There is an ongoing debate between free speech absolutists and what is commonly called the woke mob. One side sees unrestricted self-expression as the only safeguard against totalitarianism. The other sees in this unrestricted speech a licence to speak hatefully and to manipulate others into doing the same. For Catholics, this debate often feels like a lose-lose proposition.
There is a real danger that state power is being abused. In England, ordinary people such as Isabel Vaughan-Spruce have been arrested and charged for thought crimes. Canada’s House of Commons is now considering passing the Combatting Hate Act, which could see passages of Sacred Scripture classified as hate speech. These are not imagined concerns, and they explain why free speech absolutism can appear attractive. At the same time, it is equally clear that deviant individuals are weaponising speech to promote dangerous and antisocial ideas. It is not unreasonable to think that some power of the state should act as a restraint.
There is a growing tension that this debate consistently overlooks, particularly from a Catholic perspective. It is difficult to find a solution, but we can clarify the terms of the problem so that a more fruitful dialogue might begin.
It would serve us well to recover a fuller account of what freedom means in the Catholic vocabulary. Freedom is commonly understood today as the neutral capacity to choose one thing over another. On this view, the role of the state is simply to preserve individual freedom by promoting and protecting these supposedly sacrosanct choices. We must have all the options, and any limitation is taken to be an injustice.
Yet experience tells us otherwise. Man does not flourish among endless choices. This is not where freedom is exercised, but where it is often lost. The term “analysis paralysis” has been coined to describe the market phenomenon in which even simple decisions become a source of stress due to the sheer variety of options. What this reveals is that freedom requires more than choice. It requires an orientation.
St Augustine, writing in the fifth century, offers a markedly different account. For him, true freedom is not simply the ability to choose among alternatives, but the ability to be ordered toward the good. A man becomes free as he acquires virtue, because virtue orders him toward what is genuinely good. A coward is not free to act bravely. A compulsive liar is not free to speak the truth. It is irrelevant whether I choose Bach or Mozart; if I am untrained in music, I am not free to play either. Only virtue grants a man the freedom to choose well.
This account of freedom has direct implications for how we think about speech. As Catholics, we hold that powers exist for specific ends. Speech is no exception. Just as sight is ordered toward seeing the visible and hearing toward apprehending sound, so speech is ordered toward communicating what is knowable, namely the truth. Our speech exists for the sake of truth.
This is not to reduce truth to a collection of sterile facts. Speech is always personal as well as propositional. Indeed, for the Christian, truth is ultimately not an abstraction but a person. He who is Truth is what we communicate, however imperfectly. For this reason, truth can never be separated from charity. Christ himself warns us not only against uncharitable words, but even against careless speech (Mt 5:22; 12:36). Far from saying whatever we want, Christ demands that we be cautious, truthful, and considerate of our listeners. To speak truly is not merely to say what is correct, but to speak in a way ordered toward the good of the other.
At the same time, charity and mindfulness do not demand that everything we say be easy on the ear. In the season of Advent, the Church places before us the prophet Isaiah, who does not hesitate to name the wickedness of his own people. John the Baptist does the same, as does Our Lord when confronting the Pharisees. Charity, then, does not exclude criticism or contradiction. In certain circumstances, it positively demands them.
If this is so, then freedom of speech cannot be reduced to the right to say anything whatsoever. Nor can it be separated from its proper good, which is truth. Why are men free to speak? So that they might speak the truth to one another. As rational animals, we are set apart within creation by our capacity to apprehend truth and to communicate it. Speech exists to serve that end.
The question that remains is how the state ought to involve itself in this moral landscape. Since the state exists to protect individuals and their freedoms, it clearly has some role in safeguarding freedom of speech. Yet, as we have seen, speech is not simply for self-expression, but for the truth. The Catholic must therefore conclude that the state should help its people to speak in truth.
This becomes particularly difficult in a post-truth culture. Both the free speech absolutist and the woke activist tend to assume that language is nothing more than a tool for power. Each side interprets the speech of the other as a bad-faith attempt to dominate or manipulate. This is how I assume the Scottish government justifies arresting people like Rose Docherty for offering conversation outside an abortion facility. In such a climate, truth claims appear agenda-driven at best and tyrannical at worst.
Catholics, however, cannot fully embrace either posture. We cannot defend the right to say whatever we wish without reference to truth and charity. Nor can we surrender the regulation of speech entirely to a secular state that no longer shares a common morality. To do either would be to misunderstand what speech is for.
So where does this leave us? It leaves us, perhaps uncomfortably, between two reductions. If freedom is ordered toward the good, and speech toward the truth, then the central question is not merely what may be said, but what ought to be said, by whom, to whom, and for what end. This requires virtue, prudence, and moral formation certainly, but it also involves the rule of law.
I do not presume to resolve the political dimensions of this debate here, and perhaps they cannot be resolved in the abstract. What can be said is this: any Catholic engagement with questions of speech and freedom must begin not with power or rights, but with truth, charity, and the difficult task of speaking well in an age that no longer knows what speech is for. How that task is to be lived out, both personally and politically, remains an open question, and one that demands intentional dialogue and prayerful discernment.
