Justify Censorship

[PumpkinCookie]

It is well known that the Roman Catholic Church engages in various forms of censorship (by suppression of writings, demotion of dissenters, and by encouraging the faithful to avoid engagement with the ideas of those who oppose the Catholic faith). By no means is the Roman Catholic Church the only institution with a culture of censorship, indeed censorship seems to be the norm for human societies and continues to exist today. It seems that the silencing, by force, of opposing political, ideological, or religious views, is the “first line of defense” for the “guardians” of a culture when attempting to preserve the homogeneity and cohesiveness of that culture.

My question is: can truth or the “fullness of truth” possibly exist within a culture of censorship? What are the possible justifications for the silencing of new or challenging ideas? I don’t wish to discuss the censorship of obscenity or violent/threatening images or speech, but rather the intellectual disagreement brought “to the table” by those who dissent from the “official” narrative.

I’ve heard the explanation that not everyone is “capable” of engaging with dissenting or opposing views, and therefore the “sheep” must be protected. This strikes me as unbearably patronizing. I will agree that it seems like young children should not be exposed to ideas which radically disturb their imaginations, but it also seems like childhood is impervious to “dangerous ideas” because children are incapable of engaging with theological or philosophical arguments. Whether you teach a 9 year old that God is “really” or “symbolically” present in the Eucharist doesn’t seem to matter much, since the quality of assent given by a 9 year old is negligible. So, this justification of censorship seems to fail.

What other justifications of censorship are there? What can support the burning of books, the maintenance of a list of prohibited writings, or encouraging the faithful to avoid opposing viewpoints?

I will admit that this post is motivated partially by the removal of my thread which contained much valuable discussion. I can only assume the thread was censored, but I am having difficulty coming up with justifications or rationalizations. Please do not discuss the content of the prior thread or else I fear this will be censored as well!

 

[Joe_5859]

It is well known that the Roman Catholic Church engages in various forms of censorship…

You have this first part incorrect, which makes it difficult to have a conversation about the rest of it.

Pointing out that people are teaching something contrary to what the Catholic Church teaches is not “censorship.” It’s just being honest.

 

[frizzgrig]

Amen.

 

[KD8TZC]

Do you think that Jesus told us everything about what awaits us? Was that censorship? by all means. Why did He do this? Well, you would have to ask Him that question, but I can only imagine because we would not be able to grasp the content of the message.

I think some censorship is okay in the right circumstances.

PAX,

John

 

[PumpkinCookie]

I consider the index of banned books, the burning of books, forced public recantations, and the imprisonment, torture, or execution of “heretics” to be historical instances of censorship.

More recently, I consider the firing of “dissenting” faculty from Catholic Universities, the public disapproval of certain works such as those by Margaret Farley (and many more), and the maintenance of the idea that reading or considering non-Catholic ideas is a sin against the first commandment to be more recent examples of censorship. The Catholic League functions largely as an attempted censor.

(usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-06-04/catholic-nun-sex-book-pope/55386004/1)

If you want, I’ll search for an internet source, but I know that I’ve seen many examinations of conscience which specify the reading of literature containing anti-Catholic ideas as a sin under the first commandment.

Is this enough to establish that the Roman Catholic Church has engaged in censorship? I will grant that one could argue that they no longer engage in censorship, merely public disapproval. But, I also argue this is the case because they lack the ability, not because there is no will to censor.

Also, I will grant that a Roman Catholic institution has the right to hire only those theologians/teachers/staff that agree with its point of view. I am not arguing that they should be forced by anyone, or even a sense of fair-mindedness, to hire those who don’t march in lock-step, but still it is the reluctance to engage with opposing ideas which requires some sort of justification. What is it?

I of course do not accuse Jesus of engaging in censorship! Withholding all of the information is not censorship, in my opinion. If Jesus were to have the Pharisees imprisoned and executed for disagreeing with him, he would be the censor, but actually precisely the opposite is what happened. The Pharisees, the high priests, and the Romans were the censors of Jesus!

Simply choosing to omit the complete truth about everything is not a reasonable definition of censorship. Rather, punishing or publicly shaming those who raise dissent or new ideas is censorship. Encouraging ignorance and instilling fear about new ideas is censorship.

