what they get.

Roman Catholicism is not "sola gospel" but many are taking that way. Turn the other cheek is personal insults to oneself. But when God is involved, that is NOT the Gospel to let disgusting liberals and leftists spew their hatred upon what is holy. The Gospel of "Turn the other cheek" does not contramand the "Do not Blaspheme". A Christian practicing Virtue does not condone nor acquiesce in Blasphemy. The Muslims consider him holy, so what. For me, in the virtue of "being reverent", I have to respect his religion and any other religion. I will teach that they are in error and that Mohammed is not a prophet of true religion but I will never desecrate nor blaspheme. A man of virtue never does that in any case. When a Christian conquers Islamic territory, they are within their right to take over mosques and convert them to churches or destroy them but there is NO right to blaspheme anywhere or at anytime. Respect is given.

Enlightenment junk values do not contramand the teachings of Virtue.

Virtue also demands Righteousness: Duty to God and Spirits. Assault God, and the dictates of Virtue demand retribution. My duty is to God--not to some godless liberal precept of god-haters of "freedom of speech". Traditionalists of the Old Order don't put up with BS, and everything spewing from Charlie Hebbdo is just plain garbage. Under a Catholic Monarchy that cr*p wouldn't happen.

I pay them no respect and they deserve what they get.

You need to dial it back. We do not allow advocacy of terrorism on this blog. So please get that straight.

And you're uninformed, to put it mildly, if you think that converting a mosque to a church or destroying it is not blasphemy, and a lot of other things too, in the Muslim view. The distinction you think you are making does not exist in the Muslim view. Indeed, to portray Mohammad in a picture for purposes of making a point of discussion is itself considered blasphemous, without any obscenity at all.

DeGaulle, first of all, to call the cartoonists "blasphemers" without quotation marks or any other qualifier is to imply that insulting Islam is really blasphemy. Which it isn't. Secondly, the Pope's comments here are not contrary to the leftist perspective. It is completely fine with some left-of-lefties to sympathize with the Muslim murderers in this case. Because, you know, the poor murderers felt insulted. In fact, in general, dhimmitude tends to be left-wing rather than right-wing these days, though not always (as the comments in this thread show). But in the Pope's case, this is hardly a damned if one does, damned if one doesn't. This is a consistently left-of-center script.

Believe me, if we were talking about Christians doing something *really* nasty and illiberal like saying that Jesus is the only way to heaven and that non-Christians are probably going to hell, you'd very quickly see how "sympathetic to illiberalism" this Pope is--namely, not at all. He'd trot out his little list of high-falutin' theological epithets for traddies, which has been getting a good workout all along, and blast 'em with it.

I speak as a Protestant, but I have the use of my eyes and other faculties, and this all presents a pretty consistent picture, sadly enough.

Lydia, I do not withdraw my description of the cartoonists as blasphemers, because I have read a detailed description, by a commentator over at Fr. Z, of some of the cartoons by Charlie-Hebdo aimed at Christians, which I assure you I have no stomach for repeating. It is on that basis I apply my description and I consider it well-justified. These cartoonists certainly deserved a good punch from someone, and the account of their blasphemy against all that is sacred in Christianity drained me of all sympathy for them. As for the so-called blasphemy against Mohammed-surely it is in itself blasphemy to put Mohammed, a mere human being, up on such an idolatrous pedestal? As for Pope Francis, I thought his comment refreshing-we have been sucking things up too long. It's time we reasserted ourselves instead of simpering over every issue. And I'm not advocating going around shooting people-I unequivocally condemn that action.

DeGaulle, if that's what Pope Francis was saying, that would be nice. But it's not the sense I get. Not "if you insult my mother I would punch you out and that would be the good and proper thing, so you shouldn't provoke me", but more like "if you insult my mother I would punch you out regardless of what the good and proper action might be, and you shouldn't provoke me into that." Yes, in both cases "you shouldn't provoke me" is there, it sets off a fence, a social restraint. But in the first one it does so with a moral claim that the fence is in the right place, in the second one there is no obvious connection between the social restraint and any moral basis. The Pope passed up the chance to make a moral thesis with weight, instead (at best) he made a social comment.

Did his "You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others" do so from the ground of universal moral concepts? Not clearly. He made the whole thing ambiguous. He didn't follow up the "You cannot" with why. Some people will walk away thinking "you cannot insult the faith of others because that's an offence against the liberal golden rule: be nice." Being nice is where it's all at. People who are not nice get punched. Or at least should expect to get punched.

Did the Pope really mean "you cannot insult the faith of others" from a more principled, more rooted foundation than the liberal golden rule? You cannot tell from the article. Instead creating a teaching moment, all we got was fluff. And this carelessness is what we find over and over. Indeed, the Pope himself said it:

"I am worried, but you know I have a defect: a good dose of carelessness. I'm careless about these things,"

It is reaching the point where practically nothing that Francis says, no matter how crude and unbecoming the office of the papacy, really surprises me anymore. There was not a hint of depth or Christian wisdom to anything he had to say, but that is not really a departure from the norm. Apparently Christ instituted the papacy so that we could be treated to sophomoric observations such as, Insult my mother, and you should know you've got a punch coming.

The only people who get a thing out of this kind of talk are the people who make their living providing "context" and back-filling his statements with the moral seriousness that they lack on their face. It's really just getting embarrassing.

Isn't the most relevant issue with scripture here that Christ actually was known for being insulting to the Jewish leaders of His day? He compared them to snakes and tombs and made numerous statements about the hypocrisy and uselessness of their worship.

Sage,

That's one of the best comments about this Papacy I've read in a long time.

As Lydia keeps pointing out, and this goes to the heart of DeGaulle's and Wheeler's sympathies with the Muslim attackers, not all of their cartoons were obscene. I would have no problem with State authorizes cracking down on obscenity. But to show a cartoon of Mohammad simply saying "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!" is plain old legitimate satire and I don't think fits anyone's (even Wheeler's) definition of blasphemy -- except for Islamic killers. And that is the problem with Islam.

In the time of Judges, only the leaders ruled. There was no "rule of law". It was rule of the authority of the judges of Israel. It was based on their own personal integrity and leadership. Under the Monarchy, the rule of judges passed to the rule of Kings. King David did not go to a "set of rules" to judge. He judged upon his authority to do so. At this time was the OT being written down. In local cases, law-breakers were brought in front of a council of elders who decided cases. The pattern of tradition was then written down latter.

In France, there is no authority. For no authority anywhere excuses blasphemy. Liberalism is the absence of authority; i.e. there is nothing dogmatic and so there can be no authority. Hence, the need to act on one's own. They had plenty of warning. They knew the Muslims get infuriated over any depiction of Mohammed. And yet they continued. You would think that the sticking of the Danish Cartoonist would teach you. Liberals never learn.

You play in the hornets nest---you deserve to get stung. Muslims are strict iconoclasts. As the Jews, fellow Semites, there is no depictions. That is the nature of their religion. Respect that. Depicting Mohammed, even as a picture, is forbidden because of the rule against graven images in their religion.

Under the Old Order, these people from the Dutch cartoonist, Charlie Hebbdo and others would have all been jailed. As Cicero said, The Truth doesn't change; There is not one thing yesterday and another today, there is not one thing in Athens and another in Rome. Truth exists eternally.

Oh, brother. Now I've heard everything. There is no rule of law in Europe because it's a liberal country. How convenient for terrorism and vigilantism. Rule of law? Murder? What rule of law?

By the way, I _strongly support_ Molly Norris's saucy "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" satire from 2010. Anybody who says that if you depict a toaster and say that it's Mohammad as an act of defiance and satire against Muslim bullies you deserve to die is insane. And I do not mean "insane" in a metaphoric sense. Not fit for human company.

I applaud anti-Islam satire as one tool in our toolkit. Theological debate is another. There are many. But satire is one.

Respect that.

Wheeler, sometimes your silly loony-bin lunacy is funny and entertaining, in an appalling sort of way. Here it is just dumb without even being entertaining.

In the time of Judges, only the leaders ruled. There was no "rule of law".

In local cases, law-breakers were brought in front of a council of elders who decided cases.

If there was no law that ruled, but just the will of judges, then what laws were being cited to identify "law-breakers"? Of course there was law. Half of Exodus and Leviticus shows Moses issuing laws. The Jews were the people of "the Law". St. Paul spends 2/3 of the Epistles pointing out that "the Law" doesn't save.

In France, there is no authority. For no authority anywhere excuses blasphemy. Liberalism is the absence of authority; i.e. there is nothing dogmatic and so there can be no authority. Hence, the need to act on one's own.

Not even sophomores would be taken in by that sophistry. Hey, any time I want I can dispense with so-called authority simply by declaring "you're no authority because you permit X and authority wouldn't permit X". Every man is his own final authority, because every man decides for himself what belongs in X that authority wouldn't permit. Moses? No, he struck the rock twice, authority wouldn't disobey God's direct orders. Elders? No, they permitted this, that, or the other violation of the Law. Judges? No, they permitted Philistines to take some of the territory guaranteed to Israel. Kings? No, they permitted their wives to worship idols. There has never been an authority on Earth (other than Christ) who didn't sin, so there is no authority on Earth. Until Christ comes back, anyway.

That's some powerful weed you have there.

Jeffrey, I have no sympathies whatever with the Muslim killers. They are devils, emulating their alleged "prophet". I meant that I had lost what little sympathy I had for Charlie-Hebdo when I discovered the extremes of their anti-Christian blasphemy.

Lydia, "if that's what Pope Francis was saying, that would be nice." That is the problem, isn't it? It's too difficult to know what he's saying. I just am trying to be as positive as I can about him. Maybe, I over-shot, I can't even say I know.

I am reminded of how, back in 1969, Patricia Buckley Bozell (sister of William F. Buckley, husband of L. Brent Bozell, and mother of L. Brent Bozell III), smacked feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson while the latter was giving a talk at Catholic University of America. Bozell was outraged by statements by Atkinson (a lapsed Catholic) about how Our Lady had been "knocked up by the Holy Spirit" and how CUA had given her a platform even after such statements, which she thought should have disqualified her from appearing at any public event sponsored by a university established by the bishops of the United States. William F. Buckley reprinted, in National Review, correspondence he had had with one of Bozell's sons, in which one of the two of them (I don't remember who) quoted C.S. Lewis to the effect that there are some sins which a lot of people are, not above, but below. Bozell's response to Atkinson's blasphemy might be one of them.

My memory was faulty. The incident with Patricia Bozell and Ti-Grace Atkinson was in 1971: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071402272.html

Actually, de Gaulle, that was Tony who said "that would be nice," and I think he was being nice. I wouldn't even go as far as that. It would still demonstrate a poor sense of perspective in the face of evil murder. It would still demonstrate a refusal to acknowledge that the Muslim definition of "insulting one's mother" is incredibly broad and includes non-obscene satire making a legitimate point. It would still ignore the attacks on other civilians that took place in a completely different location *as part of the same attack*. It would still mean ignoring the attempted intimidation and Islamicization of Europe. Frankly, there is no good way to construe the utter foolishness of what the Pope said when he said it.

Lydia, let's also not forget the wantonness of the killer's execution of a helpless police officer (a Muslim, as it happens), jogging up to him as he lay there begging for his life, and shooting him in the face.

Ah, well. We have it on the Pope's own eminence that it was only natural, so whaddayagonnado?

Apparently Christ instituted the papacy so that we could be treated to sophomoric observations such as, Insult my mother, and you should know you've got a punch coming.

Sage, in a day where the Pope (or someone on his staff) feels he must participate in being a Twit (the proper formal term for participants in Twitter, of course), this is not surprising. No, we DON'T need to hear every inane word that comes from the mouth of anybody, even a pope. As the quantity goes up, the quality must needs go down. We don't need that.

I would like to point out several things that rest on race. In the Hispanic countries of South and Central America, the mother is very very important. Insult anybody's Hispanic mother and you have a fight on your hands. The Pope is just expressing a very Hispanic cultural trait. The resistance and umbrage expressed toward the Pope's statement is very clear in the Northern European and Liberal European statements. There is a cultural, hence racial, divide. Race is in everything; Race colors everything. Christians should be aware of that.

