On Friday, the Observer carried an advertisement for OUTreach ND. In light of that I'm going to take the chance of saying something controversial about free speech and the need for a more open climate of free expression on this campus. Briefly, I claim that all of us, even the most conservative members of this community, should be committed to the free public expression of diverse convictions and the proliferation of groups espousing a variety of positions, even when such positions contradict the magesterium of the church.

Religious conservatives often associate such pluralistic sentiments with intellectual or moral relativism, as if the only reason to value pluralism is the belief that no one is in any significant sense right or wrong about anything. But I can think of at least two good reasons for even the most conservative Catholic to recognize the value of pluralism and the freedom of expression needed to sustain it.

The first is the truth of falliblism, the notion that human intellectual capacities are limited and that humans are prone to get many things wrong. The second is the important role disputes play in forcing us to correct and to better articulate our own convictions.

First, as fallible humans — even as fallible vehicles of revelation, many of our beliefs are false. We also have no way of knowing which ones are false. So we all go about our lives acting on our convictions, all the while realizing that some of the things we do will be based on false beliefs. This should not make us skeptical about our beliefs, but it should make us a bit more tolerant of those who believe differently.

Tolerance doesn't require us to abandon our own convictions or to become relativists. Unless we lose sight of our human frailty, we should find ourselves with two sets of commitments, a commitment to our beliefs on the one hand, and a commitment to tolerance on the other, stemming from the recognition that as humans we often get things wrong (even when we feel we have been divinely inspired to think as we do). There is nothing particularly post-modern or liberal about espousing tolerance. The attitude follows from intellectual humility, a traditional Catholic virtue.

Secondly, arguing about our beliefs is the way in which we correct our mistakes and improve the clarity and definition of our beliefs. Cardinal Newman argued that heresy has long been the prime mover in articulating doctrine. No one knew we needed to specify whether the Son was begotten or made until someone stepped forward and started saying quite definitely that he was made. Such challenges not only force us to defend our beliefs, but they also force us to specify exactly what those beliefs are. Doctrine exists only against a background of lively debate and dissent and lively debate and dissent exists only in communities where dissenting voices are allowed to organize and have a public face.

Convictions are not formed and honed in the mind, rather they are worked out through trying to live according to them, and by and large we work out our convictions in the day to day interaction with others going through the same process. Tolerating opposing views means allowing groups like OUTreach to function, and that means at the very least allowing them some access to campus media to enable them to say something about who they are and what they are trying to do here.

To allow OUTreach Notre Dame to advertise is not to condone homosexuality. It only shows due tolerance for a group that comprises many members who in fact disagree with the church's teaching. It also shows a willingness to engage in a debate over church doctrine, in the good faith that such a debate might help even the most ardent advocate of the magisterium to improve his understanding of sexuality and sexual morality.

This community should thank Michelle Krupa and the editorial staff of the Observer for having the courage to take a small step in the right direction by running the OUTreach ad Friday. The administration's policy of ripping down posters and banning ads is inconsistent with the intellectual aspirations of this institution as a university. Anything that helps to promote a plurality of voices on this campus improves the intellectual climate of the place. That's something we should all appreciate.

Tim Byrne is a member of the PSA and of OUTreach ND. The PSA column is run every other Tuesday.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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