Keeping Company

I hope that the Director of Durham's Centre for Catholic Studies (in no sense an institutional manifestation of the Catholic Church) is very pleased with the company that he is keeping in his remarks about the Holy Father as quoted at length on the front page of The Northern Cross, lining him up with the very high-octane and highly organised media campaign, especially in The Times, for an assassination during the State Visit. Yes, I hope that he is very, very proud indeed.

And I hope that the Editor of The Northern Cross is very pleased with the action now being taken by that same criminal element to cover his back in response to this blog's call for complaint against, in the latest of a long line of offences, his coverage of that Director's disgraceful outburst. That Editor finds himself blessed with such support because of his new best friends' ongoing wider campaign to ensure that in 2015 what will be this new parliamentary seat containing major centres both of Recusant and of ancestrally Irish Catholicism, containing a large Polish community, and containing Ushaw College, is seamlessly handed over to a supporter of abortion up to partial birth, of assisted suicide, of the criminalisation of the all-male Priesthood (enacted by all three parties at the end of the last Parliament, so already the law of the land), of the criminalisation of the definition of marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman (likewise), of wars and weapons wholly at variance with Catholic Teaching, and of the ongoing genocide of Catholics and other Christians in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, but an enemy of Catholic schools, of Christian RE and collective worship in state schools, and of chaplains in hospitals, prisons, the Armed Forces, and so on. Yes, I hope that he is very, very proud indeed.

Between them, these two - that Director and that Editor - had already deprived this Diocese of the generally expected visit of the Holy Father to Durham next month. The continued distribution of The Northern Cross on church premises is utterly, utterly baffling. Is it only because not enough people complain? Or is it only for the lack of an alternative?