People should also consider in this the Religious Wars in Germany between Protestants and Catholics. Protestants considered Catholics as heathens and pagans due to the statues in their churches. The prohibition against graven images was a very serious concern for the German Protestants. The divide between Protestant and Catholic Germans caused a very long, evil civil war. Whole families were butchered because each side saw the other as evil. The iconoclasm of Protestantism was part of the make up the violence.

Iconoclasm when it becomes realized, is very violent and exterminatory. It is the nature of the beast. Islam as a very strict monotheistic religion and has at its core iconoclasm. It will react violently.

Here's a pretty good opinion piece about the Pope's statement that I came across today:

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/16/opinion/schlumpf-pope-paris/index.html

Quite well said by Heidi Schlumpf.

It amazes me how the "world" is being turned around. If you deny the Holocaust, you go to jail. But you can freely deny that Christ is the son of God. If you deny that six million died in the Holocaust and insist on a lower number, you can lose your job and are vilified. But if you deny the existence of God, you're okay.

We see here in this example that values are transposed. An historical event is sacrosanct while a religious dogma has no value, no effect. British and French government arrest people for crimes against the Holocaust but crimes against Catholicism? That is even promoted. You can go to jail for denying the Holocaust but you can be celebrated and feted if you drop a crucifix in a glass of urine.

Who is greater?

What has happened is that the Holocaust has become more holier, more sanctified than God and Jesus Christ. The Holocaust is Holier than God Himself.

The same goes to "Freedom of Speech". Freedom of Speech cancels out the dictates of not only Religion but Virtue. "Freedom of Speech", a liberal atheist dictate has now become Holy Writ. Can you not see that we are comparing and contrasting and judging according to "Freedom of Speech". That Freedom of Speech is above and beyond the Ten Commandments. Freedom of Speech is now greater than the religious law of Blasphemy.

So as Christians, were do we get our values from? What is the hierarchy of values? Freedom of Speech is the highest moral value? Greater than Blasphemy? Have Christians put liberal values first before God's values?

And this goes to the heart--You have NO free speech regarding the Holocaust. But you do have free speech to Blaspheme God and the prophet of Islam. So what is greater? Who rules us?

Actually, this has little or nothing to do with freedom of speech. Murder isn't even, e.g., the government fining someone for obscenity. These were vile murderers. They are wicked because they committed vile murder against multiple people, including police and people buying bread in a market as well as cartoonists, not because they violated a principle of freedom of speech.

Wheeler - You are really missing the point. Just because someone doesn't think that certain kinds of speech should be outlawed doesn't mean that they approve of that speech. Take your example of denying that Christ is the Son of God. Someone who denies that is speaking falsehood, but I wouldn't want to live in a society in which that kind of falsehood was punishable under the law. Suppose we did live in such a society. Would that make people more likely to believe that Christ is the Son of God? No, it would merely make a society in which they couldn't say so. I think it's preferable for people to be able to say what they really think, even if what they think is false. As Christians I think we should be in favor of people having the freedom to say what they really think.

Besides, one can easily imagine a scenario in which what one is or is not allowed to say is dictated by the narrow beliefs of the ruling Christian class. You say you're Catholic? So would Protestants be allowed to disagree with the Pope in your fantasy world? Would debate over specific doctrines and interpretations be permitted, and to what extent? It isn't hard to see where that would lead, and where it has led historically.

Incidentally, the ruling secular liberal class is becoming increasingly hostile to divergent viewpoints. Just look at how conservatives are refused the opportunity to speak at commencement ceremonies, or how conservatives are increasingly vilified for stating (or even holding) views that are contrary to the progressive view of homosexuality, abortion, and even Islam for that matter. Such an increasingly authoritarian society would not be better just because it was a particular group of Christians doing the vilifying. The answer to falsehood is to speak the truth, not to punish the purveyors of falsehood. God will deal with all such in due time. And unlike human authorities, he will always judge correctly.

John, for the record: Wheeler being "Catholic" is rather much too much to debate. Since he rejects and repudiates official teaching in (at a minimum) the Church's Declaration on Religious Liberty, (Dignitatis Humanae), along with so much more that he re-molds into his own twisted sense, let's just say that nobody could easily recognize what the Catholic Church teaches from what he says.

Funny, I remember that Socrates counseled that the poets be censored because they taught bad things about the gods. For Socrates and Plato, God can only do good. Plato, in the Laws, talks of the interdiction of atheists. They were to be arrested. For five years, they were to be re-educated and exhorted to believe in God. If not, after five years, they were still recalcitrant, they were to be silently and in the dark, executed as being dangerous to the body politic.

Plato was a philodorian. He got his ideas and borrowed his philosophy from the Spartans. The Spartans had laws called the "xenelasia", i.e. foreigner speech. With Plato's condemnation of atheism, where he calls it a malady, a sickness, one may also consider that xenelasia was also directed at atheists. It is the Doric Greeks that are at the basis of true Western Culture. The Doric Greeks who were very pious, god-believers and the originators of the Trinitarian concept of God. Plato is the basis of Western civilization and culture.

All the famous people of the Enlightenment were a majority atheists. Paul A. Rahe outs the French priest Cassendi as an atheist. The rest were deists connected to the Hermetic Tradition. Spinoza was a pantheist/atheist. This is the intellectual foundation of the modern world. Much of the wars of the Modern Era, were based on Atheism. The American Revolution was based on the work of Spinoza, that "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence.

For Christendom, Church and State go together. Every Catholic has a loyalty to Christendom and its rebuilding. I remember another encyclical that condemns modernism. It seems that many here have adopted modernism. The purpose of a society is to help the Church with its goal of salvation---not freedom of speech. It is precisely that Liberal dictum of "Freedom of Speech" that is destroying America, today, by allowing filth and vulgarity to run rampant.

The last part of Plato's Republic is about growing a Good person, the end goal of philosophy is to raise a god-fearing and god-like person. That means the culture has to be controlled. That children have to be raised in a holy and godlike environment. Plutarch wrote that Lycurgus formed a complete philosophical state. The Spartans based their society on Wisdom. Wisdom dictates the control of the culture. Nothing in the Enlightenment is about Wisdom. And most certainly the Bill of Rights, this Freedom of speech, has nothing to do with Wisdom. Wisdom teaches the opposite. It says that God loves only those who operate with Wisdom. It also says, "Blessed is the man who has not listened to the counsel of the ungodly". Our whole country is based on the counsel of the ungodly. Give it up and return to Christendom.

I find myself having a lot of sympathy for Wheeler's viewpoint and am flabbergasted that many of the regular contributors to a site dedicated to opposing liberalism in the name of GK Chesterton have seemingly allowed themselves to adopt the liberal shibboleth of "freedom of Speech" as a commandment to supercede God's Third.

We cannot use either of the two sides this site is opposed to as ally against the other. Was that not the theme of a recent (excellent) post? The Devil is with both sides.

DeGaulle, I really don't think Lydia and Paul and John were promoting freedom of speech superceding obedience to God's Third Commandment. Not at all.

Contrary to Wheeler's free-wheeling and unhinged diatribe, belief in the right to free speech is not in itself tantamount to saying blasphemy is good. There is no direct contradiction. There is, admittedly, tension there.

Let me expand on an example. John mentioned denying Christ is the Son of God. Back in the early days of the Church, there were people sincerely trying to understand the right way to speak of Jesus, and who had not (yet) the support of (still to come) councils where the right way to speak of Jesus came to be generally accepted and understood, and some of them might have put forward the thesis "since God does not have a body, he cannot have a son". Though they would be wrong in their conclusion, they would have be RIGHT in part of the thesis: since God does not have a body, he cannot generate a son in the ordinary manner a son is generated. Their erroneous statement that included a true part would have been part of the debate, the dialogue and development eventually leading to the TRUE teaching that Jesus is the Son of God combined with an account of that which makes sense of God not having a body. During the time when the matter was still partially unsettled, saying "Jesus is not the Son of God" out of conviction of the TRUE thought that God could not generate a son in the ordinary manner would have been erroneous but not a sinful act of blasphemy. Merely stating a thesis that opposes some specific truth about God is not the sin of blasphemy. Suarez defined it so: as "any word of malediction, reproach, or contumely pronounced against God. Included in the concept is the pejorative *manner* of referring to God (or sacred things).

Secondly, there is nothing in principle impossible about having laws against blasphemy and having laws protecting freedom of speech. Just as our existing laws do not protect all forms of speech: they do not protect slander, nor maliciously putting people at risk (yelling "fire" in a theater when there is no fire). Sedition laws can restrain speech. In addition, disturbing public peace with "fighting words" can be criminalized. None of these upset the PRINCIPLE of free speech, because the principle is not that free speech is the highest good, hence there are goods that supercede it, and the law (and the state) may suppress such speech as violates higher goods. It is perfectly possible in a good Christian state to have laws protecting free speech and laws criminalizing blasphemy, not least because (like fighting words) blasphemy is not merely speech that contains content against some truth about God, but speech that harbors a pejorative manner of speaking about God. The fact that OUR state is no longer a good Christian state is sad and deplorable, but is not due to valid freedom of speech principles. Which is what Dignitatis Humanae says. Wheeler just rejects the Church's teaching on the matter.

Third, speech about Mohammed, personally, that merely portrays him as foolish or evil is not "blasphemy" for two reasons (at least). First because it isn't about God, and second because the "merely" part means it is without the pejorative sense that is part of blasphemy. So, EVEN IF we rightly retained good Christian laws, and enforced them, against blasphemy, that would not have suppressed such things as (just to take an example) a description of Mohammed as a child molester on the basis of accounts that he married a pre-pubescent girl (9 years old). That's not blasphemy, and would not run afoul of laws like the ones in force in Christendom in high medieval times (as claimed by Wheeler).

The fact that Muslims would claim such an account is blasphemous is something that authorities might have to consider in a culture where large groups of Muslims live, because it could impact public peace even though it isn't blasphemy. That's a different consideration than that such speech should be suppressed on account of blasphemy laws.

Lastly, there is a fine line between malediction or contumely spoken of someone connected to the things of God, and speaking these _of_ God and of the sacred: obviously, denigrating Abraham precisely as the "father in faith" of all Jews and Christians is different from denigrating him for sleeping with his servant woman, an act not approved by God. Same with Solomon and his 700 wives and letting them worship idols. There is also a fine line (to some tin-eared people an indistinguishable line) between good-natured teasing about something connected to the faith and Christianity, and speaking with malediction. Those who are half-way intelligent are generally capable of distinguishing when it is good-natured teasing and when it isn't, when it is NOT their ox being gored. Everybody can lose a little objectivity when it is their own ox. But the fact that Muslims cannot tolerate ANY speech about Mohammed that runs in the direction of making smaller, even stuff that Christians would tolerate (as mere teasing) about Jesus who REALLY IS GOD, means that we cannot trust their claims about when something is truly denigrating (in the sense that is required to reach to blasphemy).

Um, DeGaulle, please don't say that. Lindsay Wheeler is, literally and strictly, a terrorist-sympathizing nutcase. You are not. Please re-read his comments here. Let sink in the fact that he expressly supports the murderers here. In fact, he expressly says that there was no rule of law in Europe because of the liberal government and that it was good that the Muslims had the cahones to come in and gun down the wicked blasphemers. You have expressly disavowed that position.

This is why Wheeler is on the cusp of being banned for advocating terrorist violence and you aren't.

Seriously, read more carefully.

DeGaulle, please also keep in mind that Chesterton's great poem, "Lepanto," among other insults, repeatedly refers to Islamic prophet as "Mahound." Today he'd be lined up with the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and shot down in the street by the Jihadists.

DeGaulle - I don't really see how you can take me as saying that freedom of speech supercedes God's Law. I specifically stated that God will judge blasphemers. Freedom is a New Testament principle - see Gal. 5:1 for example: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Note that Paul was specifically writing against the Judaizers who wanted to compel observance of the Law in addition to faith in Christ. Paul and the other apostles firmly rejected that view (see also the Jerusalem council of Acts 15). I find this concept is not understood or seriously misunderstood by Christians but it is a central New Testament principle. Attempting to compel obedience to God by means of law does not and cannot work. So blasphemy laws don't actually make blasphemers into non-blasphemers. There is a lot more that I could say about that but I don't really think a com-box is the right medium for that.