 

[agnes_therese]

It is well known that the Roman Catholic Church engages in various forms of censorship (by suppression of writings, demotion of dissenters, and by encouraging the faithful to avoid engagement with the ideas of those who oppose the Catholic faith).

It is? I’ve been Catholic for 30 years, and I didn’t know that. And I’ve never been “encouraged,” in any way, to “avoid engagement with the ideas of those who oppose the Catholic faith.” If that were true, CAF wouldn’t allow non-Catholic posters. Such as yourself.

Perhaps you could enlighten us poor dummies with some proof?

 

[agnes_therese]

More recently, I consider the firing of “dissenting” faculty from Catholic Universities . . .

Are you saying that no organization has the right to expect its employees to support it’s purposes and rules? You’d be perfectly OK with me joining an atheist organization, in a position where I was paid to promote their ideas, and use that position to preach the doctrines of the Catholic Church?

the maintenance of the idea that reading or considering non-Catholic ideas is a sin against the first commandment to be more recent examples of censorship.

Again – proof, please? I’ve never been told that, and I hang with a very orthodox bunch of priests and religious.

The Catholic League functions largely as an attempted censor.

While I don’t always agree with their selection of causes, their purpose is to defend the Church against false stories about it. Such as yours in the section above.

 

[MrSnaith]

If a professor of mathematics began teaching his students false mathematical principles, rules or procedures, he’d likely be fired, laughed at, and if he produced any books, they’d probably be banned from schools and learning institutions. Why? Because they teach what is known to be false.

And this is the crux of the question. The only justification one can have for censorship is the protection of the truth. If the Catholic Church engages in censorship, this is its motivation.

The Church teaches and professes that it has received the fullness of Truth, and that it is her duty and obligation to protect and defend it. That is its justification.

That anyone in particular disbelieves that there is such a thing as religious truth is what causes people, such as yourself, to find no justification in such censorship. You think this is a matter of opinion, therefore other opinions, which may be equally valid, should be available for consideration.

If, however, what the Church teaches is, in fact, true, and she knows it, then how could she not censor what she knows to, therefore, be false? Not to do so would be as foolish as allowing false mathematics to be taught publicly when it is known to be false.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

O gosh don’t call yourself a dummy! That’s not very nice. Dummies don’t ask for proof, they just unquestioningly accept whatever an authority figure tells them is the truth.

1. “Officiorum ac Munerum” speaks for itself. If this isn’t an official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, then I don’t know what could possibly qualify!

users.qwest.net/~slrorer/Censorship.htm

1. This entry in the Catholic encyclopedia is also quite informative. The author argues not that the Roman Catholic Church does not engage in censorship (this is manifestly and obviously false), but that the Roman Catholic Church is justified in its use of censorship.

newadvent.org/cathen/03519d.htm

I feel as though these sources are fair and widely accepted. If you disagree, please supply something of equal weight which shows that the Church welcomes all ideas and encourages all of her people to examine and engage with opposing opinions in order to make informed and wise decisions, or something to that effect.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

MrSnaith,

This is what I’m looking for, thank you. OK, so censorship of opposing views is acceptable if the party doing the censoring knows the truth? You give the example of mathematical truth. I think this is interesting, but do you really believe that religious propositions are of the same quality as mathematical statements?

Consider, mathematicians spend years or even decades methodically and meticulously proving, a priori, a statement. I should know since my wife has a PhD in math and I have spent much time around math professors and researchers. Does anyone have the same kind of a priori knowledge of, say, the virgin birth? I don’t suspect we do, but maybe I’m wrong. I agree with you, that if a person has the kind of epistemological certainty that a mathematical proof affords, some amount of censorship, at a basic level, could be called for in order to protect vulnerable minds from error. The problem is that, with math, this basically never happens. Elementary mathematical truths are so evident that your example would never happen. A teacher proposing that 2+3=6 is ridiculous since the falsity of that statement is obvious. If someone were so mentally tender as to struggle with that statement, I very much doubt they would be in an elementary math class at all!

