From Gloria TV…
Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald announced (Twitter, July 4) that “the new owners” and he “do not agree on the future direction of the company.”
The Catholic Herald is owned by the British businessman Rocco Forte, a non-practicing Catholic, and German born Princess Michael of Kent. Both are very much part of the British establishment.
To explain his stance, Thompson pointed to his interview with Raymond Arroyo last week on EWTN [see video below] where he criticised the forthcoming Amazonian Synod and called to “cancel this wretched ‘synod’.“
Thompson will do weekly podcasts for The Spectator, where he is an assistant editor, and be “free to tell you what I really think”.
His “first tweet as a free man” criticized Francis concerning the new Viganò revelations,
“It’s now obvious that Pope Francis is deeply implicated in terrible scandals. My concern isn’t theological: it’s the spectacle of a corrupt pope, something I never expected to see in my lifetime.”
Comment:
The Catholic Herald is often described (to me, at least) as the most orthodox of the current crop of Catholic newspapers. In the above interview, Damian Thompson slices through the weakness of the UK Bishops in matters of pro-life and he is rightly outspoken about the forthcoming Amazon Synod of Bishops, offering concrete examples of major concern, not least the shocking justification of infanticide on “cultural” grounds by the author of the Synod’s working document, Austrian Bishop Erwin Kräutler. Damian Thompson calls for the Amazon Synod to be cancelled. Catholic Truth adds its voice to this call to cancel what is designed to cause huge scandal.
A major weakness in the interview, however, is Damian Thompson’s analysis of the Bishops of Scotland… He considers them, despite tending to be left wing… as, nevertheless, “in many ways, quite strong and fearless”. Oops! We’ve missed that! Must’ve been out for lunch that day!
I’ve emailed Raymond Arroyo to ask him not to seek the views of English commentators on our Bishops, because they do, invariably, think that the Scottish Bishops are sound; this is mostly because of their occasional pro-life statements. When commentators abroad paint this misleading picture of our Bishops, it undermines our efforts to fight the crisis in the Church here in Scotland. I mean, providing safe spaces for LGBT pupils in Catholic schools can hardly be classed as “strong and fearless” – can it?
Share your thoughts – are you still buying/reading the Catholic Herald. If so, when, on this earth, will you learn!
