It's Iimi! The Battle of C.S. Lewis' Bridge!

 When Ms. Celarent decided to open class discussions on the issues of book bans and the accusations of censorship, she asked Iimi if she had any thoughts that went against conventional wisdom. When she did so, she never imagined she would be opening up a Socratic Dialogue and that the class would soon be in the midst of… The Battle of C.S. Lewis' Bridge!

Pre-Comic Notes:

CS Lewis' Bridge was first introduced in Issue 97 and explained to Lilavati in Issue 129 if you want to review the concept in other contexts. 

Post-Comic Notes:

The background on the cover is done with AI.

The news stories Anne references can be found HERE and HERE. Whether they ultimately affect Eris Street High in the comic will depend on what happens in the real world.

Some of my Catholic readers might be surprised—even shocked—by my position on the Mortara case. But as I pointed out in the comic, the case involved the laws of the Papal States in the 1850s. There was no doctrine requiring other Catholic countries to do the same. While I don't doubt Pius IX thought he was morally obligated to do this, we are not obliged to defend him for his actions. It was not a teaching of the ordinary or extraordinary magisterium.

For my non-Catholic readers, the main reason there was a debate on the topic is that we believe baptism leaves an indelible mark on the soul. So, the question was: What do we do with a baptized child with parents who will (obviously) not raise the child as Catholic? Pius IX had decided that removing the child from its parents was the only choice. But I believe that with the deeper understanding and development of doctrine on religious freedom and the rights of the family, his decision in 1858 would not have been made today.