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Spanish Artist Faces Prison For Insulting The Catholic Faith

We have previously discussed the trend in the West toward an international blasphemy standard and prosecutions for insulting religion (here, and here, and here and here and here and here and here and and here and here and here and here). Now, one of Spain’s best known underground artists is facing a year in jail for a 54-second film that he did in 1978 that a Catholic group charges is insulting to them and their faith. Javier Krahe’s “how to cook Jesus Christ” was a brief satire based on a cooking show.


The Catholic legal association, the Centro Juridico Tomas Moro, has demanded that the artist be sent to prison for the crime of “offending religious feelings” with the brief movie.

Krahe is the ultimate example of a social critic targeted for his free speech and beliefs. Krahe has spent his life exposing the crimes and hypocrisy of the establishment. Now he could be jailed for a film that he did 34 year ago.

The West has steadily yielded to the demands of religious groups that free speech must be curtailed in the name of faith. At the same time, West governmental and religious leaders have denounced agnostics and atheists as one of the greatest threat facing the West (here and here and here and here). President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been facilitating this trend by working with Muslim nations to develop an international standard allowing for the prosecution of those who insult religion. The Administration has drawn a dangerous line with Muslim countries in first supporting the concept of an international blasphemy standard. As I have mentioned before, the efforts of the Obama Administration to work with countries like Egypt on an international blasphemy standard is a threat to free speech around the world. After first supporting an international blasphemy standard, the Administration sought to get Egypt and other countries to adopt the Brandenburg standard as the basis for such prosecutions. These cases show the mentality of countries pushing for a “balance” between free speech and religion. It also shows why the use of the Brandenburg standard is so dangerous in the hands of such officials who view free speech as the cause of imminent violence. Because any joke or image of the Prophet can trigger violence, the standard is immediately satisfied in countries like Egypt, which can then claim some legal legitimacy under the standard created with the United States.

The prosecution of Krahe represent one of the most serious attacks on free speech this year. Spain has always been a country divided between the powers of orthodoxy and free speech — a division shown most vividly and tragically during regime of Franco. The Church was accused of being a key ally to Franco and an enabler of the abuses that occurred during his reign. Now a leading Catholic organization wants to use the state to punish those who insult its faith as a criminal act. The free speech community needs to organize internationally against the renewed blasphemy prosecutions worldwide. Free speech is the ultimate protection — not the threat — to free exercise. Free speech is often being denied in the name of tolerance and pluralism through hate speech and discrimination laws. Spain is one of those countries that puts aside such niceties and enforces a crime of insulting religion or blasphemy.

Ironically, Krahe has spent his life using his art to try to educate people of the dangers and hypocrisy of the establishment and orthodoxy. His own trial may now serve that purpose. The artist has become his art — a tragic irony to say the least.

Source: Independent

38 thoughts on “Spanish Artist Faces Prison For Insulting The Catholic Faith”

  2. Pingback: United Nations Affirms the Human Right to Blaspheme | Politics | Religion Dispatches « sixpointnineme
  4. Pingback: what should be, what should not be, and condemning hypocrisy « power of language blog: partnering with reality by JR Fibonacci

  5. Jomo999: “How ironic that the Catholic Church which has turned a blind eye towrds its pedophiliac priests now is complaining about an artist insulting the Catholic Church”
    ***

    It’s good strategy, the best defense is a good offense.

  6. Turley blog blames Obama for Spanish Inquistiion! Vote for Willard. Whats good for General Motors is Good For the USA.

  7. How ironic that the Catholic Church which has turned a blind eye towrds its pedophiliac priests now is complaining about an artist insulting the Catholic Church. A religion which covers up the disgusting child abuse of its priests is beyond insult and is utterly without any redeeming social valueOne has to wonder whether the Catholic Church is as anxious to put its pedophile priests in jail

  8. raff!

    What would the good Benedictine nuns think?

    You’ll get sent to sit in the hall again if you’re not careful. 😉

  9. “Orthodox Catholicism, again, seems to have a crushing effect upon certain literary forms, especially the novel. During a period of three hundred years, how many people have been at once good novelists and good Catholics? The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.” — George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature

  10. From Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle:

    Oh a very sorry people, yes,
    Did I find here.
    They had no music
    And they had no beer.
    And, oh, everywhere
    Where they tried to perch
    Was owned by Castle Sugar, Incorporated,
    Or the Catholic Church

    The form of government was anarchy, save in limited situations wherein Castle Sugar wanted to own something or to get something done. In such situations the form of government was feudalism. The nobility was composed of Castle Sugar’s plantation bosses, who were heavily armed white men from the outside world. The knighthood was composed of big natives who, for small gifts and silly privileges, would kill or wound or torture on command. The spiritual needs of the people caught in this demoniacal squirrel cage were taken care of by a handful of butterball priests.

    Change “butterball” to “pedophile” and you’ve got … well … you know ….

  11. Give the Catholic Church an inch, and it will take a continent. Give it the right to ask one question of one free thinker, and you will get an inquisition. No one ever expects fascism until after they have gotten it. Better to put the beast down hard at the outset, before it can grow longer claws and teeth.

  12. What an artist! I’d love to create an art project that so pissed of TPTB that I’d be arrested. I have some great ideas but not the follow thru.

  13. he should have known better, but then again,no one expects “the spanish inquisition”.

  14. Thank you all for a very, VERY entertaining thread.

    It would be an good first step for all of the Spanish citizens that love free speech to show up at the offices at the Centro Juridico Tomas Moro each carrying signs with insults to the Church on them. Wouldn’t be a bad idea for a gathering in front of the Vatican Embassy in DC demanding that the Church release its records on complaints against pedo-priests to the appropriate local authorities throughout the world.

  16. Pingback: Spanish Artist Facing Prison For “Insulting” The Catholic Church

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