Even with the degree of certainty possible in math, it seems that there are no censors. Why is that? I think it proceeds from the nature of the questions. To me, it seems like censorship can only be needed where there is doubt, or even deception. Consider: the possibility of absolute truth is found in math, and yet no one punishes, tortures, or censors those who err…and yet the Roman Catholic Church claims to have “the fullness of truth” about everything and they have engaged in those activities. Why? Is the truth so doubtful?

Secondarily, many people have claimed to have the “fullness of truth.” ISIS claims so and punishes/censors those who disagree. Do you claim that their right to do so proceeds from the fact that they know they have the truth? I doubt you mean this. More likely you will assert that they don’t know the truth at all and are totally mistaken. And yet, how can this be proven? It seems to me that censorship lives in the space of doubt rather than the “fullness of truth.”

 

[edwest2]

A few observations:

It seems that some take the “if a non-religious thought of this idea and I think it’s good, it’s good” and easier to accept than, “if a religion like the Catholic Church is against it, especially on moral/Commandment grounds, then their thinking is suspect, biased or not mainstream, or backward.”

Novelty is not, in itself, a bad thing in moderation. Changes in hairstyles, certain changes in clothing, and architecture, and new discoveries and inventions can motivate people or at least, not harm them.

Intent is always the driving force but the argument often boils down to “I’ll do whatever or try whatever even if it may be of some risk to myself.” I had a friend tell me that he knows someone who told him: “If they made something illegal tomorrow that had been legal, he would automatically begin doing it out of protest.” That’s an unexamined statement and a generalization. It took some decades between drunk driving being illegal to the more severe laws we have now. In Michigan: “Drink and drive and you go to jail. Period.” Not, “But, but my uncle used to do this and they might put him in the ‘drunk tank’ to sleep it off but this is too much!”

Generally, the media, before 1968, was supportive of values and depictions and word choices that the Church and, having lived through the time period, most people would find acceptable, pleasing, informative, beautiful and uplifting. As I watched the decades pass, the volume kept getting turned up on sex, profanity and graphic violence. After all, you just can’t keep rerunning movies and TV shows from the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s forever, right?
You can’t be replaying the same songs from those years on the radio either, right?

So, I can objectively look at a media that tries to keep upping the volume on horror movies - moving from buckets of blood to 55 gallon drums of blood and/or graphic torture and dismemberment by the sickest sickos you’ve ever seen or even semi-respectable looking sickos, like Dexter.

And self-control regarding sex? Forget it. You’ve seen it a million times. People who have any kind of sex, adultery? what’s the big deal?, cohabitation with sex? what’s the bog deal?, LGBT sex? what’s the big deal? and ‘any other kind of sex’ soon to be added to the, what’s the big deal? list.

Now there are groups for sex addicts and porn addicts. Imagine all that deviant sexual behavior being reinforced by the media, because it is. It’s championed, in fact. According to the CDC, there is an STD epidemic going on in this country. Is part of the solution introducing more deviant sex and soft porn to the media (Game of Thrones) part of the answer? I think not. On that basis alone, I would advocate for censorship.

I was part of a forum of men who were against porn. Soon, someone posted, “What’s wrong with you guys?! I love porn!” Talk about not getting it.

The Church has not changed her positions. If anything, when challenged, she has done everything possible to explain to all men of good will, not just the faithful, why she teaches what she teaches. And are we NOT in control of ourselves? Especially as regards sex, or using profanity, and getting used to going from being disgusted by graphic violence to “Oh well. It’s the 21st Century.” WHAT does that have to do with anything?

Entertainment has gone from good and wholesome to focusing on graphic sex to graphic language and graphic depictions of murder and torture. We’ve come a long way – in the downward direction. Is this what we “enjoy” now? Is it better than what was entertainment before? In 98% of the cases, the answer is a clear no.

Why fill your head with all that? I went to bed in the 1950s and early 1960s filled with joy and wonderment and good - seeing good, hearing good. I knew these people were actors, I knew people weren’t perfect, but should I enjoy watching or hearing what’s called “entertainment” today? No. And no. I have every reason to believe that it’s not good from a psychological standpoint either. In some cases, the “good guys” are only slightly less bad than the “bad guys.” And please, I don’t need to see and hear the worst a human being can be as “entertainment.” Give me a documentary or a panel of experts, not Hollywood.