As a long-time reader of this site, I am moved for the first time ever to write a comment. Your treatment of Wheeler in this thread has been disgraceful. He's clearly a diehard traditionalist Roman Catholic and therefore not at all sympathetic toward Islam. Shame on you Lydia for being so uncharitable in your interpretation of his words as to accuse of him being a terrorist sympathiser. You're smart, you know that's not what he was saying. His statement 'at least the Muslims stand up for their faith' is clearly hyperbole- he is not exonerating Islamic terrorism, he is using hyperbole to chastise weak Christians for caring too little about blasphemy directed against Christianity.

And yet here we are, talking about the importance of free speech, with Lydia threatening to ban Wheeler. Je suis Wheeler.

Buddy, I have _expressly_ said that I will _not_ tweet "Je suis Charlie" and that _precisely_ because of their obscenity. I have also repeatedly stated on this site that I am not a free speech absolutist.

Moreover, if you read my comments above, you will see that I, for one, do not consider that terrorist murder is an issue of free speech in any event. The problem with vile murderers is that they are vile murderers, not that they violate freedom of speech. (I believe I wrote that almost word for word.) So I, for one, am _not_ talking about this in terms of freedom of speech.

Wheeler's comments are unequivocal and speak for themselves. People with truly kooky opinions such as his (and I have every reason to believe that he has meant every single word just as he has said it) waste a lot of time for blog contributors and administrators in various ways. Such as deciding when actually to ban someone who is expressly adulating and praising murder.

But one thing I flatly refuse to do is get involved in a meta-debate with commentator B about whether I have "uncharitably" interpreted commentator A's loony bin rants. I would rather spend my time watching paint dry, and I have a lot more important things to do than watching paint dry.

Stephen N -

he is using hyperbole to chastise weak Christians for caring too little about blasphemy directed against Christianity.

I don't think you know what a weak Christian is. In case you haven't read your New Testament lately, the Gospel turns the entire worldly concepts of strength and weakness upside-down; "God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong . . ." What Wheeler is advocating is precisely the kind of worldly strength that progressives AND Muslims advocate - authoritarianism and ultimately totalitarianism. That doesn't wash with me. God calls us to something higher.

I am not going to pile on to Stephen, Lydia and John's answers are sufficient. However, I will point out that Wheeler has a back-history here, and part of that is a fairly clear trend of being very thick-skinned. He doesn't offend easily. He doesn't seem to GET it easily, or with mere subtle hints, either. If you want to make an impression, of any kind, sledgehammers seem to be the right tool. We were operating with that understanding.

Nevertheless, Stephen, I am glad you are a long-time reader here. And I hope we see more comments by you.

Just a clarifying comment about free speech and its suppression, censorship. Free speech isn't free. That is to say, there no force in nature or the heavens that can rid speech from having consequences, and sometimes those consequences cost you. You can make people around you unhappy with you, for example, thus damaging your other social status and freedoms.

But aside from that built in reality, unless you want to build your own soap box to speak from, you are going to have to buy or borrow someone else's. If you buy it, your speech costs you. If you borrow it, on the basis of friendship for example, then you will EITHER, of your own free choice, choose to self-censor your words by tailoring them to keeping in mind the friendship that gave you the soap-box for your use, or you will NOT do so and potentially run the risk of damaging the friendship itself. Again, speech has consequences and anyone who speaks intelligently thinks about those consequences and reflects that thinking in his speech. Thus a man either watches his own mouth and restrains himself, or he bears the social consequences thereof. No power on Earth can divest his words of the social consequences he must bear if he will utter them. Ostracism for saying heinous things is natural in society, not a political act by government.

We call government censorship of speech, with legal penalties, "suppression" of speech. This penalizing unacceptable speech is a political issue, getting into rights. When an acquaintance fails to offer you his soap box, that's an example of not gifting you with a privilege, it is not taking away a right. Not granting you a special opportunity to make speeches that are offensive to me means merely that you can continue to make them without my help, it isn't an instance of taking away your rights. Nobody has a right to MY HELP to make speech that I find offensive (whether I am reasonable in that or not).

Anyone who wishes to make heinous comments that are offensive to decent Christians can make them in places other than WWWtW, without our interference. Not extending THIS soap box to making such speeches is not a violation of - or even an interference with - a person's right to speak. That's why, when we ban a commentator (which happens rarely), it has nothing to do with free speech rights.

In his book, that I'm reading right now, The Ugly Renaissance, Alexander Lee writes of a case of blasphemy in Florence in 1501. A certain Antonio Rinaldeschi, who was a pious individual by all accounts, went on a drinking binge at a local tavern. He was ruined by a game of dice. Infuriated and mad, looking for an outlet for his rage, he flung dung at an image of the Virgin Mary.

He was arrested, convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to hanging. He repents--and is still hung. (pg 36)

We had an artist in America that created a picture of the Virgin Mary with dung. And nothing happened.

One can conclude that 'salt' has left the Catholic Faith. We no longer have true believers.

In Medieval Christianity, homosexuals if found were castrated and rode out of town backwards on a donkey.

Yet, at a city commission meeting here in Battle Creek, an anti-discrimination ordinance was passed. I was the only Catholic to appear to resist. No priest showed up. The Bishop, an half-an-hour away, did not show up. There were two opportunities to comment. Three Catholic parishes in Battle Creek, one three blocks away from City Hall, Two Catholics on the city commission-------And there was not resistance, no letters to the editor by any Catholic, and two Catholics with their votes passed it.

What happened to the zeal for the Faith? What happened? Historical examples abound that show up modern Catholicism as weak and ineffectual, compromised by Liberalism.

Yeah, since the govt. wouldn't hang the guy who made the Virgin Mary thing, what would have been great and would have shown that America still has a few pious Catholics in it would have been if a couple of them had shown up with Kalashnikovs and gunned down the artist./sarc

Reading the pope's remark, I am reminded of Marc McYoung's comments on the difference between blame and responsibility directed at feminist understandings of so-called rape culture: http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/blame_responsibility.html

I tell you what, Wheeler: We will give you one opportunity to retract, unequivocally, your endorsement above for beating up or murdering people who commit what you deem to be blasphemy, or even real blasphemy. (January 15, 8:05 a.m., January 15, 10:07 p.m.)

Since you were warned about such endorsement of violence, you have been incorrigible in continuing to defend your earlier statements, though you haven't, as it happened, explicitly re-stated what you originally said to the effect that those who are thus murdered "deserve what they get" and that you "totally agree" with killing them. You have, however, developed an explicit rationale for such murder in your insane claim that there is no rule of law in Europe or other liberal societies, thus rejecting the designation of murder for those private individuals who kill blasphemers.

By your continued, rambling rants on these subjects, you have also derailed the thread and wasted a good bit of time and bandwidth.

All of this shows a sufficient intransigence on the matter of endorsing terrorism and murder that it will warrant banning if not clearly retracted in a timely fashion.

I've been very, very sick for the last week or so, and haven't been able to rouse myself to respond to Wheeler until now. Much of what I would say has been said, and for that, frankly, I'm grateful.

Still, it bears saying what I have often said elsewhere, which is that restrictions on speech that include Holocaust denial or advocacy for mass murder are not the problem in the West, even where such legal inhibitions obtain. The problem in the West is the disapprobation that attaches to normal, healthy expressions of Christian faith, as well as normal, healthy expressions of national pride. A free Christian Europe can easily survive all manner of restrictions on kooky anti-Semitic and neo-fascist rabble-rousing.

What threatens Europe is the promulgation of the idea, now being taken seriously by many Europeans who have been given little opportunity to know better, that there is no real philosophical daylight between the good and healthy desire to preserve the country and the culture of one's fathers, and Serbian-style quasi-Christian fascism. This is dangerous because feelings of national pride and the basic desire for self preservation are normal. They are natural and ineradicable, and the great liberal gamble that they could be suppressed until they no longer mattered is bound to backfire in the worst possible way--though when the reckoning comes, men like Wheeler will no doubt revel in the cathartic gore. The vigor of Christian society does not, contra Wheeler, find its measure at the gallows.

Now, I disagree wholly with free speech absolutists like Charles W. Cooke at National Review, who expressed the usual libertarian principle in a recent podcast that the freedom to spread vile obscenity is the most fundamental freedom of all, without which no other freedom is possible. That difference is, I daresay, the norm at WWWtW. So Wheeler's characterization of this blog as a place where a commitment to "free speech" represents the summum bonum of Western society is either ignorant or calumnious. Tony offers a good enough summation of right Catholic teaching on the freedom of speech; it is enough to add that Catholicism is not Islam, and Christianity does not necessarily entail juridically-imposed punishments for blasphemy, or licentiousness, or what have you. Nor need you be a modernist to admit that neither terroristic nor state-sanctioned violence in retribution for blasphemy will restore the social kingship of Christ.

These things seem obvious. As for Stephen N., you should understand that this is not YouTube, and kooky commentary that degrades the quality of the discussion here cannot be allowed to stand, much less go without serious condemnation. Argue the proper contours of those restrictions as you like, but one would think that explicit advocacy for retaliatory murder might fall somewhere outside the bounds of what's acceptable in an environment intended to be both sane and civil. All that said, I echo Tony in saying that it would be nice to hear from you more often.

St. Maximos the Confessor said, "One man with the truth is the majority".

I'm a realist and a soldier. I understand what is going on. Lydia is going to ban me, but the CIA and this country engage in Terrorist activity all the time. America is conducting a war against fundamentalist religion whether Christian or Muslim. Liberalism is being enforced by the edge of the sword. State sponsored terrorism is okay but push-back is not okay.

We don't live in Eden and we are not supposed to be.

And I will be damned if I take threats from a skirt and have a woman tell me what I must think, do or say. I will not be emasculated.

I do NOT retract anything I said. Go ahead. Just one more website in a long train of websites to ban me. Thank you.

What threatens Europe is the promulgation of the idea, now being taken seriously by many Europeans who have been given little opportunity to know better, that there is no real philosophical daylight between the good and healthy desire to preserve the country and the culture of one's fathers, and Serbian-style quasi-Christian fascism.

Thank you, Sage, thank you. Very valuable point. The full scope of options are not covered by "all speech allowed with no limits and no consequences" and "even mildly unpleasant references to Mohammed will be punished by law or by crazed vigilantes who rightly assume there is no lawful authority." There is a heck of lot of ground for options in between those two extremes. Attempting to set the terms of the debate as if rejecting one extreme means embracing the other extreme is a discussion killer, it is obscuring, not enlightening.

Purty sure Wheeler wouldn't have retracted even if a non-skirt had happened to be the one to ask for the retraction. Which, for the record, I did only in full consultation with our non-skirt editor. But I'm glad we got it cleared up that Wheeler is not merely "using hyperbole" when he advocates murdering blasphemers. No clarification to that effect has ensued. If the rest of you chaps can't recognize crazed rants when you see them, so much the worse for your interpretive abilities.

Catholic traditionalists, a great many of them, have been welcome as commentators at W4 for a long time. To call people like Wheeler "Catholic traditionalists" is an insult to a body of noble men. We are not obligated to host such rantings.

Sage's comment is excellent and spot-on.

We should not allow those either on the right or the left to push us into a false dichotomy of free speech absolutism vs. killing blasphemers. That is ridiculous, as a couple of centuries of American history indicate. The world in which Hollywood's content was explicitly censored for decency and in which clear laws were in place against pornography was not a world in which blasphemers were sent to the gallows, much less gunned down in their offices to loud cheers from all right-thinking men!

Sage also sees quite clearly the contours of the extremely disturbing society emerging in France and other European countries. Devoid of a clear, positive picture of a sane and decent society, a kind of, as he rightly calls it, quasi-Christianity (which I would say is really neo-pagan) is being pitted against Islam, on the one hand, and virulently anti-Christian leftism, on the other. _None_ of these offers anything but a dark future for the West.

In simpler terms, what Pope Francis actually said was,
'There is no excuse for murder. But if you provoke anger you can expect anger'.
This is completely non-controversial.

Provoking others to anger is a sin. The Pope pointing this out should not be 'disappointing' nor a surprise.

There is no such thing as a "Right to absolutely free speech". Incitement to riot is a crime. Provocation is a moral and legal term.
No, they do not excuse crime or sin ("incitement to riot is no excuse for a riot"), but Pope Francis didn't say they did, did he? Of course not. he condemned the murders in detail before he said what you are discussing.

The staff of Charlie Hebdo pays their mortgage by purposefully and methodically insulting Jews, Muslims, Christians, Blacks, and others by mocking and belittling what they hold most dear and most sacred. It is (again) completely non-controversial to say that such efforts result in anger.

