Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel is back to preaching and has issued a powerful new sermon in defense of free speech and the natural rights of man.
On April 28, Bishop Emmanuel made his first public appearance after being viciously attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. The bishop delivered a sermon in which he defended the right to freedom of speech as a fundamental human right and referred to the Australian government’s recent attempts to suppress the video of his stabbing on social media platforms such as X.
Bishop Emmanuel expressed dismay at attitudes that dismiss or outright attack freedom of speech, saying, “Every human being has the right to their freedom of speech and freedom of religion…and for us to say that free speech is dangerous, that free speech cannot be possible in a democratic country … I’m yet to fathom this.”
Bishop Emmanuel also lamented the state of the Western world and the increasing prevalence of a nihilistic viewpoint that fails to uphold universal moral truths or recognize basic human worth.
“I’ll say it again, the Western world has succeeded exceedingly in giving value to everything, but I’ll say this with utmost sadness in my heart, the Western world has failed miserably in giving purpose to everything, but until we find the purpose of the thing, we can never give it value… Human rights is human value,” Bishop Emmanuel argued.
The bishop contrasted this modern view with the attitudes of Australia’s forebears, who fought for human rights.
“I am very proud of these great ANZAC warriors who gave their life up to the very human rights, to the very freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” Bishop Emmanuel said. “They died to keep and preserve the human identity.”
In recent weeks, the bishop has been the center of a controversy between the Australian government and Elon Musk.
The head of Australia's eSafety commission, Julia Grant, issued an order on April 16 to X demanding that the platform take down the video of the stabbing of Bishop Emmanuel that had been proliferating on the platform.
The order even prohibited users outside of the country from viewing the content. X’s Global Government Affairs Team refused to ban the content for users outside Australia, saying that the order was unnecessarily broad and outside the legal authority of the Australian government.
Musk and X’s refusal to toe the line of the Australian government has attracted the criticism of numerous Australian politicians such as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
“By and large, people responded appropriately to the calls by the [eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant],” Albanese recently commented. “They stand, I think … I find it extraordinary that X chose not to comply and trying to argue their case.”
Australian Senator Jacqui Lambie even threatened Musk with prison time for not complying.
“Someone like that should be in jail, and the key be thrown away,” Lambie asserted. “That bloke should not have a right to be out there on his own ideology platform and creating hatred, you know, showing all this stuff out there to our kids and all the rest.”
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