When Satirical Cartoons Push the Limit
"Licit to Wound Others' Religious Sentiment?" Asks L'Osservatore
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 7, 2006 (Zenit.org <http://www.zenit.org> ).- The
Vatican's semiofficial newspaper proposed an examination of conscience
on the question of freedom of speech, in the wake of violence linked to
the publication of cartoons about Mohammed.
L'Osservatore Romano stated that such an examination should include the
media and all countries, explicitly a Spanish case, where a theatrical
performance ridicules the Pope, threatens Catholics and incites to
apostasy, and a television program that explained "how to cook a
crucifix."
"Is it licit, in the name of freedom of thought, to wound the religious
sentiments of those who belong to a given confession?" asks journalist
Francesco Valiente, in the newspaper's Feb. 6-7 Italian edition.
"Where does the right of expression begin and where does offense to the
inner convictions of others begin?" he continues. "What is the
borderline between satire and derision, between wit and outrage, between
irony and blasphemy?
"Different levels are mixed and sometimes confused in the question: the
juridical and cultural, the ethical and deontological."
"There is no doubt," Valiente adds, "that the right to express one's
thought and the right to freely profess a religion are fully entitled in
the fundamental and inalienable human rights recognized universally" for
the past 60 years by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
At the same time, "there is no doubt that every genuine expression of
the first of these rights meets with a natural -- to describe it in some
way -- limit in the full and integral realization of the second," adds
the author.
Satire
"Should not the much-trumpeted 'secularism' of modern society find one
of its cardinal points of reference precisely in understanding and
respect for the 'other's' convictions, even if they are different and
antithetical to one's own?" he asks.
The article defines the pedagogic and moral function of satire with the
ancient Latin adage "castigat ridendo mores" (castigate customs
laughing).
The text praises satire, for example, "when it has lashed out at evil
customs and denounced the injustices of every age, unmasking the
idolatry of the 'powerful,' depriving it of that sacred and artful halo
which often concealed vices and corruption."
But this, the author adds, has nothing to do with "low, 'sacrilegious'
whims. When its target is the values and symbols of religion, of the
sacred in the absolute and indefectible sense, it inevitably loses its
nature and function," Valiente adds.
"Being deprived of any critical and educational objective, it becomes
mere rage. It is transformed into gratuitous vulgarity," he notes.
And in the case of the Mohammed cartoons or blasphemies against the
crucifix in Spain, "the artistic and cultural or simply 'satirical'
value is not clear," asserts the Vatican newspaper.
The article ends by stating that what happened in Spain does not seem
"to have aroused particular contempt in public opinion. However, between
the excesses of the media noise and condescending silence, remains
offended dignity, the wounded conscience."
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