READ PROPERLY, ANOTHER WOULD NOT BE MAKING THESE ILLUSORY:

Religion. The press. Twin pillars of a free society. Each an affirmation of personal liberty and an assertion of individual and institutional autonomy, the two were woven together from almost the very beginning of our republic and tied in a circle of sadness here this week.

For it has been true from the start of this country, and apparent to us as journalists from the start of this week of remorse and remembrance, that the freedom to worship and the freedom to think, write and publish are inextricably linked in a way none of us considered before, in a way our neighbors and fellow countrymen very likely never considered before.

But the relationship is intimate, and it is indispensable.

"Those focal points of personal and communal allegiance are vital platforms for speaking truth to power and for affirming the reality of truths not subject to state manipulation," said Lawrence H. Tribe, the Harvard Law professor regarded as one of the leading authorities on constitutional law. "That's why every tyrannical regime begins by crushing both the independent press and independent religious bodies -- and by replacing the truth as perceived and pronounced by honest journalists and incorruptible clergy with an official orthodoxy."

Moments after I discussed this notion with Tribe, I sat with a gaggle of rabbis, grim-faced mourners in the brightly lit environs of the Milky Way kosher restaurant on Murray Avenue in the heart of Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill. They were here for the funerals, some from great distance, and it struck them that the connection was not a nuance but a fundamental feature of our national character.

"They're related, for sure, and they are at the core of the founding of the United States," said Rabbi Barry Gelman of the United Orthodox Synagogue in Houston. "If either of them is endangered, we are tearing at the fabric of what America is."

His dining companion, Rabbi Adam Scheier of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmount, Quebec, Canada, chimed in:

"They're both efforts to try to make sense of the world -- the press with that which is obvious and confusing at the same time, and religion, which renders what we don't perceive but believe exists."

The First Amendment speaks of the responsibility of speaking truth to power, and of using the power of truth for the betterment of society. They are sacred responsibilities leading to sacred acts.

But there is a third element to the First Amendment, the right of the people to assemble peaceably.

That was expressed with eloquence as well in Pittsburgh this week, in vigils across the city.

Of all the poignant and potent messages, this one, expressed at one of those vigils by another man of the cloth, the Rev. Glenn Grayson, pastor of the Wesley Center AME Zion Church, seemed to speak to the moment with unusual power:

"A tragedy for Squirrel Hill is a tragedy for the Hill," he said of the historically black Hill District. "It's a tragedy for the whole city."

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