Ed

 

[agnes_therese]

O gosh don’t call yourself a dummy! That’s not very nice. Dummies don’t ask for proof, they just unquestioningly accept whatever an authority figure tells them is the truth.

1. “Officiorum ac Munerum” speaks for itself. If this isn’t an official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, then I don’t know what could possibly qualify!

users.qwest.net/~slrorer/Censorship.htm

1. This entry in the Catholic encyclopedia is also quite informative. The author argues not that the Roman Catholic Church does not engage in censorship (this is manifestly and obviously false), but that the Roman Catholic Church is justified in its use of censorship.

newadvent.org/cathen/03519d.htm

I feel as though these sources are fair and widely accepted. If you disagree, please supply something of equal weight which shows that the Church welcomes all ideas and encourages all of her people to examine and engage with opposing opinions in order to make informed and wise decisions, or something to that effect.

Did you by any chance happen to notice the age of these documents?

Would you care to post something even remotely current?

 

[boomerang]

PumpkinCookie, it seems you are having trouble discerning exactly what it is you are dealing with. Catholicsm is a *religion *based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. What they have handed down to us is what we call the truth. There is no other “truth” out there. Anyone claiming to have some other kind of “truth” is wrong.

The Church is correct to protect the truth of the Apostolic teachings against untruth. As you and I well know, people are easily led into falsehood. The Church is the shepherd that guards the flock against predation by wolves clothed in ideas that are contrary to the Apostolic teachings.

The Catholic Church is not a social club, incorporating new ideas when it suits itself. No, it is the oldest Christian religion, charged with handing down the legacy of the teachings of Jesus and His apostles. This is serious business, deadly serious. Our eternity is at stake. There is no wiggle-room here. Charges of “censorship” do not apply here. The Magisterium protects the legacy of Christ’s teachings to us. They cannot do anything else. If they always allowed “free speech” and new ideas, there would be no more Christianity on this planet, as all other churches came from the Mother Church, which is the Catholic Church. So what you term “censorship” is what I would call “self defense.”

 

[PumpkinCookie]

Agnes Therese I feel that you are irritated! Why so? I mean you no harm, and ideas can’t hurt us.

Yes I know these sources are old, but does the “fullness of truth” change over time? If the “fullness of truth” doesn’t change over time, then I don’t think we have a problem. The scriptures are many centuries older than these documents. If the fullness of truth changes over time, then why do we need censorship to protect it against new ideas? Maybe the new ideas are now true and the old ones are false?

By the way, I use quotes to denote a specific term, not as sarcasm or something like that. I italicize words that are being used in uncommon or highly specific ways, and use quotes to denote a term that I have not made up but is in common use by proponents of a particular ideology. Hope that clarifies my tone? I don’t mean to irritate you!

Ed, nice post, I agree! The violence and sex are very disturbing to me as well. I don’t want to talk about that kind of censorship since I don’t have a well formed contribution to make, but I intuit that some kind of censorship of ugly, vile, disgusting, or obscene things is necessary. Just an intuition though.

 

[Joe_5859]

Pumpkin Cookie,

You do seem sincere in your desire to discuss this matter. I’ll share some off-the-cuff thoughts. I make no promise of infallibility.

Yes, there has been plenty of censorship in the past, though I would argue that I really don’t see anything that would qualify as such at present. I think the reasons for all of that are not completely cut-and-dried.

The fact is, ideas are powerful. At the time of the Reformation, you have people utilizing the newly minted printing press to produce tracts that undermine Catholic teaching and the result is that entire nations fall away from the Catholic faith. Now, to you or I today, “banning” books might seem a bit severe, I can understand how, at that time, it was a natural solution to pursue. We are talking about millions of souls being put at risk. It’s easy to judge those actions by modern sensibilities, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to do so.

