Archd. of Westminster checks The Bitter Pill

From Damian Thompson:

The Tablet [The Bitter Pill or… considering their complacency about certain issues, perhaps RU-486] has been sternly corrected by Bishop Alan Hopes, auxiliary of Westminster diocese, for an  editorial a couple of weeks ago in which it suggested that Archbishop Vincent Nichols was trying to control supporters of the traditional Latin Mass in order to relegate them to a “necessarily marginal” place.

As Will Heaven said at the time, [as I said at the time] the Tablet grossly misrepresented the Archbishop’s message to a training conference for priests learning to say the older form of the Roman Rite. And now Bishop Hopes has responded on his boss’s behalf, in a letter published in this week’s issue. He writes:

    [The Archbishop] is not ‘seeking to nip potential schism in the bud’ or suggesting that the place of the Tridentine Rite is ‘necessarily marginal’ …

And, regarding the Tablet’s implication that the Archbishop shares its view that worshippers at the older Mass do not participate:

    … ‘active participation’ has always been understood to be internal and external. To reduce participation to solely external signs is both a simplification and a misguided attack in the ‘culture wars’ you seek to avoid.”

It’s no secret that the Tablet didn’t want Vincent Nichols to become Archbishop of Westminster. Now that he’s got the job, it’s continuing to pick fights and play juvenile tricks on him. Way to go, Ma.

I wrote at the time:

Given the scurrilous treatment by The Tablet used Archbp. Nichols, I should think he would want to open up questions about that once worthy publication at the Bishops’ Conference meetings.  Should The Tablet really have such an artificially inflated circulation if the editors are set to pit the new Archbishop against Pope Benedict?

 

Folks… let this be your constant question.

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7 Comments

  1. Thomas G. says:

    A much-needed correction, indeed, but I’m also looking for a correction to the recent Tablet editorial that chided the U.S. Bishops for not supporting Obama’s health care reform due to their concern over “a specifically Catholic issue”, i.e., abortion.

    This is a studied misrepresentation of the reason for Church opposition to abortion and cries out for rebuke. When is it coming (or have I missed it)?

  2. bruno says:

    Surely the Tablet has lost its position of reflecting the faith of the people of England and beyond. It comes across to me much like those mindless papers that one can read while waiting in the line at the supermarket. Perhaps this would be the best point of sale for it.

  3. RichR says:

    Kudos to Bishop Hopes!

  4. Hidden One says:

    I wonder if Bp. Hopes would end up with, in essence, a column in the Tablet if he wrote in every time the Tablet send something particularly liken-able to excrement.

  5. TJM says:

    Probably time for either a new editorial board or shut it down. I am happy that Bishop Hopes took those left-wing loons to task. Tom

  6. Ed the Roman says:

    Is actuosa “active” or “actual”?

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