Courtney McGrailResponsible freedom of expression requires respect for others’ feelings, says Pope
“One cannot kill in the name of God”, said Pope Francis, answering a question on balancing freedom of religion and freedom of expression while he was flying from Sri Lanka to the Philippines. Describing both as “fundamental human rights”, he stressed that the principle point about religious liberty is that “One has freedom in this, but without imposing or killing in the name of religion.”
Freedom of expression, he added, is about duties as well as rights: one has, he says, not merely the right “but also the obligation” to say what one thinks to help the common good. Insisting that “one cannot react violently”, he nonetheless pointed out that when people provoke, reactions are inevitable, jokingly saying that if a friend insulted his mother, “a punch awaits him”.
There are limits, he explained, to the responsible exercise of free expression, cautioning against mocking any religion that respects human life and the human person.
Pope Francis’ points have been supported by, among others, Egypt’s Coptic Patriarch Tawadros II, challenging how French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has published another cartoon of Mohammed following the terrorist attack on their offices in which a dozen people were killed. Such insults, he said, “do not help the peace in the world, and do not produce any benefit”.
Francis plans more missionary canonisations
After canonising Sri Lanka’s first saint without waiting for a second miracle, Pope Francis has announced his desire to canonise several other great missionary saints in this way.
St Joseph Vaz was an Indian Oratorian who sailed to Dutch-occupied Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, in 1687 and ministered to the underground Church which was suppressed by the Calvinist authorities. Known as the ‘apostle of Sri Lanka’, he was beatified in 1995. At his canonisation Mass in Colombo, Pope Francis called on us to emulate Vaz, who “knew how to offer the truth and the beauty of the Gospel in a multireligious context, with respect, dedication, perseverance and humility”.
The next saint to be so canonised without waiting for a second miracle will be the 18th Century Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra, who Pope Francis intends to proclaim a saint while in the US in September. Majorca-born Serra entered what is now the state of California from Mexico in 1769, and founded the first nine of California’s 21 missions. He was beatified in 1988.
The process of ‘equivalent canonisation’, whereby regular canonisation processes are put aside in favour of a papal declaration, has already been used by Pope Francis to canonise his predecessor Pope John XIII as well as the 16th Century Jesuit Peter Faber and the 13th Century Franciscan mystic Angela da Foligno.
MLK’s politics were driven by religion, say US bishops
Writing in advance of Martin Luther King Day, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has observed that the annual observance is “a celebration of the power of religious faith working through believers who open themselves selflessly to that which God calls them to do in the world”. It is too easy to forget, he wrote, that the campaigning by King (pictured) for justice was “fundamentally Christian”.
The inspiration for King’s activism, he added, came “not from a devotion to any political party or even set of public policy solutions, but rather from his understanding of Christian discipleship”.
Louisville’s Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, called on communities to heed King’s call to move “from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity”.
Pointing out that continuing racial violence shows how much work remains to be done, Archbishop Kurtz said that American communities will only reflect human dignity if guided by prayer, saying “That which seems impossible can only be brought about through God and his powerful intervention in our hearts.”