Those days are gone, though, and I don’t expect they will ever be back. First, I think it is arguable as to how effective such tactics were. Second, with the modern means of communication, trying to “ban” something is a completely futile enterprise. Once an idea is out there on the internet, getting it back in Pandora’s box is impossible.

However, that does not mean the Church cannot or should not make clear to Catholics whether such-and-such a book or theologian is spouting off things that run contrary to the faith.

Look at it from the Church’s perspective. We believe that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, entrusted Divine Revelation (the revelation of who God is in His very essence) to the Apostles and their successors. The Pope and bishops thus have a grave responsibility to see that this revelation is passed down from generation to generation without anything being added to it, subtracted from it, or having it otherwise obscured in anyway. Because if people get their understanding of Revelation wrong – of who God is wrong – souls perish. A lot is at stake.

So, yes, we need not be afraid of questions or other viewpoints. But the Church has a responsibility to proclaim the truth and to identify when things run counter to that truth.

Yes, lots of examinations of conscience include things about reading bad stuff. First, I would just point out that I haven’t come across an infallible, Vatican approved examination of conscience that is binding on all the faithful. Examinations of conscience are not intended to be exhaustive laundry lists of mortal sins. Indeed, many of the questions often touch on venial matters. They are simply meant to help a person think through and – no surprise – examine their conscience.

Toward that end, reading questionable materials can be harmful to people’s faith. You don’t need to browse through the forum too far to find people who post a question in a panic because they read something questionable from some random website. Now, confronting these things and gaining knowledge can definitely be good things. But what of the people who never bother to pursue the answers to the questions raised? Their faith is damaged by such things. You might say that their faith wasn’t strong to begin with and that is true enough. But we all start somewhere. We don’t want to blast the sapling with heavy winds before the roots are deep enough and the bark is thick enough.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

 

[edwest2]

PumpkinCookie, it seems you are having trouble discerning exactly what it is you are dealing with. Catholicsm is a *religion *based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. What they have handed down to us is what we call the truth. There is no other “truth” out there. Anyone claiming to have some other kind of “truth” is wrong.

The Church is correct to protect the truth of the Apostolic teachings against untruth. As you and I well know, people are easily led into falsehood. The Church is the shepherd that guards the flock against predation by wolves clothed in ideas that are contrary to the Apostolic teachings.

The Catholic Church is not a social club, incorporating new ideas when it suits itself. No, it is the oldest Christian religion, charged with handing down the legacy of the teachings of Jesus and His apostles. This is serious business, deadly serious. Our eternity is at stake. There is no wiggle-room here. Charges of “censorship” do not apply here. The Magisterium protects the legacy of Christ’s teachings to us. They cannot do anything else. If they always allowed “free speech” and new ideas, there would be no more Christianity on this planet, as all other churches came from the Mother Church, which is the Catholic Church. So what you term “censorship” is what I would call “self defense.”

Wonderful. Right now, self-defense is the right word, and encouraging others to examine what the Church tells us is so important. Pope Francis is being watched like a hawk whenever he speaks about something, especially if it is contrary to what is called “mainstream” thinking and lifestyles/behaviors.

I think we should ask ourselves why the Catholic Church in particular gets all this attention. Sure, other Christians do get some attention but rarely to the same degree.

Guard yourself. Defend the truth.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

Agnes Therese I feel that you are irritated! Why so? I mean you no harm, and ideas can’t hurt us.

Yes I know these sources are old, but does the “fullness of truth” change over time? If the “fullness of truth” doesn’t change over time, then I don’t think we have a problem. The scriptures are many centuries older than these documents. If the fullness of truth changes over time, then why do we need censorship to protect it against new ideas? Maybe the new ideas are now true and the old ones are false?

By the way, I use quotes to denote a specific term, not as sarcasm or something like that. I italicize words that are being used in uncommon or highly specific ways, and use quotes to denote a term that I have not made up but is in common use by proponents of a particular ideology. Hope that clarifies my tone? I don’t mean to irritate you!

Ed, nice post, I agree! The violence and sex are very disturbing to me as well. I don’t want to talk about that kind of censorship since I don’t have a well formed contribution to make, but I intuit that some kind of censorship of ugly, vile, disgusting, or obscene things is necessary. Just an intuition though.

