The days following the outrageous and deeply evil attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris saw the news channels, the social media and indeed the streets of Paris all speaking as one, expressing shock, grief and outrage at this horrific event. Western opinion was overwhelmingly of this stamp, and those of our friends in France placed particular emphasis on the central place of free speech in the constitution of their nation and their determination that no amount of murder and terror on their soil would ever change this. Watching the massive demonstrations of support for France’s secular constitution, it was impossible not to be impressed by this monumental expression of human solidarity, and in my case to say the word “bravo!” out loud.

How odd it was then, reading the news headlines the other day, to discover that the head of the Roman Catholic Church had seen fit to offer his opinion on the issue of free speech, and to find that he had weighed in against it. “Free speech must have its limits” he was quoted as saying. If it has limits, I found myself observing at once, then it is not free speech. Pope Francis had struck me prior to this as a rather liberal and moderate man, intent upon a certain amount of Vatican reform and seemingly well aware of the issues facing humanity in a fast-changing epoch. Yet this staggering statement, together with corollary remarks which included a threat that anyone speaking disrespectfully of his mother would find that “a punch awaits him”, reminds us that at heart this particular branch of theism has more in common with the Jihadi movement than is perhaps generally perceived. What he is really hinting at here is that Charlie Hebdo had it coming. “You cannot insult the faith of others” he added, without giving his authority for such a view. He is in point of law quite wrong in France’s case, and even if he were not, is violence the natural response to any perceived insult to religion (or indeed family honour)?


That’s the way to do it!

For the Pope, it would appear, free speech ends at the door of religion. Just as it does in much of the Islamic world, which constutionally speaking is a ragbag jumble of criminal dictatorships, tyrranical kingdoms, rogue states and repressive theocracies. This is where the denial of free speech leads, Snr Bergoglio. The values of the Enlightenment are under powerful physical, bloody attack now from religious intolerants and extremists, and you have taken sides with them on this issue. I am offended, deeply offended. However, it would never do to punch you in the mouth by way of a response, for I believe in free speech, and when my beliefs are challenged I defend them without recourse to violence, by using reason to explain them. Of course, that is not a recourse that is open to the soldiers of Jihad, or indeed to His Holiness.