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The Metropolitan, Canada
Jan 8 2015
Je Suis Charlie
By Father John Walsh on January 8, 2015
The world must stand up for freedom, freedom of expression; freedom,
pure and simple! History has proven that the denial of freedom is the
greatest obstacle to our development as human beings. The greatest
freedom we have is to seek the truth. Truth will make you free. What
is the truth about Je Suis Charlie?
Although we seek truth that is absolute and therefore self-evident,
truth is not absolute, it is relative to the events and circumstances
in which we seek the truth. It is not situational but must be
situated in the time and space in which truth is sought after. In the
case of Charlie Hebdo, people use their pens as satirists and draw
cartoons lampooning people and events in depictions that may be
considered extreme to wake people up who otherwise would be very
content to live with the status quo.
The truth is that world-wide humanity is complacent and unmoved by the
most extreme horrors humanity can imagine. We remained silent in the
face of the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian Holocaust, the genocide in
Rwanda, and we remained silent about the need to educate girls until
Malala was short in the head. I consider that extreme. Is it not
extreme pain to suffer from starvation, from dislocation and being one
of the 52 million refugees looking for a safe place to live? Is it
not extreme cold for the homeless right here in many North American
cities?
Satirists are doing the world a service by using their pens to draw
not what the eye sees on paper but drawing our attention to serious
issues affecting all of us, sometimes far away and sometimes in our
backyard, and provoking us in extremis because otherwise we, as human
beings, would not react in a manner that would move us to act on these
issues. The satirists who depict religious figures do so in the
extreme because religion fails, time and again, to be self-critical.
Any religion that tolerates any form of murder, for any reason
whatsoever, needs to be self-critical and do whatever needs to be done
to re-interpret their "sacred" texts to completely obliterate any
interpretation of a "sacred" text that can even hint at condoning
murder. Texts are sacred when the truth they advocate is for the
betterment of our world and for the betterment of humanity. No
culture is sacred. No religious culture is sacred. The sacred reality
we must uphold and never stop defending is the dignity of each human
being. Our dignity is our extreme expression of who we are as human
beings. The massacre in Paris tries to deny our need to look
ourselves in the mirror and recognize ourselves for who we really are.
http://www.themetropolitain.ca/articles/view/1489
Jan 8 2015
Je Suis Charlie
By Father John Walsh on January 8, 2015
The world must stand up for freedom, freedom of expression; freedom,
pure and simple! History has proven that the denial of freedom is the
greatest obstacle to our development as human beings. The greatest
freedom we have is to seek the truth. Truth will make you free. What
is the truth about Je Suis Charlie?
Although we seek truth that is absolute and therefore self-evident,
truth is not absolute, it is relative to the events and circumstances
in which we seek the truth. It is not situational but must be
situated in the time and space in which truth is sought after. In the
case of Charlie Hebdo, people use their pens as satirists and draw
cartoons lampooning people and events in depictions that may be
considered extreme to wake people up who otherwise would be very
content to live with the status quo.
The truth is that world-wide humanity is complacent and unmoved by the
most extreme horrors humanity can imagine. We remained silent in the
face of the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian Holocaust, the genocide in
Rwanda, and we remained silent about the need to educate girls until
Malala was short in the head. I consider that extreme. Is it not
extreme pain to suffer from starvation, from dislocation and being one
of the 52 million refugees looking for a safe place to live? Is it
not extreme cold for the homeless right here in many North American
cities?
Satirists are doing the world a service by using their pens to draw
not what the eye sees on paper but drawing our attention to serious
issues affecting all of us, sometimes far away and sometimes in our
backyard, and provoking us in extremis because otherwise we, as human
beings, would not react in a manner that would move us to act on these
issues. The satirists who depict religious figures do so in the
extreme because religion fails, time and again, to be self-critical.
Any religion that tolerates any form of murder, for any reason
whatsoever, needs to be self-critical and do whatever needs to be done
to re-interpret their "sacred" texts to completely obliterate any
interpretation of a "sacred" text that can even hint at condoning
murder. Texts are sacred when the truth they advocate is for the
betterment of our world and for the betterment of humanity. No
culture is sacred. No religious culture is sacred. The sacred reality
we must uphold and never stop defending is the dignity of each human
being. Our dignity is our extreme expression of who we are as human
beings. The massacre in Paris tries to deny our need to look
ourselves in the mirror and recognize ourselves for who we really are.
http://www.themetropolitain.ca/articles/view/1489