Thank you. Here is a document that I hope sheds some light on the influence of the media and the Church’s response.

w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_29061936_vigilanti-cura.html

Best,
Ed

 

[MrSnaith]

MrSnaith,

This is what I’m looking for, thank you. OK, so censorship of opposing views is acceptable if the party doing the censoring knows the truth? You give the example of mathematical truth. I think this is interesting, but do you really believe that religious propositions are of the same quality as mathematical statements?

Some, yes, perhaps, mostly no, though. The Church is clear about this point. The bulk of Divine Revelation is just that, revelation, and should not be considered truths that are easily accessible to the human reason, if accessible at all.

Consider, mathematicians spend years or even decades methodically and meticulously proving, a priori, a statement. I should know since my wife has a PhD in math and I have spent much time around math professors and researchers. Does anyone have the same kind of a priori knowledge of, say, the virgin birth? I don’t suspect we do, but maybe I’m wrong. I agree with you, that if a person has the kind of epistemological certainty that a mathematical proof affords, some amount of censorship, at a basic level, could be called for in order to protect vulnerable minds from error. The problem is that, with math, this basically never happens. Elementary mathematical truths are so evident that your example would never happen. A teacher proposing that 2+3=6 is ridiculous since the falsity of that statement is obvious. If someone were so mentally tender as to struggle with that statement, I very much doubt they would be in an elementary math class at all!

Right. So the question is, do we consider something like the Virgin Birth an “elementary religious truth”? I would answer no. What would qualify as an elementary religious truth? Perhaps the question of free will? I’d suggest that it’s a basic, elementary truth and that most people would scoff at the suggestion that we don’t have this. Is it basic to Catholic teaching? Absolutely, as most of Catholic theology wouldn’t make sense without it. So, should books that question free will be censored? Probably not, since, as you point out, widely understood, basic truths like this hardly need to be censored.

But what about a question like the equation E=MC^2? Though this mathematical principle is almost universally accepted, mainly because it’s stood up to practical application very well, it’s not a mathematical truth that is obvious, nor easily arrived at. Indeed, there are still people today who question whether the Constant in that equation is a true constant, which would call the principle into question if it were ever shown not to be. So, would a mathematics professor’s position be called into question if he taught that E=MC^2 is false? Maybe, I don’t know. I think at least he’d probably be looked at as something of a kook.

I would suggest the question of the Virgin Birth might be something akin to a more difficult mathematical principle, one which is not obvious or easily arrived at.

Even with the degree of certainty possible in math, it seems that there are no censors. Why is that? I think it proceeds from the nature of the questions. To me, it seems like censorship can only be needed where there is doubt, or even deception. Consider: the possibility of absolute truth is found in math, and yet no one punishes, tortures, or censors those who err…and yet the Roman Catholic Church claims to have “the fullness of truth” about everything and they have engaged in those activities. Why? Is the truth so doubtful?

I dispute your position here. I would assert that basic mathematics isn’t censored because the truth of it is obvious. I would further assert that more complex mathematics aren’t censored because for the average person, VERY little is at stake. There is no personal consequence to me if I don’t understand or even know about complex quadratic formulae, or logarithmic functions. In fact, if I would suggest most people have an incorrect understanding about such things. And there’s nothing at stake for such people. They aren’t personally harmed by it.

Yes, censorship does occur when people have agendas. But just because that’s true in some cases, doesn’t make it universally true.

Secondarily, many people have claimed to have the “fullness of truth.” ISIS claims so and punishes/censors those who disagree. Do you claim that their right to do so proceeds from the fact that they know they have the truth? I doubt you mean this. More likely you will assert that they don’t know the truth at all and are totally mistaken. And yet, how can this be proven? It seems to me that censorship lives in the space of doubt rather than the “fullness of truth.”