In simpler terms, what Pope Francis actually said was, 'There is no excuse for murder. But if you provoke anger you can expect anger'. This is completely non-controversial.

That's how I read it as well which is why I linked the MacYoung entry. It is not contradictory to hold that Christians should not return insult for insult and at the same time believe that deliberately provoking thugs with a history of thuggery and a writ of thuggery is foolish. The HF is merely describing reality.

P.S. Blessed Monday in the second week of Ordinary time everyone!

Aquinas Dad,

Provoking others to anger is a sin.

Well, Jesus certainly provoked others to anger, resulting in his execution. Some of that even included direct insults like "brood of vipers" and "hypocrites." Paul and the other apostles provoked Jewish and Gentile audiences to anger on numerous occasions in their preaching. I'm assuming that you are a Christian - were these examples of provoking anger sinful? Presumably you would have to say not. So already we have to distinguish what constitutes sinful provocation and non-sinful. And of course no law can discern or distinguish such a thing.

As has already been pointed out on this thread, just saying that Mohammad isn't a true prophet is punishable under Islamic law (and also provokes anger). There are lots of perfectly true things one can say that nevertheless provoke anger. The Pope's statement of course makes no distinction, he just says you can't insult someone's religion without expecting a punch. And actually I already noted that the statement is completely non-informative because everyone knows it. So you're right that that particular statement is non-controversial. That's not the point. The point to me is what the Pope left unsaid, which is that Christians aren't supposed to react this way even if everyone else does.

So, Aquinas Dad, is any satire or humor directed at Islam a sin, then, in your view? Because believe me, it will make them angry. They get angry very easily. Your statements are overstatements.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have made such overstatements in various venues. "It's always wrong to insult someone's religion." No, not really. "It's a sin to provoke someone to anger." No, not really. Jesus provoked the Pharisees to anger all the time. He also insulted them, personally.

Anti-Islam satire can be not only permissible but positively laudable. That is not to say that _all_ anti-Islam satire is _automatically_ laudable. But it certainly can be. It is also undeniably the kind of thing that is going to tick Muslims off, even if totally non-obscene. That is their problem.

As Jeff S. pointed out, some of the cartoons even by Charlie Hebdo were mere straight satire, without any obscenity, and that has a place.

It is not the case that everything at all likely to make Muslims angry is "incitement to riot." That is to give the heckler's veto to those who threaten to riot.

This very web site is likely to provoke Muslims to anger. I'm proud to be part of it, partly for that very reason.

Moreover, I notice that Aquinas Dad, like the Pope, continues to ignore points that we have made in this thread. Sage has made such a point, and I have made another, repeatedly:

This attack, this same attack, planned by the *same group of people*, had numerous deliberate victims who were in no way associated with any cartoons. These included the murdered police woman and the customers at the kosher market. This attack was all of a piece, and the pope's comments not only give the foolish appearance of making excuse for evil murder but also irresponsibly ignore the Islamic supremacism involved here and all the other victims. That is, frankly, inexcusable.

It is odd to me that, though several of us have made these same points repeatedly in this thread, those who either want to defend the pope's comments or repeat them in some form or other *consistently ignore* these points. That is not clear thinking, I'm afraid.

And if I didn't happen to mention this one above (I don't have time to go back and look), here's another: The evil murderer at the kosher market blamed, instead, the fact that French citizens pay taxes which, he believes, support military opposition to ISIS. *That* was *his* reason for his murders. Is that, too, "incitement to riot" and "a sin"?

Yet that was a more honest and clear statement of what this is _really_ all about. Oppose Muslim terrorists either in your own country or in Iraq, and we will murder your civilians.

Folks, you need to think more carefully and clearly about these things, I'm afraid.

the statement is completely non-informative because everyone knows it.

Exactly so. I long for the day when everything I write is is considered unassailable to the precise extent that it contains banalities.

Lydia,
I am not ignoring those points, they are simply not germane to the point at hand. Did the pope say 'it is just that people were killed'? Of course not, he condemned the violence! And so did I.
Or do you not understand what "...they do not excuse crime or sin..." means in this context?

Forgive me, but since I condemned violence in general I felt no need to specifically condemn each and every act of it for the repudiation to be complete.

Anger in and of itself is not sinful. Making people angry as an consequence of telling the truth, teaching, admi\onishing the sinner, etc., is also not sinful. But the provocation of people to anger such that it leads them to desire vengeance *is* a sin.
(CCC 2302-2304)
And thus utterances are are made _for the purpose of_ causing other people to feel anger are a provocation to sin.
Since we are to avoid the near occasion of sin this means we are to avoid deliberately provoking others to anger. Church leaders acting in their authorities as teachers and leaders, of course, may make statements that make people angry, but this is NOT 'provoking to anger'.

This is Cathechism 105 stuff you should have picked up in 8th grade CCD, folks.

No, no one at Charlie Hebdo "deserved" to be *yelled at*, let alone harmed. The Pope didn't even hint at anything else and neither do I.
BUT! That does not mean that their deliberate attempts to provoke Jews, Muslims, Christians, etc. to anger are to be praised! The staff of Charlie Hebdo deliberately provoked others into sinful anger: they do not deserve praise for that.

I submit, Aquinas Dad, that "making people angry as a consequence of admonishing" *could indeed* provoke someone in such a way that he desired vengeance. Plenty of people desire vengeance against anyone who has the gall to admonish them.

Moreover, again, you overstate concerning "deliberately provoking others to anger," because such a statement, on a very plausible construal, would make all satire sinful. In satire we poke fun at what is ridiculous in, for example, an ideology. This is for the purpose of bringing clarity and understanding, but *of course* it will also make those angry who are committed to the ideology and cannot handle criticism of it. When those people are also threatening bullies, there can even be a kind of admirable courage in saying, "I will not submit to your threats." Is that "deliberately" making them angry? In a sense, yes.

I submit, again, that is is pretty clear that Jesus _deliberately_ made the scribes and Pharisees angry. His insults are sufficiently blunt as to leave little doubt about that.

You also continue to be tone-deaf, as indeed the Pope was as well, to the necessity of responding correctly to an historic occasion and maturely recognizing and noting the meaning of that historic occasion.

The _meaning_ of what happened in Paris was not, not remotely, "Insult my mother and expect a punch."

The meaning of what happened there was, "Islamic supremacists brook no dispute and mass murder civilians in pursuit of trying to take over France." It was also, while we're at it, "Islamic supremacists especially hate Jews," given the attack on the kosher store, which is set in a context of rising, blatant incidents of Muslim anti-semitic violence in Paris.

In the face of what actually happened, to say what the Pope said was irresponsible and showed no understanding of *what is actually going on in France*. The big picture, the real "story" that those events told. And as a world leader, he is especially responsible to understand what is actually going on in France and to make that his focus.

I wish to thank everyone for taking the trouble to address my last comment. I have to say that my sympathy was to the gist of Wheeler's comments and that I wasn't taking him literally but I don't know his history as well as some. That sympathy was lost completely by his appalling rudeness to Lydia.

I just find myself provoked to anger so often now; it's hard to retain one's cool and I just can't be indifferent. Therefore, it is hard to condemn anger in another when there is such provocation. Those blasphemies, and I mean the ones against the Holy Trinity and Our Lady (I hope Wheeler thinks better of her than he did of Lydia) are really shocking and part of me still doesn't rule out that The Lord may have used those terrorists as agents of His Wrath (as He, and He only, is entitled to do), just as Islam in general could conceivably be a chastisement for the apostate West.

These are difficult times and prayer is in order.

Well, it's easy for me to "be fair" now, DeGaulle, but "to be fair," I was deliberately rude to Wheeler. (Hoping, in a sense, that he would stop without being banned outright.) That is partly because of his history and partly because I truly believe he meant everything he said quite literally--as indeed the sequel has confirmed. The misogyny is part and parcel of a particular type of reactionary oeuvre, which you may not have previously encountered. As such it does not surprise me.

I think it is possible to have interesting discussions about all of these things--be it free speech absolutism or the pope's comments. But it requires a certain degree of focus and a shared moral compass to do so profitably, and when a commentator shows that he lacks both of those, we're better off without him.

As far as God's using terrorists as agents of his wrath, it's generally IMO not a good idea to conjecture that absent revelation. In this case, the evil terrorists also deliberately targeted a larger group of people; it becomes, if possible, even more problematic to conjecture that the people at the kosher store were just collateral damage in God's intended use of terrorists against blasphemers.

Such a conjecture is also fairly impractical. After all, if you were the good guy at the kosher store and saw that gun sitting on the counter within hands' reach, or if you were a French policeman involved in a shoot-out with the terrorists, saying that Islam is God's judgement on the West would not make any difference to what you needed to do--defend the innocent and stop the evildoers.

Aquinas Dad, there is an interesting thing about "provoking" someone to anger. As Lydia and John mentioned, it is pretty clear that Jesus did just that in his public ministry with the Pharisees.

But to be more specific about that, Jesus's clearing the Temple of profane activities was, apparently, a DELIBERATE act of provocation. Psalm 69:9 says "zeal for my father's house consumes me", and John 2:17 calls forth that very psalm to explain the temple-clearing. Typically, we think of "consuming" zeal as metaphorical - very passionate zeal. But it is in this case LITERAL: Jesus was challenging the priests' and scribes' authority here, FORCING them to take a stance about him. This is, in the long run, what led them to kill him. That is, zeal for His Father's house led ultimately to the chief priests and scribes forcing the Romans to put him on a cross and thus consummate the sacrifice of the New Covenant, and immolation and holocaust sacrifice.

Now, Jesus was God, and we cannot do everything he did. In particular, we cannot institute a new sacrificial order. But there are other examples of prophets whom God calls to be fairly "in your face" about their testimony to the true God, including Elijah's challenge to the 400 priests of Baal.

What I would say in distinguishing, then, is that while it is never permissible to intentionally provoke a response of anger without due cause, and it is never good to provoke by using (for example) false accusations, there are apparently times when we are indeed called to provoke for the sake of the kingdom. Woe to the man who, being so called, takes personal delight in the provocation and goes beyond God's intention. But equally, woe to the man who God calls to witness to Him and refuses because it will provoke others to anger.

I think myself that part of what is going on here psychologically is an artificial division between religion and ideology.

For example, think of your favorite anti-Communist joke. How about the one where someone goes to Minsk to buy bread in Moscow. The punchline is, "I know, but the line starts in Minsk."

You don't think that joke would "provoke to anger" a committed Communist? I bet it would. Almost any sharp political satire would. If someone draws a cartoon making fun of Putin, it's going to make a lot of Russians mad even if it's a brilliant cartoon making an important political point.

Most of us recognize that this can be a _good_ thing even though it is a kind of provocation. It provokes thought as well and does important work in pointing out absurdities in some system of thought or politics. It's when we drop our voices and say, "But you're making fun of someone's _religion_" that we get this artificial idea that it's always wrong.

Lydia, there's something to that. It might explain why there you hear this sort of hushed reference to "a person's deeply held beliefs," even when you know the speaker would not feel the same about, say, Randian ideology (and can anyone doubt that committed Randians hold their beliefs deeply?).

In general I'm ill-disposed towards arguments that lump ideology and religion together on the basis that both constitute views of the world. The separation isn't wholly psychological or artificial--they're very different things. But as you say, the distinction isn't actually relevant for purposes of this discussion, and there's something opportunistic, particularly in the case of liberals, who look to treat Islamic belief as a sacrosanct category of personal identity akin to race, so as to place it somehow beyond the bounds of legitimate criticism (thus the use of the bully word "racist" to bludgeon Islam critics, which makes little more sense than calling a leftist critique of Austrian economics "anti-Austrian bigotry").

No, no one at Charlie Hebdo "deserved" to be *yelled at*, let alone harmed.

I would think that if someone has been provoked to anger by a kind of speech, the best response is to verbally respond to the provocation. Otherwise it becomes bottled up and builds resentment. Even if it isn’t a dialogue, much less the ideal of a respectful debate, a degree of point-counterpoint (or simply traded insults) is closer to justice compared to an escalation of violent threats. Besides, I don't have any reason to respect a man who can't take a dose of his own medicine. Something about removing specks in the eyes of others.

