I would like to clarify some comments in your article The Editor Strikes Back (rabble.ca, June 3) about the Constable cartoon controversy.

First, let me say neither I nor the Catholic Civil Rights League told anyone to write to rabble.ca about the cartoon. I’ve been known to encourage our members to write to MLAs and MPs about the issues of the day, but magazines and e-zines usually generate enough reaction on their own. Also, the headline “Canadian Government Caught Funding Anti-Catholic Website Bashing Pope Benedict” did not appear on our press release. Maybe it was in one of the newspapers that picked up the story.

We did invite Aileen Carroll to examine any funding relationship that may exist between CIDA, Alternatives, OneWorld and rabble.ca. This she has done, and she has stated that CIDA’s funding to Alternatives ended a few months ago for reasons unrelated to your website.

I don’t regret raising the question of funding. At the time the press release was written, your website suggested a degree of coziness among rabble.ca and those agencies that made an already distasteful cartoon even more objectionable. However, I do regret any impression that the absence of such funding makes the cartoon acceptable. In fact, it remains insulting to the Catholic Church and to the Pope, and is not exactly sensitive to those who suffered under the Nazis.

My opinions aside, neither artistic freedom nor freedom of speech should ever be interpreted to mean freedom from response. I get plenty of insulting mail and phone calls in response to our activities, press releases and articles, along with the messages of support. As you point out in your article, it can be unpleasant to wade through the venom, but if freedom of speech is important to us, we have to expect the bad with the good.

Executive Director
Catholic Civil Rights League