`Free speech' limited
Peter Zavodnyik
class of '92
Paul Schofield in a letter yesterday entitled, "Knights misunderstand free speech," attacks the criticisms of the Knights of Columbus and claims they do not understand free speech.
May I suggest that it is Schofield — along with much of the rest of the country — who does not understand the term "free speech." Although it is slowly being converted into a cultural term for the notion that we may publicize any conduct we like, the term originates in the First Amendment.
It is at origin a legal term with a precise meaning. For 170 years following the ratification of the Constitution, the term applied only to political, or in a few cases commercial speech. As late as 1956, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan acknowledged that it did not apply to popular entertainment.
Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court has made the arbitrary decision to expand the scope of the First Amendment to provide for complete freedom of expression. The expansion of the scope of the First Amendment in such a profound way should have been done via amendment, not by judicial fiat.
Perhaps the more important issue though is whether all ideas, no matter how destructive, need to be considered. They do not. By that logic we ought to watch murders and rapes in order to fully understand why they are wrong (or study racist theories such as eugenics). The role of the Catholic university is not to expose students to all viewpoints. Instead it is to help students find the truth. Catholic schools, after all, have a mission not completely unrelated to that of the Catholic Church: to help people achieve salvation. They cannot do that job while encouraging people to engage in conduct in direct conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Schofield points to Galileo as an example of an incident in which the Catholic Church has previously erred. Galileo represented a tangible advance in scientific knowledge; the act noted in Schofield's letter appears to be little more than an exercise in depravity.
Admittedly the Church erred in attempting to keep people from reading "The Catcher In the Rye." However, the past mistakes of the Church do not relieve Catholic institutions of the right to bar messages that not only conflict with their view of life but actually threaten the very students whom it seeks to assist.
In sum, Catholic schools ought to feel free — and in fact obligated — to bar carnival acts such as the one described in Schofield's letter. Such acts do not help students seek out truth. Catholic schools like Saint Mary's and Notre Dame ought to be more forthright in stating that they will expose students only to paths that lead them to understand themselves, their world and their maker. If students want to be taken to the carnival, they can go somewhere else.
I suppose Notre Dame has no one to blame but itself, because instead of proudly advertising itself as Catholic university where the ravings of the lost are ignored, it seems to think, as a "national Catholic research university" that it must go along with the popular trend in higher education — expose everyone to everything, no matter how confused, stupid or destructive.
Peter Zavodnyik
class of '92
Chicago
Feb. 21, 2002
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, February 22, 2002