All,
As a theologian I spend a fair amount of time speaking with Protestants. I often hear variations of,
"Why do Catholics worship Mary?"
There are many ways I can respond to this. My preferred answer is to explain that we venerate Mary and then use a number of bible passages to begin to explain to them their errors. I could also reply,
"We don't, you Hell-bound fool! If your mind hadn't been poisoned by Calvin you'd know that, idiot!"
Note: That is a close quote of something I once heard as an actual response to the query.
This statement roused the wrath of the woman he shouted this at, and it was obviously meant to.
This was sinful.

I was aware of Charlie Hebdo more than a decade before the shootings and the violence. They were often *not* engaged in 'satire' but rather in vicious attacks on others. This includes such things as portraying a Black woman as a chimpanzee wearing earrings and the statement that 'French Catholics are as stupid as Negroes'; these are NOT the worst examples, not by a long shot. I will not even describe the worst of what they published under the cloak of 'satire'.
Once again, with emphasis- stating that such things are wrong *is not controversial*.

Thank you; from the comments here and elsewhere I doubt I ever have any reason to return

I hold no general brief for Charlie Hebdo and never have. I unequivocally condemn obscenity and mere vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity. (Note: In the present context of historical events, I think _that_ is the disclaimer that should be made. Not, "I unequivocally condemn violence, but if you insult somebody, you should expect, blah, blah." Part of understanding the big picture here is knowing *which thing* should be the prefatory disclaimer and *which thing* should be the main emphasis.) I have referred to a very small, isolated set of their cartoons (two or three) as "satire," and Jeff S. has noted the same thing specifically about the one that said, "1000 lashes if you don't die laughing."

Moreover, I have responded in a reasoned fashion to *over-statements* to the effect that it is generally and always wrong deliberately to provoke people to anger. The fact is that even if Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists had never done _anything_ that could be correctly described as satire, that *over-statement* does condemn satire. This should not be difficult to understand. When you make sweeping generalizations, you end up catching stuff in your net that doesn't belong there.

Aquinas Dad, you seem to be laboring under the impression that we here are W4 look for opportunities to make people angry, or at the least that we defend Charlie Hebdo's cartoons. I can assure you that neither are what we are here for. Pretty much all of us contributors have agreed that the CH cartoons that blaspheme against God and Jesus, the cartoons that mock Christians based on false ideas of what Christians actually say or do, the obscene pictures (of anybody, not just Christians) - all those were WRONG. Nothing justifies doing such things, INCLUDING a design to satirize people for things that legitimately are targets for satire, like hypocrisy. Designs to poke fun in satire that use blasphemy, false stereotypes, and obscenity have gone too far. By which I mean morally too far.

We also agree with you that even depictions that DON'T arise to blasphemy and obscenity can still be can be sinful, such as comments about French Catholics being as stupid as Negroes. Even if French Catholics are legitimate targets of satire in one form or another (maybe they are, considered as a group and on the average, stupid in what they choose to do - certainly American Republicans are) doesn't mean just ANY satirization is justified. Charlie Hebdo's stock in trade seems to be crass and mean-spirited and excessive, even when it isn't actually indecent. We aren't really disagreeing there. Yes, stating that these are wrong is NOT controversial.

Given all that, there is NO DOUBT that CH engages regularly in things that provoke anger, and they do so without justification. We certainly are not praising CH for these actions, nor saying that provoking anger is justified merely because "that's what satire does". And we are not surprised that someone responded in anger. It is, really, understandable that people would _be_ angry at such evil nonsense, and predictable that the most extreme of those who were angry would act violently on that anger.

Like you, we utterly denounce the murdering that the Muslims visited upon people at CH. However, we also utterly denounce the murdering that the Muslims visited upon people not in the least bit related to CH, nor related to any specific acts of provocation. And, hence, we note that the full nature of the motivation of the murderous plot is not captured by "righteous anger at excessive and immoral media attacks on our religion", nor even "unrighteous but provoked anger at excessive and immoral media attacks on our religion", but rather something like "dealing 'properly' (by jihad) with people who reject Islam, and especially those who participate in the culture of the West that fights against Islam, or who are Jews." Merely being part of the West was enough (for the police, anyway). Rather than CH being the specific surgically precise target of their anger, CH was rather just the one of the nearest and itchiest irritants in a whole country of irritants ready for pruning, in their eyes.

I have spent a lot of time delving into some of these issues over the last year or so at a few Catholic blogs and they bear much more extensive analysis than I can make, here. Let me throw out a few things:

1. Lydia said, in reply to Aquinas Dad:

"So, Aquinas Dad, is any satire or humor directed at Islam a sin, then, in your view? Because believe me, it will make them angry. They get angry very easily. Your statements are overstatements."

In terms of humor theory, what one is talking about is known as a Humor Killer. A humor killer is a word, topic, or communicative act which, by its very nature, is unable to be processed as humor. It so weights the processing of the situation, locks it in, in such a way that one cannot escape from the stimulation to consider the secondary interpretation of the context which defines humor. Humor occurs, at least in a simplified linguistic model, when two different competing scripts can be derived from the same communicative act neither of which can be discharged or ignored. The brain keeps switching between these two contexts. This script-switching is the most current model of humor used for general discussion. One can get more detailed on the neural aspects, but script-switching, which involves a type of competitive Baysian processing between the two scripts has to occur. If access to one of the scripts is blocked, due to fear or ideology, then one cannot see any sort of comment involving that humor killer as a joke. If, for instance, a person has a morbid fear of spiders - I mean to the point of passing out at the mere sight of one, then they will not be able to respond to any spider joke, no matter how mild. Humor killers do not have to be rational.

Unfortunately, slighting Mohammed is a humor killer in Islam. The more rigid the belief, the deeper the barrier. I am not saying that it is rational, merely stating the facts on the ground.

Now, satire, in itself, has a long history. Two articles of mine just came out in an encyclopedia of humor studies that was recently published and there is an article on satire in it (which I did not write):

https://books.google.com/books?id=yjRzAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA661&lpg=PA661&dq=encyclopedia+of+humor+studies+satire&source=bl&ots=HkOXPnJbeA&sig=OT8ZOtVULvRaT8UJcUAz_4A8PvE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p7S-VKmbEJH4yQTkuYHgDQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=encyclopedia%20of%20humor%20studies%20satire&f=false

Satire, up until recently, was, primarily used as a moral commentary. The appreciation of satire as humor is of relatively recent origin. Obviously, one has to ask what kind of consistent moral commentary Charlie Hebdo is making if they insult ALL religions. They seem not to care if their satire is offensive, which tells me that they have no moral understanding of humor or its limits. This means, to me, that they are irresponsible. In a better informed society, they would have been shut down for violating the public good. They provide nothing of substance because they have no consistent viewpoint except that anything goes. This is amorality raised to a dubious art form.

Could they satirize Islam or Mohammed? Sure, but what would be the point? Moslems, at least once they become fundamentalists, will not even understand that there is humor intended. Charlie Hebdo's satire is a wink, wink, nod, nod at the rest of us, but, don't worry, they will wink at the Moslems at some other time by insulting some other group that they can laugh at. In other words, Charlie Hebdo's, "satire," isn't real satire, because it has no consistent moral outlook. It has removed the concept of God, reverence, and any definite moral order from its vocabulary. In other words, its satire is not satire and its humor is inhuman.

Now, perhaps someone with a consistent moral outlook could satirize Islam with a view towards provoking thought, even among Moslems, if they are clever enough. Charlie Hebdo isn't. It is just mean-spirited. That leads me back to the morality of humorous acts - a subject of which there is a dearth of literature and which, if I live long enough, hope to write a book on. Charlie Hebdo, we have already shown, has no commitment to an informed moral outlook on Islam, so what they are doing with regards to Islam really doesn't qualify as satire, per se. Further, they read the newspapers, so they know that insulting Islam (again, not satire, as the media reports) runs the risk of insult and retaliation. Certainly, they have to know that many Moslems would not find their work, when it employs elements of Islam, funny - because they can't. Thus, Charlie Hebdo's actions, in the context of the beliefs of Islam, are disordered, logically. Knowing what they know, knowing the effects their work would have, they are, as Aquinas Dad points out (although not very completely), at least, in this case, guilty of passive, if not active scandal. Not all satire is sinful. Theirs is.

Scandal is defined by St. Thomas Aquinas as (Summa, II.II Q. 43):

I answer that, As Jerome observes the Greek skandalon may be rendered offense, downfall, or a stumbling against something. For when a body, while moving along a path, meets with an obstacle, it may happen to stumble against it, and be disposed to fall down: such an obstacle is a skandalon.

In like manner, while going along the spiritual way, a man may be disposed to a spiritual downfall by another's word or deed, in so far, to wit, as one man by his injunction, inducement or example, moves another to sin; and this is scandal properly so called.

Now nothing by its very nature disposes a man to spiritual downfall, except that which has some lack of rectitude, since what is perfectly right, secures man against a fall, instead of conducing to his downfall. Scandal is, therefore, fittingly defined as "something less rightly done or said, that occasions another's spiritual downfall.

Clearly, Charlie Hebdo's work, in the examples of it Islamic, "satire," demonstrates a lack of rectitude. St. Thomas has an extended treatment of active vs. passive scandal, which is well worth reading. As I see it, morally, Charlie Hebdo hasn't a leg to stand on and celebrating their, "free speech," is idiotic.

St. Paul had choice words about one's freedom causing another to fall (see Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8) and Jesus had very harsh words, among the harshest in Scripture, about people who cause scandal. This has nothing to do with turning the other cheek - a passage often misunderstood, which I can't address, here. The Christian response to the scandalizing of people is supposed to be medicinal. Turning the other cheek is not applicable, here.

That, in perhaps a confused manner, might be what the Pope meant. I don't know. The few Moslems who went off the deep end also sinned, of course, gravely. It would have been a measured response in accordance with right reason if all of the injured parties, Catholic, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, etc., had gotten together and held a peaceful protest rally and made their anger know to the government (whether France would have done anything is not mine to know). The silence of the other parties in the face of Chalie Hebdo's scandalous behavior allowed them to keep going until they just ticked off the wrong party.

I blame both sides in this affair. No one gets to hold up a banner of virtue. Satire is, sometimes, able to scandalize. One has to appreciate the fact the satire is a moral instrument, but can be used in immoral ways. It seems to me that the people celebrating free speech really haven't thought much about what they do with their speech. Words have consequences. We ought to put as much thought into why we say things as what we say. This situation is a genuine tragedy in the Aristotelian tradition: a peripety caused by the defect in character of the parties involved.

The Chicken

The Masked Chicken,

It is a rare day when I find your normally penetrating and insightful analysis of a post lacking. This is one of those days. Let's review the chain of events in the Charlie Hebdo 'scandal'. To begin, they were one of the few publications in France to reprint the Jyllands-Posten (the Danish paper) Muhammad cartoons. I'm sure you recall those cartoons -- for example the one that depicted Muhammad with a bomb for a turban? Scandalous? Mean-spirited? Or satire that hits the mark. In the Western world, it is obviously the later -- and that's the problem -- with Islam, not with the West.

You are operating from the premise that Muslims in the West have a "right" to go about their business and not be confronted with the truth of the Christian religion (which is scandalous to them) or those who would point out flaws in their own religion, using satire to do so. It is not our problem that they (the Muslims) refuse to see the humor (the turban/bomb cartoon is actually quite clever). It is not our fault that they worship a false god. But it is our job to stand up for truth and for our values, which include the right to depict satire.

This website has already denounced Hebdo's obscenity -- that is not the issue. But showing a cartoon of Muhammad whose caption reads "100 lashes of the whip if you don't die of laughter" is not obscene. It is not particularly funny, but it is clearly satire. The reaction from French Muslims? Burn down the offices of Charlie Hebdo. It was at that point that France should have rallied to the publications defense, reprinted that cartoon in every major publication, and marched through Muslim neighborhoods with banners of support for Hebdo. French society should have told their Muslims the French people will not be intimidated.

I don't understand your support for closing down Hebdo or your sympathy for the Muslims in France -- why would you have marched with them in solidarity when they got offended by the cartoons? Muhammad is a false prophet and we should be happy warriors, willing to mock and satirize him when we have the chance. The decadent Left creates strange bedfellows.

