The Illiberal Liberals and Pope Francis on Freedom of Expression

Bill Maher: When Anger Dresses
Up as Humor it is no less toxic 

I am a fan of The Big Bang Theory and there probably isn’t an episode I haven’t seen at least once, but I still get a bit queasy and want to change the channel when I see Howard do his imitation of Stephen Hawking’s synthesized speech.   Professor Hawking has been on the show and almost certainly doesn’t mind, but I am not sure where the line is on making fun of a person with a disability or a challenge.  Just because the person being mocked doesn’t mind doesn’t make it right. 

I think we have, at least in the United States and at least among those of us who weren’t raised by wolves (or white trash), a social consensus that we don’t make fun of people with disabilities or with what we often call today “special needs.”  To make fun of a person with Down’s Syndrome or with Cerebral Palsy is called bullying.  We don’t do it; we don’t tolerate it.  Similarly the sort of mockery of people for distinctive racial or ethnic features that was the staple of cartoonists such as Thomas Nast or Friz Freleng would not be tolerated today.  Julius Streicher was the Nazi Cartoonist whose anti-Semitic drawings in Der Stürmer helped turn the German people against the Jews in Hitler’s Reich; we recognize the evils to which he made a significant contribution.   One certainly doesn’t denigrate women in today’s responsible press.  Nor is it acceptable to make broad statements or reinforce stereotypes of the LGBTQ community.  But isn’t it great fun to mock people for their religious beliefs? 

There are people who have reacted strenuously to Pope Francis for saying that people should not be mocked for their religious beliefs.  This is seen as an attack on “freedom of expression.”  What many people today do not realize is the difference between “freedom” and “license.”  Freedom recognizes that it carries along with it responsibility.  License is nothing more than the unbridled indulgence of self-willed egotists.  It refuses to be accountable to either objective truth or to the sensitivities and rights of others.  Those who make fun of others for their religious beliefs are simply schoolyard bullies on a larger scale.

Several weeks ago I saw Bill Maher on Conan.  Mr. Maher is one of religion’s most irresponsible critics and produced and starred in Religulous, the 2008 documentary that pretty much tarred all religion with the same choleric brush.  He also is not a nice man.  Anger, no, actually a discretely muffled rage, best described his performance on Conan.   Rage is no foundation for humor.  Anger in any and all forms, the Dalai Lama says, is poison.  And it is.  Nothing more; nothing less.  It destroys people from within like a cancer, spreading out from the gut into the whole person and becoming an obsession that distorts the individual’s power for healthy relationships and eats away their capacity for joy.  Anger or Rage is also highly contagious and spreads like a spiritual cholera from one person to another by even the most casual of contact.  Just look at how the bias against Muslims has spread in our society and in Western Europe, spread to the point where Duke University had to rescind its permission for the Adhān (the Call to Prayer) to be chanted from the chapel bell tower for fear of violence against the University and its campus.   Of course there are those who want to silence the bells in church towers as well or prohibit the display of crosses on the outside of church-owned buildings.  We must be careful because to undermine the freedom of public expression for one religion is potentially to undermine the public expression of any and all religion.

This is not to say that religion must be above criticism.  Rational argument is far different from mockery whether the mockery is in the form of cartoons, films, jokes, literature, or art.  Religion, like every other aspect in our lives, needs to be put under the microscope of free, rational, and responsible critique.  But the Pope is right.  It is no more legitimate to mock the religious beliefs of some or any or all than it is to bully the developmentally challenged, the transgendered, the economically disadvantaged, the ethnic minority, or the physically handicapped.  It is time we grew up and faced our biases rather than make them clever conceits that massage our egos into thinking that we are superior to others who are different from us.    

Atheist Popes and Closet Believers

Have you heard of the dyslexic
pope who believes in Dog?

Bill Maher says that he thinks Pope Francis is an atheist but from his description of atheist, I suspect that Bill Maher is no more an atheist than the pope.  This raises an intriguing question—not whether either the Pope or the comedian is an atheist, but what do people mean by “atheist.”   I have always held to a pretty strict definition of the term.  An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity—God or any god.  But Mr. Maher points to the Holy Father’s recent statement about salvation for those outside the Church—and even for those who profess to be non-believers.  Maher’s quote, as best as I can retrieve it, is “‘Pope Frank’ said the Lord has redeemed all of us, not just Catholics, even the atheists. And I was like, I’m going to book my flight to heaven right now. “  The question is does Mr. Maher not believe in a Supreme Being or does he not believe in organized religion?  Not believing in organized religion is not sufficient grounds for declaring oneself an atheist.   Many of us are Christians, even Catholics, in spite of the organizational dimension of “the Church,” not because of it.  Note, I say the organizational dimension of the Church, not “the Church.”  I love belonging to a community of people centered around the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That energizes me and give me some vision for life.  That community to which I belong—and which I find has the most energizing power—happens  to be Catholic.  On the other hand, I am not particularly enamored of belonging to this overly pompous institution fascinated far more by human traditions than by the Evangelical Tradition which draws me and which has been handed down from Christ through his apostles.  Speaking as a historian and not in a theological context, there is a world of difference between “the Church of Jesus Christ” and the institutional bureaucracy that is today’s “face” of Catholicism.  Such things as the College of Cardinals, the Code of Canon Law, the Tridentine Rite, communion on the tongue, galeros and miters, the Knights of Columbus, monsignors, communion rails, canon 915, Bishop Frank Dwayne, male-only altar servers, religious habits,  and birettas are not part of the Jesus-patrimony.  That is not to say that some of them aren’t good things, or even that I don’t like some of those things—but it is not what our faith is about.  Reconciliation, forgiveness of sins, inclusiveness, dignity of each individual, the Kingdom of God, justice, community, service, mercy, almsgiving, change of heart, and prayer are “what we have received from the Lord and handed on to you….”  Many of these things in the patrimony from Christ are somewhat ambiguous and call for our response without giving us concrete norms and that is difficult for people who find great comfort in rules, regulations, and canon laws but the Gospel is the Gospel. 
Frankly, and again as a historian not a theologian, I find that I am called not to believe in the Church (whether as an institution or as a community) but to believe in the Gospel and I see the Church as the community with the mission of spreading that Gospel.  The Church is not worthy my faith.  As a human institution (even if it has foundations in a “divine origin”—i.e. it was founded by Jesus) the Church has proved itself over and over again as unworthy of our faith.  But we as Church have a glorious mission of animating our human family with the message of God’s Kingdom, “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Now that is something I can believe in.  Apparently so does ‘Pope Frank.’  And seemingly so also may Mr. Maher, though he certainly doesn’t see the Catholic Church as an agent in transforming the world and he probably doesn’t see  how these dreams of a “better world” find their greatest potential in the teachings of Jesus.  And without putting words into the papal mouth, I think that what the Holy Father was trying to say is that all who embrace God’s Kingdom will find a place welcome for them in it.  No, Pope Francis is no more an atheist than Mr. Maher is a Christian, but I am not sure he is the atheist he wants to be either.