Freedom of Speech and Erroneous Opinion

It never fails. Whenever freedom of speech is brought up in a blog post about some position contrary to the Catholic Faith, someone writes a response to the extent of, “Error has no rights whatsoever, be it in the spoken word, written statement or otherwise.” Their point, as near as I can tell, is that we should not have the wide-ranging freedom of speech we enjoy here in the United States, but should only be free to express that which is compatible with the Truth revealed by Christ.

As Christians, we must always speak and act according to the Truth. Because we follow Christ, we do not have the freedom to behave contrary to his will, and fall into sin when we do. If we are serious about our belief in Christ, we must use our free will to do what we ought, as Pope John Paul II put so eloquently.

On a civil level, there is a problem. We need to be very careful when desiring the abolition of government protected free speech. We do not live in a country governed by Catholic values. Some would argue the United States is barely holding on to any Christian virtue at all. It is not Christian Truth that governs this nation’s practices, but rather post-modern philosophies that reject the Christian Faith.

If government protected free speech were withdrawn, it would not be error that would be repressed, but the Truth of Christ. The revealed Truth of Christ would be seen, as it already is in some places, to be “hate speech” and would be repressed severely. The same freedom of speech which allows error to be expressed also allows us to proclaim the Truth of Christ. Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Those who would remove freedom of speech from error require that same freedom of speech to call for its abolition.

There is a solution to the problem, but it’s far more difficult then merely calling for repression of error. Instead of removing the freedom of speech from those who disagree with the Truth revealed by Christ, we should use the same freedom of speech to spread the Gospel. One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to instruct the ignorant. We can fight error with Truth, not merely seek to repress it. Truth will overcome error, but we need to courageous in proclaiming that Truth.