It's more serious than I think you have cared to credit the matter, and the two sides are hardly equal in their irrationality - false equivalence, again.

As for the Vatican, I believe more firmly in the separation of church and state and in freedom of speech. I wouldn't care to have an effective legal restriction that says people cannot ridicule the Pope or rabbis or Muhammad or Jesus. If people's faith is not strong enough to suffer a cartoonist's derision, than it doesn't sound like much of a faith to me - no excuse for that violence reaction and energy, which is worse than childish.