I notice, too, MC, that you are not mentioning the *completely unrelated people* who were murdered by the *same terrorist plotters*. Do you call this also "going off the deep end" or in any sense a "response" to the CH cartoons? Because it wasn't either of those. In fact, the murderer at the market said that French people pay taxes that go to fight ISIS and that this is why they are targets. Obviously, this particular market was also targeted because of Muslim anti-semitism.

I know how careful you are with words. Don't you think "going off the deep end" and implying that this was about making the wrong kind of response to the cartoons is a pretty misleading way of characterizing a wide-ranging terrorist plot to murder not only the CH cartoonists but a lot of other people as well?

Further: The Muslims themselves are not the only potential target of cartoons or other satire directed at Islam. Islam is an ideology. As with any ideology, cartoons or other witty criticism can have a place in showing contradictions and absurdities to waverers and sympathizers as well as die-hard believers. And as with any ideology, cartoons and other witty criticism will probably just anger the die-hards. That doesn't mean that such wit is, per se, wrong or merely a cause of scandal.

In the case of Islam there is another function to cartoons or humor in general. (It goes without saying that I do not mean obscene or merely vulgar materials.) That is the function of a refusal to submit to bullying and terrorism, which can hearten others and lessen the sense of fear and awe surrounding a supremacist religious ideology which does, indeed, seek to terrorize and overawe with fear.

For example, as I brought up above, Molly Norris's idea of "everybody draw Mohammad day" was precisely of this kind. By wittily suggesting that people draw toasters and other ordinary objects and dub them "Mohammad," she made an interesting point about depiction (what does it actually mean to draw Mohammad?), made legitimate fun of the Muslims' exaggerated and murderous demand that *all the other people in the world* follow their superstitious taboo on drawing Mohammad, and also sent an "I do not submit" message.

I would go so far as to say that it *does not matter* if most or all committed Muslims were "unable to process as humor" what she did there. It does not matter. What she did there had good functions nonetheless, as I have just spelled out.

In other words, Charlie Hebdo's, "satire," isn't real satire, because it has no consistent moral outlook. It has removed the concept of God, reverence, and any definite moral order from its vocabulary.

Honestly, I find this statement virtually unbelievable from someone who studies humor as an academic exercise. I mean how high is the ivory tower from which "humor" is being analyzed when one can assert that humor is supposed to be reverent and avoid scandal? It is a timid and nonsensical view of what humor is, what is does, and how it operates. If I didn't know better, I would say MC is trying to play a joke on us by claiming this "you must respect somebody's deeply held irrational beliefs" line. Absolutely not.

From what I can tell Charlie Hebdo is little more than an R-rated version of Mad Magazine (which makes their postmortem elevation to the status of journalists a delicious irony), and everyone realizes how sane it would be to get offended by that sort of ruthlessly mocking humor. To even be offended by their caricatures is to elevate them to a level of seriousness they don't deserve, but that is only the beginning of the scandal. First, the prohibition on images of Muhammad is more of a custom than a dogmatic rule, a custom mainly followed by the Sunnis but not other Muslim sects. The reason behind this is of course the prevention of idolatry, but what fevered mind imagines that a true believer will start worshiping a cartoon figure? A prohibition which goes that ridiculously far can't be construed as anything but an insult to the intelligence and devotion of all Muslims. Second, for the offense of blasphemy Muhammad wasn't perfect nor did he claim to be, so there has to be a legitimate space for criticism which isn't blasphemy. Most (but not all) of the cartoons could be fairly characterized as criticism rather than pure vulgar insult and in addition many of the cartoons were only indirectly aimed at Muhammad but instead were appropriately targeting the boneheaded fanaticism of some of his followers.

The other thing that strikes me is that very often one might look at a single cartoon from _anyone_ and not be able to tell what his overall moral outlook might be, yet know that that cartoon is making a good point in a clever way. I have no idea what Molly Norris's moral outlook or worldview was, except that I would guess on statistical grounds that she was probably some kind of atheist or agnostic. But her "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" cartoons were still a clever idea making a point. So it can't be right that whether some cartoon is funny or not or counts as satire or not depends on the overall moral outlook and worldview of the person who draws it. It might be an interesting thing to note some larger body of cartoons produced by that person or group of people and to point out that there is an overall nihilism or shallowness in the total picture. I'm not denying that. But to take that point and reject the individual joke or cartoon from the category of "satire" on those grounds seems sort of like saying that someone can't be a pretty good poet, even in a single instance, if his body of work taken as a whole conveys a shallow or nihilistic message. Surely individual cartoons, like individual poems, can to an important extent be understood and hence evaluated aside from the larger project of looking at the other things that person or group has produced.

While it might seem that I was being a tad too scrupulous in assigning moral content to humorous acts, the simple truth is that there is very little work that has been done in this area. There is no consistency in viewpoint as to what constitutes acceptability in humor. What is bad humor is, in a certain way, judged like the famous quip about pornography: "I'll know it when I see it." For instance, suppose, arguendo, that the Eucharist is, in fact, the Body, a Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. Now, here's the point - it is impossible to satirize a fact. One can satirize the implications derived from that fact, one can satirize a moral position derived from that fact, but facts, themselves, do not have free will and cannot be influenced. Thus, a "satirical," cartoon about the Eucharist makes as much sense as satirizing the fact that Helium has an atomic weight of 4 amu. In other words, one can satirize what people have possible control over.

Thus, if there is a religion that just happens to be true (I am speaking in the abstract, since I am a Catholic and hold that to be true and other variants of Christianity to contain at least parts of that truth), mocking whatever happens to be truths, in themselves (and not mere derived behavior) with that religion is not, technically, satire, but a form of denial of fact, expressed in a form resembling humor, but, nevertheless not anything like a valid attempt at persuasive argument, of which satire is one form. In a secular society, religion contains nothing intrinsically true, so anything is free game for, "satire," even though, for certain topics that actually touch on real truths, what is being done is not satire, but denial of truth.

I do not want it to be thought for a minute that I, in any way, support the actions of any of the Moslem extremists who murdered people before, during or after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. I, also, do not denounce satire in the whole. Used properly, it can be a great source for social change, but let us get our terms straight. Not everything that mocks in art is true satire and too many people lump all of these artifacts together without making critical distinctions. Satirizing the atomic mass of helium will be hilarious to someone who thinks that helium is made up of little fairies dancing around a pole, but to the rest of the people, it will be incomprehensible. Something can seem to be satire, when it isn't and one cannot make that judgment just because someone laughs.

"But it is our job to stand up for truth and for our values, which include the right to depict satire." This assumes, of course, that you have the truth, does it not? Again, how does satire affect people who hold a different, "truth," than you? If satire is to truly be useful, it must argue, not merely mock (mocking is dismissive argumentation, I suppose, but it doesn't go much beyond that).

"I mean how high is the ivory tower from which "humor" is being analyzed when one can assert that humor is supposed to be reverent and avoid scandal? It is a timid and nonsensical view of what humor is, what is does, and how it operates."

If you really believe that, then you might not understand humor from a Christian point of view. Christ's range of humor was more restricted than ours because, being perfect, he puts a hedge around the limits of acceptable humor. We can vastly range beyond those boundaries due to the darkening effects of Original Sin. In reality, humor is supposed to be (more or less) reverent (as the word is properly used - to give honor to one's Creator by one's actions) and avoid scandal. That is the Christian perspective, but few today, caught up in the mad rush to be new and original, seem to take the moral implications of humor into consideration. I am not saying that Charlie Hebdo did not, occasionally, make trenchant observations through their satire, but that does not also mean, at least from a Christian perspective, that they could not and did not also sin in some of their satire.

"For example, as I brought up above, Molly Norris's idea of "everybody draw Mohammad day" was precisely of this kind. By wittily suggesting that people draw toasters and other ordinary objects and dub them "Mohammad," she made an interesting point about depiction (what does it actually mean to draw Mohammad?), made legitimate fun of the Muslims' exaggerated and murderous demand that *all the other people in the world* follow their superstitious taboo on drawing Mohammad, and also sent an "I do not submit" message."

This is the point I was trying to make: this sort of activity preaches to the choir. It really has no or little effect on Moslems except to anger them or create a feeling of incomprehension, so what is the point? It make those outside of Islam feel better (humor, after all, creates a feeling of superiority), but it nothing of practical value as a moral argument to the Islamists.

I am not arguing that we should not satirize Islam out of fear or the idea that all religions should be treated with kid gloves. I have done my share of apologetic work arguing against Islam. I am saying that it is, by and large, a useless activity to satirize with any hope of influencing them, other than of course, to anger. It is a defect in their religion. What can one do?

I have to go. This really is a complex issue and I wish I could express myself, better. I know this blog has denounced the works of Charlie Hebdo, where they deserved it. I am not at odds with that. I am trying to point out that the use of humor does have consequences - moral, social, and behavioral. We just don't have more than vague intuitions at this point as to what those consequences are. Someone has to try to develop the issue philosophically and theologically. My feeble attempts might be wrong, but they are a start.

The Chicken

Chicken,

I appreciate the follow-up post -- I think this summary has merit:

Christ's range of humor was more restricted than ours because, being perfect, he puts a hedge around the limits of acceptable humor. We can vastly range beyond those boundaries due to the darkening effects of Original Sin. In reality, humor is supposed to be (more or less) reverent (as the word is properly used - to give honor to one's Creator by one's actions) and avoid scandal. That is the Christian perspective, but few today, caught up in the mad rush to be new and original, seem to take the moral implications of humor into consideration. I am not saying that Charlie Hebdo did not, occasionally, make trenchant observations through their satire, but that does not also mean, at least from a Christian perspective, that they could not and did not also sin in some of their satire.

Now, agreeing with this summary, I still think you are wrong about Islam. You say, that "[satirizing Islam] is, by and large, a useless activity to satirize with any hope of influencing them, other than of course, to anger. It is a defect in their religion." Here I think you ignore the wide variety of Muslim practice -- there are indeed committed Muslims who are quick to anger and will exploit the cartoons for their ideological purposes. But there must be so-called 'edge cases' -- Muslims on the fringe who will recognize by the natural light the logic in such satire and begin to see their way out of the cave (to mix metaphors for the moment). Think of General al Sisi's recent speech to Al-Azhar -- he basically was telling the Muslim world that their religion is violent and problematic. Somehow he was made to understand that Islam has a problem -- perhaps the cartoons helped him come to this conclusion? We don't know, but I'd like to think that there are some Muslims who can indeed be reasoned with (those who aren't 'good' Muslims and can be brought out of the shadows).

However, in addition to Muslims, there are also many Westerners who are too willing to sacrifice freedom of speech on behalf of Muslims -- so the cartoons and the satire aimed at our own people are necessary as well. As Lydia said in another post, we are fighting two incommensurable evils and we need to attack the liberals who would team up with Muslims to shut down Christian preaching and witness in the name of "hurt feelings" and Muslim sensibilities.

This is the point I was trying to make: this sort of activity preaches to the choir.

As Jeff points out, you're making some pretty strong generalizations about Muslims *as people*. I'm prepared to argue that Islam has a violent social essence, but individual Muslims might be more convince-able. Moreover, "the choir" also lumps together various non-Muslims. For example, there could be non-Muslims who wax all somber about "portraying Mohammad" but who might rethink if they thought about the "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" humor. It counters dhimmi attitudes and ideas. Dhimmi attitudes and ideas are not a good thing, so it is a good thing to counter them. So it's very important not to paint with too broad a brush. Finally, even if we are just talking about "the choir" in the sense of people who are already aware of the danger of dhimmitude and determined not to fall into it, there can be a good point in preaching even to that choir. We read to know that we are not alone, and when dealing with a terrorizing and supremacist religion, this becomes all the more important.

As far as Christ's range of humor, I think it's worth noting that very often Christ was doing exactly the parallel of what you call "preaching to the choir." Look, for example, at John 7:21-24. There Jesus actually is making fun of the contemporary Jewish leaders' convoluted rules whereby they circumcise on the Sabbath if it is the eighth day, not considering this to be a violation of the Sabbath, but consider it wrong for him to heal (make a man whole) on the Sabbath because it is allegedly "work." Jesus is playing on the concepts of circumcising and making whole and on the concept of "doing a work." He is *undeniably* mocking the Pharisees' religious rules. Moreover, he knows quite well that the targets of his mockery will not change their minds. It just makes them more and more angry. (We see this same pattern throughout Jesus' ministry.) So it isn't for their benefit that he makes his plays on words and his dry humor. It is for the sake of those who will "hear his words."

