We can agree that Fr David Muscat’s now infamous Facebook post – saying that homosexual desire is worse than diabolical possession – was disgraceful. But was it inciting violence or hatred? That’s what the police must show when they formally charge him with the crime of hate speech. The archbishop’s decision to issue Muscat with a formal warning is graver than it might look. If your personal identity is entwined with the priesthood, the threat that you could be stopped from publicly exercising your priestly functions is existential. It’s a spiritual vasectomy. Muscat has not been sanctioned for stoutly preaching what the Church’s catechism says but for flagrantly ignoring it. The catechism does reiterate Church tradition that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” – as Muscat correctly insists – but it also enjoins that homosexual people must be treated with “respect, compassion and sensitivity”. No matter how you parse Muscat’s words and intentions, they fall gravely short of that. But do they amount to incitement? Are they words a secular liberal society should send a crackpot priest to prison for? Because that’s what we’re talking about if we think he’s guilty of...