Actually, the Catholic Church has very strict rules in place for how it determines what is true, and nothing is proclaimed as true unless it adheres strictly to these rules. One of these rules is that it has to cohere to reason. In other words, it has to make sense. There is nothing taught in the Church that has not at one point or other in her history been subjected to extremely rigorous scrutiny of reason. Moreover, it doesn’t just have to make sense. It has to make sense in a macrocosmic way. In other words, it has to make sense both within the theological framework of the Church’s totality of teachings, and it also has to make sense according to the universal laws of nature and our understanding of the natural world. So, as our scientific understanding improves, and thus our understanding of the laws of the universe, so too does our theological understanding improve, though the teachings themselves remain the same.

 

[agnes_therese]

Agnes Therese I feel that you are irritated! Why so? I mean you no harm, and ideas can’t hurt us.

Yes, false attacks on the Church do irritate me. As do people who make them, and then don’t respond to questions.

Best for me to leave this “conversation.”

 

[PumpkinCookie]

MrSnaith,

It seems to me like the question of “free will” is a very contentious topic. In fact, there are dozens of threads on just this forum debating its nature, quality, existence, etc. I wouldn’t call any teaching about it basic in the way simple arithmetic statements are considered non-controversial. I guess you could consider an opinion about free will as axiomatic. Given “libertarian” free will, for instance, the “free will” defense against the argument from evil seems to succeed, but given “compatibilism” of various kinds, it would appear to fail. Even these statements are contentious though. In fact, it doesn’t seem like any religious proposition is non-controversial, except for maybe some kind of reciprocal morality like “Do unto others etc…” There are several well known philosophers who dispute reciprocal morality (Nietzsche for one) but no religion I am aware of disputes this.

Switching tracks: I’m going to make an analogy that might be illustrative. What if you met a man for the first time, and you didn’t know anything about him, but you knew that he had one thing in common with some others whom you did know quite well: they beat their wives. Let’s say you knew that several dozen people were wife-beaters, and they shared other characteristics as well (short temper, alcoholism, abused as children, often unemployed, etc). Now this man you meet is also a wife-beater. Would you reasonably assume that the new man you have met has some of the other shared characteristics as well? If, in your experience, wife beaters are often alcoholics, unemployed, and impatient, wouldn’t it be reasonable to suspect that this guy also has those characteristics? I’m not saying you’d be justified in assuming that he is in fact an unemployed alcoholic, but rather that you’d be justified in suspecting so. What if this wife beater says to you, “Yes, I know that every other wife beater is a bad guy, but I’m not because I beat my wife only as much as she deserves and is good for her, and I’m very careful to beat her for only the right reasons.” Would this be just a little bit suspicious? Why not?

Now, let’s consider the company of censors. The sophists, the pharisees, the Nazis, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, pretty much every oppressive and totalitarian regime, etc. Basically, if you look at history, can you give an example when censorship was used to protect freedom and truth? It seems like censorship has been used to silence truth and suppress freedom. I’m speaking about a very specific kind of censorship, mind you, not censorship of obscenity or vulgarity, but censorship that undermines the political or religious power and privilege held by the censors.

The argument in the Catholic Encyclopedia article seems to say that, while censorship is uniformly associated with oppression and lies, the Roman Catholic Church is the single exception because it has always used censorship appropriately and justly, or something to that effect. And yet, I can’t help but wonder why censorship is necessary in order to protect the “fullness of truth.” Is truth really the kind of thing that can’t stand up to falsehoods without the aid of violence, or the violent or forcible suppression of “liars?” Are people really so easily confused? If we are “made for truth” then shouldn’t we be able to discern true from false? Shouldn’t false ideas simply wither away over time?

I suppose you could say “no” and offer the enduring popularity of horoscopes, palm readers, and other superstitions as evidence. No one is forcing people to believe in that stuff, and yet they do! I wonder though, if humanity were able to attain true spiritual and intellectual freedom, what would happen? If everyone were able to think clearly and were free from the bonds of family pressure, political oppression, and lack of information, would everyone in the world become a Roman Catholic, or would the Church still need to censor opposing views? An open question I suppose.

Agnes Therese, please don’t censor yourself. You contribution could be so valuable! I’m not sure which question you would like me to answer. I’m not sure we need a newer source. Does the source’s “newness” make it “more true?” I doubt it, but if you disagree please just explain why and I’ll look around.