This isn't wrong. This can actually be a very good thing.

"Moreover, he knows quite well that the targets of his mockery will not change their minds. It just makes them more and more angry. (We see this same pattern throughout Jesus' ministry.) So it isn't for their benefit that he makes his plays on words and his dry humor. It is for the sake of those who will "hear his words."

Jesus was not using satire in this passage, but proof by contradiction.

The passage reads: (Jhn 7: 18 - 24, RSV):

He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?"

The people answered, "You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?"

Jesus answered them, "I did one deed, and you all marvel at it.

Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man upon the sabbath.

If on the sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the sabbath I made a man's whole body well?

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

He was showing that, according to The Law, as God intended, it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, but as the Pharisees modified the Law or misinterpreted it, they contradict themselves by saying something of the same nature (doing a good) is both lawful and unlawful on the Sabbath. This isn't satire. He sets out a premise: You do not keep The Law and, then, proceeds to demonstrate this by showing an inconsistently in their actions. That is not, to my ears, satire. It is also, not clear, that no one would be convinced. Perhaps, some in the crowd did see the contradiction. The Bible is silent about that.

What might qualify as satire is when Jesus called James and John, Sons of Thunder (mark 3:17), when they wanted to call down fire from Heaven (Luke 9:54). Thayer say:

Boanerges = "sons of thunder" a nickname given to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, by the Lord. The name seems to denote fiery and destructive zeal that may be likened to a thunder storm.

"But there must be so-called 'edge cases' -- Muslims on the fringe who will recognize by the natural light the logic in such satire and begin to see their way out of the cave (to mix metaphors for the moment)."

This is the normal hope in the use of any satire, yes. As I said in my original comment, with regards to humor killers:

"The more rigid the belief, the deeper the barrier. I am not saying that it is rational, merely stating the facts on the ground."

I don't see where you can fault me, since you just repeated what I said.

Fr. Z has a post up referencing an interview with Samuel Gregg about the problems of God being a God of voluntas, Will, in Islam and not Reason, as in the Jewish-Christian view. Gregg points out something I failed to adequately address in my analysis: that, in today's world, it is a capital offense to cause offense to anyone. He points out, quite rightly, that it, then, becomes impossible to argue about subjects such as religion without giving offense. If that is what you guys are yelling at me about, then I'm down with that, I'm with you. Offense in the service of truth is sometimes unavoidable and covered under the doctrine of Double Effect. What I am arguing about is offense for the sake of offense. If satire makes a moral argument, then it is doing what it was intended for and is covered, certeris paribus, by Double Effect. One is not meaning to kill by the satire, but to expose a truth, which might involve some pain, in the process. That use of satire is morally licit. What I said, with regards to Charlie Hebdo, is that their satire is not at the service of truth. They satirize everyone, to the extent that there is no consistency in their point of view. They are not setting out to expose a truth, merely poke fun. That is an illicit use of satire and an immoral one. They are loose canons. Do you see the distinction I am trying to make, even if you disagree?

Let me turn the tables. Can you demonstrate an instance of satire which, to you, would be morally impermissible? The reason I ask is because, then, we have data and we can analyze what might be the distinctions between your position and mine. I have not written a book on the ethics of humor, yet. I am still in the learning stages, so I value the discussion, here, although I am bewildered by some of it. I thought it would be a slam dunk observation that Charlie Hebdo crosses the line in matters of religion, many times, but from what I have seen in the comments in trying to make a discussion of the moral aspects of humor, it seems as though most people agree that almost any satire of another person's religion is fair, if you think it is false. I know I am unfair in my assessment, because I have spent a lot of time at this blog, but where do you draw the line? The Moslem terrorists were, clearly, easily seen for the moral evil they have done. I take that as a given. In my studies of humor, I want to focus on Charlie Hebdo, because, in the last week there has been a massive outpouring of sentiment, not just for the loss of life, but a blanket judgment that anything goes where free speech and my particular interest, humor, is concerned. I do not agree with that sentiment, because it leads, precisely, to the situation described in John 7, where it is alright to satirize behavior on Monday, but on Tuesday, it becomes Internet bullying and a cybercrime.

I will repeat what I have said: there is no morally consistent reasoning with regards to what is acceptable and unacceptable humor. This is an area that needs to be looked at immediately, given the needs of an increasingly connected society. It is inconsistent: some people go to jail and some people get lauded. Welcome to the modern world.

The Chicken

P. S. I don't have much experience in making controversial comments. It isn't as much fun as in the movies. Fortunately, I don't do Facebook. I could see it, now - some poor blighter posts a picture of a Chicken without a head with the caption: The Masked Chicken has lost all reason. Is that satire, or what :)

What I said, with regards to Charlie Hebdo, is that their satire is not at the service of truth. They satirize everyone, to the extent that there is no consistency in their point of view.

Well, I did address that above. Here is what I said there:

It might be an interesting thing to note some larger body of cartoons produced by that person or group of people and to point out that there is an overall nihilism or shallowness in the total picture. I'm not denying that. But to take that point and reject the individual joke or cartoon from the category of "satire" on those grounds seems sort of like saying that someone can't be a pretty good poet, even in a single instance, if his body of work taken as a whole conveys a shallow or nihilistic message. Surely individual cartoons, like individual poems, can to an important extent be understood and hence evaluated aside from the larger project of looking at the other things that person or group has produced.

That is, regardless of whether there is consistency in their viewpoint, some individual cartoons might still be making a legitimate point--e.g., that the lack of humor in Islam is a sign of a problem.

They are not setting out to expose a truth, merely poke fun. That is an illicit use of satire and an immoral one.

I'm not sure those are always sharply distinguishable. Sometimes the cause of our seeing an opportunity to poke fun is because we see a truth about the absurdity of the ideology in question. The truth about the ideology may be that it is absurd in some specific way and hence a legitimate object of poking fun. I think that my example of "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" is again pertinent here. That is poking fun at the overweening arrogance of Muslims who demand that no one else in the world draw Mohammad. It's also poking fun at their exaggerated and superstitious notion that it's wickedly evil to draw Mohammad. Which is it seems to me the same thing as exposing a truth about the ideology in question.

They are loose canons. Do you see the distinction I am trying to make, even if you disagree?

Yes, they are certainly loose cannons, but that just means if anything that they aren't consistently good satirists, not that they are not satirists at all nor that their poking fun is always wrong.

Can you demonstrate an instance of satire which, to you, would be morally impermissible?

Well, sure, as we've already said, anything involving obscenity. But in that case the moral impermissibility lies in the obscenity, not in the fact that the position taken is false or that it is merely poking fun.

But I'll try a little harder. Try this one: Suppose that I were to make fun of a Jew for wearing earlocks. I'm really bad at thinking of cartoons or jokes, but let's suppose there is no clever other point in the cartoon in question. It's not, for example, contrasting hyper-ness over wearing earlocks with letting something else go--it's not making some point about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel or anything. It's just "Haha, how silly that guy looks wearing earlocks." Now, as far as I know, no Orthodox Jews are trying to stone people or threatening other people for not wearing earlocks. Let's assume I'm right about that. So there is no point to such a cartoon of defying some taboo that others are trying to enforce with threats. (See my discussion above.) Even if it were true in some aesthetic sense that a guy with earlocks looks kind of silly (and that seems like a paradigm instance of a matter that depends on culture), that is an extremely trivial truth. It doesn't get at any deep or deep-seated problem with Orthodox Judaism. So if the *cartoonist himself* were asked what the point is of his cartoon, he couldn't in honesty come up with anything of any importance that he was trying to say or do.

This would I think be a better instance of what I think you are getting at, and such a cartoon would be blameworthy under the category of being juvenile, childish, shallow, etc. It wouldn't even require looking at the cartoonist's other work to see this. The thing in itself would be juvenile and shallow, and in that sense blameworthy, though not among the worst of blameworthy acts.

Of course, I'm stipulating a lot of context here. If we change the context, the same cartoon might have a point. For example, if the cartoonist lives in a hothouse Orthodox community where people really _are_ bringing threats of, say, excommunication on anyone who cuts off his earlocks, then a little irreverence at the expense of earlocks, all by itself, might serve an actual purpose. So I'm trying to boil this down to a simple case of pointless, juvenile laughter.

Sticking to the non-obscene Hebdo cartoons against Islam, while I don't think they are particularly deep, I don't think that they fall into this category. Aside from everything else, the *very fact* that they were under threat from evil, supremacist ideologues for daring to violate their taboo against drawing Mohammad is a huge game-changer as far as whether there is any point in doing so. There is a certain value per se in defying bullies.

The Chicken asks, "Can you demonstrate an instance of satire which, to you, would be morally impermissible?"

Sure. I think these cartoons are morally bankrupt:

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8084.htm

In particular, the two cartoons stand out as anti-Semitic -- the one with the State of Israel represented as eating Palestinian children and the one with Bibi's lips with blood on them.

However, I'm not sure I would use your phrase "impermissible". Given their political content, I think a free society should allow them to be published -- although I could imagine organizing a boycott against the publication that ran some of the worst ones.

By the way, the Arab world is full of all sorts of anti-Semitic "humor" -- again, I think such humor is immoral but like Europe's laws against Holocaust denial, I think such laws are misguided and generally result in abuse of State power. I much prefer social ostracism to attack political ideas we think are beyond the pale.

I took Chicken just to mean "wrong," so that's how I'm using "morally impermissible" in my comment.

A humor killer is a word, topic, or communicative act which, by its very nature, is unable to be processed as humor. It so weights the processing of the situation, locks it in, in such a way that one cannot escape from the stimulation to consider the secondary interpretation of the context which defines humor.

Chicken, I would make a clarification on your original point here. The communicative act in the person saying or drawing the satire is not the communicative act in the person hearing or seeing it. There are really 2 separate acts. This is important, because one same cartoon can be funny to ONE Muslim and an outrage to another Muslim, depending on the Muslims' background and mental housekeeping. It isn't the cartoon's doing that one of them can't see the humor that the other does see. So it isn't inherent to the cartoon or joke, it belongs to the CONTEXT from which that joke is being judged, and each listener constitutes his own personal context (though of course in a given culture most people will have a similar context to it, which is why jokes are heavily cultural).

Which points to a problem here: The Muslims in France are in a non-Muslim culture. (Admittedly that is changing, but it is still not a Muslim-majority place). If they cannot learn to acclimatize themselves to that culture (limiting myself here to those aspects of the culture that are not IN THEMSELVES immoral), they have no business being there, do they? Taking offence at something that within the culture is just good humor is an instance of being a bad guest to your hosts. If you couldn't take a joke, you shouldn't have come. People making their way into a different culture than their home have to expect to be uncomfortable, that's why travel is a broadening experience. Get over the fact that "that makes me feel bad."

If access to one of the scripts is blocked, due to fear or ideology, then one cannot see any sort of comment involving that humor killer as a joke....

Unfortunately, slighting Mohammed is a humor killer in Islam. The more rigid the belief, the deeper the barrier. I am not saying that it is rational, merely stating the facts on the ground.

I don't know whether what you say here, Chicken, is just not getting through to me, or whether it is missing a critical element, but to me the latter is what it feels like. I don't think an ideology, considered as a set of statements one believes, can be the source of a humor killer. I think it has to be a way you hold the beliefs. In particular, I think that when you say "more rigid" I am seeing that it is, rather "more irrational". I know some really, incredibly devout Christians, who are extraordinarily funny themselves and who "get" humor poked both at themselves and at their religion. They may not like some of the more irreverent ones, but they still GET them as jokes. In my experience, funnier people are generally smarter (up to a limit, beyond which we get extremely "smart" people who have no social sense), it takes intelligence to make better jokes. And devoutness, even sanctity, is not opposed to that (as St. Philip Neri illustrates.)

I suggest, rather, that (within your home culture), the mental framework of NOT GETTING jokes that poke fun at your belief centers is a failure of reason, pure and simple. It is a LACK in the mental space of the hearer, it is a defect. As a result, if lots of Muslims can't grasp the humor of some jokes poked at Mohammed, I suspect that we would have to conclude either that Islam as a cultural influence damages people's mental capacity, or that it is, rather, merely an ideology of excuse-making for extremist over-reaction to jokes poking fun, from which they learn not to "get" the humor and instead learn anger. (The latter would be consistent with some Muslims getting the humor even though others do not. What is the actual data on the ground?)

