Rights Talk

Cardinal Francis Arinze seems to be suggesting that Christians should push for the censorship of The Da Vinci Code:

"Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and to forget," Arinze said in the documentary made by Rome film maker Mario Biasetti for Rome Reports, a Catholic film agency specializing in religious affairs.

"Sometimes it is our duty to do something practical. So it is not I who will tell all Christians what to do but some know legal means which can be taken in order to get the other person to respect the rights of others," Arinze said.

"This is one of the fundamental human rights: that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected," he said, without elaborating on what legal means he had in mind.

We're suffering from a serious case of rights-inflation, in my view, if we're going to stake out a legally cognizable right to have the substance of our religious beliefs respected by others.  Ilya Somin calls this an example of "censorship envy."

Rob