Michael KellyWe must stand with the French people in their mourning, and we must stand for their cherished principle of liberté, writes Michael Kelly
There has been near universal revulsion at the Islamist terrorist attacks that rocked Paris last week. Only a handful of cretinous Islamic clerics who make a living by outdoing one another in extremism and terror-justification have dissented.
The attack on the little-read satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo captured the public imagination not merely for the vileness of the attack, but the fact that the murder of journalists is an attack on freedom of the press and freedom of expression in general. This is particularly acutely felt in France where the self-identity of the French Fifth Republic is bound up with an almost religious devotion to liberté.
As often happens at times of such tragedy, there is an immediate-felt human need to do something. This usually manifests itself by way of solidarity. Almost immediately, people began making signs and t-shirts with the simple slogan “Je suis Charlie” French for “I am Charlie”. It powerfully captured the huge value we rightly place on the freedom of the press.
It was a marvellous manifestation of solidarity and a gesture to all those enemies of freedom that our western values are non-negotiable. But I can’t help but think there was a certain hypocrisy in some of those rushing to defend freedom of expression.
In Ireland today, for example, college campuses have become the new frontier of attacks on freedom of expression. The traditional understanding of a university is a place of liberty where students have their beliefs and deeply-held convictions engaged and challenged. Fast forward to 2015 and some Irish colleges are going to great lengths to stop freedom of expression.
At the National University of Ireland in Galway, for example, the Legion of Mary was suspended as a college society. Its crime: the group placed a poster on a noticeboard which invited people with “same sex attractions” to “develop an interior life of chastity… to move beyond the confines of the homosexual label to a more complete identity in Christ”.
It was too much for the shrinking violets that are university students in Ireland today. Laughably, NUI Galway issued a statement saying “it is committed to protecting the liberty and equality of all students”.
Intolerant
Speaking to this newspaper in October, a former University College Cork chaplain warned that third level institutes here are becoming ‘intolerant’ of Catholic views.
Fr David Barrins expressed concerns that UCC in particular “does not wish to have a plurality of opinions properly represented on campus”.
Fr Barrins said: “There is growing intolerance in the Students Union and the student body to student views that are pro-life or Catholic.
“If you dissent from the prevailing liberal orthodoxy, then there is no place for you to be represented on campus. Indeed you are met with derision and, intolerance,” he said.
Fr Barrins comments came after it was revealed that ‘Love Life’, a student-led pro-life organisation, has been repeatedly denied recognition by the UCC Societies Guild as an official college society.
The Laurentian Catholic society in Trinity College Dublin has been repeatedly warned that it should not use college funds to organise prayer meetings but should instead operate as a kind of Catholic cultural society.
Yet, not one of the Irish commentariat or political establishment bats an eyelid. In short, many of the people chanting and tweeting “Je suis Charlie” in Ireland are quite supportive of subtle forms of censorship of views they don’t like.
Satire, in general, is virtually non-existent in Ireland. What does pass for satire is bland and crippled with political correctness. Except, of course, when it comes to the Catholic Church in which case people go out of their way to offend Catholics.
Freedom of expression is one of those things that a lot of people support in principle, but many people have difficulties when it offends against their particular ‘sacred cow’. We hear talk of ‘hate speech’ and attempts by politicians led by Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin to set limits on what people can and can’t say and make the voicing of certain opinions illegal.
There have been loud voices calling for the repeal of Ireland’s blasphemy law. This seems like a sensible proposal. We must be careful, however, that we do not end up in a situation where the ban on religious blasphemy is replaced by a form of secular blasphemy law where certain opinions – some of them without doubt distasteful and downright nasty – are made illegal.
One does not have a right not to be offended. We must stand with the French people in their mourning, and we must stand for their cherished principle of liberté.