Maybe I am a bad Christian, but there are jokes about Jesus that I think are funny jokes even though I don't think people should use them because they are irreverent without justifying purpose. They poke fun in WAYS that people should not make use of in relation to Jesus, but that doesn't disqualify them as a joke. (I am not thinking of one right now, so I will instead give an analogy: Dan Brown wrote a fiction novel using as a story-line that Jesus was taken down from the Cross alive, married Mary Magdalen, and had kids. I can see that such a plot could be a very effective plot arrangement, but I still think it a wrong kind of novel to write - an evil choice in novel crafting.)

If we have to say that Muslims "can't get" the humor of the satirical cartoons or other jokes, this might be more an indictment of Islam as an ideology (and what it does to its adherents) than of the jokes. But it would still be allowed to joke about such things when the jokes are directed at (a) non-Muslims, (b) those Muslims who are culturally not made into rigid extremists (maybe they are converts to Islam, maybe they grew up in a non-Arab culture that enjoys satirical humor), and (c) those who are falling into or falling out of Islam and could use a good nudge in the right direction. As long as you don't go shoving such jokes under rigid Muslim's noses, you might not be setting scandal (except in an accidental sense from unforeseen chance events).

In the Bible, the one joke I can think off hand of is God using Nazarites as a "type" of the Christ to come. It was all a once-off pun. Well, I suppose that the prophet Jonah was a bit of a joke too, come to think of it.

"Chicken, I would make a clarification on your original point here. The communicative act in the person saying or drawing the satire is not the communicative act in the person hearing or seeing it. There are really 2 separate acts."

That is true and we have a name for this transmissal and processing of humor information in humor theory (I wasn't trying to give a detailed lecture on the subject). It is called, Joke Competence. Various things can make the listener incompetent to process a joke: humor killers, lack of knowledge of the area of discourse, etc. As for the humor creator, he can fail if he uses a reserved meaning of a word known only to himself ( a specific mental reservation). Two-way transmission of both information and underlying assumptions is critical in processing humor. That is why the joke competence is different between Fundamentalist Moslems and the West for certain categories of joking subjects.

"However, I'm not sure I would use your phrase "impermissible". Given their political content, I think a free society should allow them to be published -- although I could imagine organizing a boycott against the publication that ran some of the worst ones."

Which is exactly what I said should have happened against Charlie Hebdo in my first post.

"Aside from everything else, the *very fact* that they were under threat from evil, supremacist ideologues for daring to violate their taboo against drawing Mohammad is a huge game-changer as far as whether there is any point in doing so. There is a certain value per se in defying bullies."

This is complicated. Standing up to bullies is fine, but the satire is really no longer satire, but a meta-statement against bullying. The satire, itself, is not teaching the moral message, the printing of the satire is. Also, the ad baculum fallacy is not, necessarily, always fallacious. Douglas Walton has written a very extensive paper analyzing this fallacy.

Between job assignments. Gotta run. More, later.

MC, I think you may be right about the meta-statement, but the presence of a meta-statement is still relevant to whether it is morally wrong to produce or publish the cartoon.

In reality, humor is supposed to be (more or less) reverent (as the word is properly used - to give honor to one's Creator by one's actions) and avoid scandal.

So you've disconnected humor from how it is used in reality, I'm sure that will work out for you. Btw, I do occasionally read Eye of the Tiber and in my opinion the post and first dozen comments on the following thread should win a prize for comedy.
http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/2014/10/28/pope-francis-says-forces-of-gravity-and-electromagnetism-are-real/

"So you've disconnected humor from how it is used in reality, I'm sure that will work out for you."

???

So, the moral basis for any action should be what everyone is doing?

The Chicken

humor is supposed to be (more or less) reverent

So you've disconnected humor from how it is used in reality,

So, the moral basis for any action should be what everyone is doing?

I can't tell whether Step2 meant that "how humor is being used" is something like (in part) "to be irreverent" and thus claiming "humor is supposed to be reverent" is just setting up an oxymoronic theory; or whether Step2 is saying that "the word humor" is used differently than Chicken says because people pay no attention to reverence when they use humor, implying that it is "supposed to be" is not the way people use the word.

Suffice it to say: humor, if it is a human action, should be used well (morally), and all good human action admits of being rightly ordered in the hierarchy of goods in relation to God. If humor done morally is at least sufficiently reverent for the situation, then it's irreverence (if any) is not the kind of irreverence that detracts from its moral goodness as a human act. If, in a given situation, morally good humor calls for the kind of localized "irreverence" that satirizes something that is, itself, erroneous or defective, that's not (by itself) an irreverence that violates the norms of moral humor.

The fact that many people use humor without noticing the fact that humor has moral norms is no more significant (to identifying the truth) than the fact that many people use sex without noticing that sex has moral norms. More pointedly, people can mistake the fact that there is morally good humor that pokes fun in the direction of religion and religious beliefs and religious practices, to conclude erroneously that there are no moral limits to what and how you can use humor to poke fun at religious issues, or (even worse, and like Charlie Hebdo) that humor is GOOD simply because it pokes fun at religion.

The thing is, though, that it *seems* that MC is requiring humor to be moral in order to *be* humor, even that extremely dry and (to my mind) often boring form of humor known as satire. Why should that be the case? Can't a joke be funny and still wrong to make? Can't satire be satire and still morally wrong to promulgate?

"Can't a joke be funny and still wrong to make? Can't satire be satire and still morally wrong to promulgate?"

Would they be funny to God?

Yes, things can cause laughter that are morally wrong because the process of humor, in itself, is an amoral process. One can make joke about an infinite number of topic (and there are certain languages where it is impossible to tell a joke, at least, in theory). Making humor is a moral act and is governed by the laws governing moral acts. Broadly speaking, as with all human behavior, there are three classes of acts: morally permissible, morally impermissible, and morally neutral. Christ was restricted, due to his divine/human perichoresis to the first and last classes. Due to our fallen human nature, we can access all three classes, but that does not mean one ought to. The first rule of moral theology is that one may not use an evil means to a good end.

The Chicken

Would they be funny to God?

There is a considerable body of theory that says nothing is funny to God. That the conditions required for humor are not possible in God. One of the conditions for humor, for example, is the limitation implied in NOT seeing the connectedness of all truth (or, at least, being able to flip/flop between seeing it and not seeing it in a specific truth). So, the possibility that a joke is not funny to God doesn't necessarily mean it isn't funny to us limited humans.

In any case, yes it is clear that there are jokes that are funny to us and that we SHOULD NOT make. They remain jokes even though they are immoral to use.

So you are all saying its perfectly alright and correct to mock at other religions and that only your religion is high and above all? Whatever you do is right? So if it was 'just' a joke then come on let's indulge in more...you yourself go and morph pictures of your Jesus Christ , make funny caricatures about him and publish them on social media and international magazines, we all would like to have a hearty laugh.
If all is well and fair for you then why was a certain novel of Dan Brown criticised and made controversial? Pray enlightene me. So Jesus christ taught you to make fun of others is it?
Learn from school children in France who refused to stand in silence and pay homage to a man who did not respect other religions. What has the world become.

Actually, that's a particularly ignorant comment, since the main point of the main post is that Christians should _not_ speak in any way as though violence is an appropriate response *even to mockery of Christianity*. As far as "Jesus teaching us to make fun," it entirely depends on what is meant by "making fun," and the distinctions among various meanings of that phrase would be lost on a commentator who just rants ignorantly, so I won't bother trying to explain them. Suffice it to say that as a general rule it is not *always* wrong to satirize an ideology that is deeply held by some people in a humorous fashion. Whether it is being done rightly or not will depend entirely on the specifics.

"That the conditions required for humor are not possible in God."

Or, they are super-present, because God can see all contingent realities.

You wrote:

"There is a considerable body of theory that says nothing is funny to God."

I, once, argued this point with the philosopher/humor scholar John Moreall. First, off, I would like to make a guess that the body of theory you refer to is not primarily about God's humor competence, but a more general theology from which this conclusion is drawn. There is, as far as I know, very little literature on God's perception of humor that actually has anything like a philosophically deep understanding of humor. I have looked at the literature for some years, now.

What is clear is that God, in his divinity knows nothing of pain, being impassible, but that God knows pain in his humanity, for Jesus is both God and man. Likewise, since Jesus weeps in Scripture, twice, and since the processes of crying and laughing share a common neural circuitry, Jesus must be capable of laughing. Baring gelatophobia (the fear of laughing or being laughed at), if Jesus can appreciate the conditions which give rise to tears, he must, also, recognize those conditions that give rise to laughter. If nothing can be funny to someone, likewise, nothing can be tragic to them, because the analysis of the two phenomena are symmetric. Since Jesus does cry, it is perfectly in line with correct Christology to say that God knows about crying. This is part of the condition of the hypostatic union. Likewise, with laughter.

Now, man, weakened by sin, has defects in his imagination that allow him to consider (these are temptations) sinful objects and actions, which can form the basis for jokes. Christ has no such defects, so any jokes he would make would be in perfect accord with right reason. Ours may not be. Finding a sinful joke to be funny can only happen with imperfect man, but it is not a given, a priori, that God would not understand the humor in non-sinful jokes and could express such through his humanity. The divine will and the human will cannot contradict each other. Jesus cannot be willing to laugh at a joke or cry at a tragedy if his divine nature does not also will it and participate, at least at the level of will.

Again, one may not use an evil means to a good end and if there are evil jokes, they ought not be used. Christ can appreciate them as evil, because all evil imports a lack.

Of more importance would be a discussion about turning the other cheek, since, as I read it, that was John's major point.

The Chicken

Now, man, weakened by sin, has defects in his imagination that allow him to consider (these are temptations) sinful objects and actions, which can form the basis for jokes. Christ has no such defects, so any jokes he would make would be in perfect accord with right reason. Ours may not be. Finding a sinful joke to be funny can only happen with imperfect man,

I don't think this argument works. Bad humor isn't ONLY found in sinful objects and actions. Let me give an example:

The adulterous woman is brought before Jesus. He starts writing on the ground, and says "let the one who is without sin cast the first stone." As he starts to write again on the ground, a rock comes out and hits the woman on the shoulder. Jesus looks to see where the rock came from, and exclaims "Mom!, why did you do that?" She answers "Well, I was doing what you said..."

There isn't any sin depicted in the joke. The humor is in the disjunction between what we EXPECT to happen (given that we know the story) and the truth that Mary was without sin and at least in theory could have been the person called on by Jesus (and the law of Moses) to fulfill the punishment meted out to adulterers. Yet the joke is still in poor taste (because of its irreverence) and generally is not a worthy joke. And is, still, a joke - it is a real instance of humor, not an instance of "humor only to sinful twisted souls".

Lydia , ignorant rant? Oh please I know very well what the main post is and I have commented after reading comments posted above. Don't give me that ignorant rant nonsense , when it's really because you couldn't answer my questions...maybe your conscience is pricking you for ignoring the role of mockery in those killings. You don't even respect your own Pope then what's the point in trying to make you acquiese other religions. Like I said you couldn't accept deviations written about your religion in a book but argue that it was an unprecedented attack by another religion. I do not support the ruthless murderers of so called Islam nor do I acquit the whole Muslim world for it. Just accept that both sides have erred instead of passing the buck!

jo,

You really need to stop digging yourself into this hole. For one thing Lydia isn't Catholic. For another, you have totally and completely misunderstood the post, and sticking to your guns in this case is making you look foolish. Just admit you were wrong here and move on.

MA, it isn't worth it. Really, it just isn't.

Marc Anthony,
Fine , I admit I was carried away a little, I have been reading too many blogs over the last few days and they were all filled with such hatred and despise of one religion over the other,one community against the other, rich countries against the third world. It really was too much to take in , just had to voice out that all needed a broader perspective and peace. Ya I'm neither Catholic nor Muslim, infact I'm a Hindu. Just want a peaceful, world!

maybe your conscience is pricking you for ignoring the role of mockery in those killings.

Yeah, that's gotta be it./sarc

Actually, I've argued at length that the "role of mockery in these killings" is extremely minimal.

Both sides have erred. That kind of talk makes me sick.

Who "erred" in the murders *as part of the same attack* of the people in the kosher deli? Justified on the grounds of France's opposition to ISIS?

Ignorant rant hits it pretty darned well.