Jesus swoons...

The Vatican chimed in with its thoughts about the Islamictoon scandal:

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18049532^663,00.html

Their quote: "The Vatican deplored the violence, but said: "The right to freedom of thought and expression . . . cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."

So freedom of speech can be used as long as it doesn't offend "the religious sentiment of believers?" What makes religious sentiment so important? If that is the case then why can't it be "political sentiment?" or "personal sentiment?" Of course one imagines that the rapidly falling membership of the Catholic church (no longer as Universal as it was 200 years ago), is bound by necessity to defend the uniqueness of the religious position, but, as always, the logic of their statement is unsound. Freedom of speech cannot be hampered by the concept of "offense," for doing that leads one down the slippery slope of eliminating the whole ideal. The whole idea of Freedom of speech is to confront someone with ideas that go against the grain, and to encourage thought and change. I'm sure there was much anti-slavery rhetoric that popped the bubble of the concept of the noble slaveowner, but it was through that rhetoric that the most inhuman institution was destroyed. I'm not saying this to push some atheist point of view, but when one runs across this type of statement, one must also look at the statement's source.