On Hair Shirts and Journalists

Coleridge's famous "willing suspension of disbelief" comes to mind when thinking of journalists and some Catholic apologists (including Bishops), only here the more appropriate expression would be "willing suspension of intelligence", which faculty I assume them in some measure to possess.

W.H.Auden, a versifier for whom I have nothing but contempt, in his "Letter to Lord Byron", wrote, referring to the average poet, but his words could better be applied to the average journalist:

A slick and easy generalisation
Appeals too well to his imagination.

Most published stuff about the Catholic Church, whether in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, or on the internet, by its ignorance and lack of basic understanding of what it is talking about, produces, in me at least, such a state of nauseous rage, subsiding into helpless boredom,  erupting into by massive uncharity and Inquisitorial fantasising,  that I regard it as spiritually dangerous. 

If I comment on your blog, I don't mean you.

I used to follow about one hundred blogs, now about 30. I have no objection to egoism: we should all love ourself just a little, but egotism is another matter. Tell us all you like about your televised interviews with the fatuous and ill-informed, but expect to impress only the fatuous and ill-informed. Drop names and, if they are of interesting or good people, I will read on. Famous nobodies, however elegant, smooth, rich, or sartorially overpowering, are not interesting. Disagree with the Pope if your fully informed conscience so directs, and an important matter of principle is involved, but do not misrepresent what he has said or written. Knowingly to do so deserves the millstone.

Tell the truth, if you can. If you don't know what it is, shut up!

I see no point in wasting time on what makes us uncomfortable and at the same time leads us into confusion and sin.

The Press? Better a hair shirt.

Can they still be bought?

Euthanasia in the U.K. as no doubt you had guessed

A Brief Encounter has a frightening post today about the "Liverpool Care Pathway". It is well worth reading, and then following the link to the Daily Telegraph report.

It seems that medical practitioners, nurses, whoever, are deciding who should die, when, and how.

How long before the Lifetime Options Directorate becomes a reality?

A pox on't! Clifford Longley fears that the illegalisation of abortion could endanger democracy

H/T for picture to John Smeaton

So the Olympian mind of brain-and-a-half Clifford Longley fears that the illegalisation of abortion could endanger respect for democracy and the rule of law. As he writes, with Cruddas, MP in mind:

Would it not be reasonable for Catholic MPs to want to take into account the damage to respect for democracy and the rule of law that would follow if the criminalisation of all abortion had somehow been forced through Parliament in defiance of public opinion?

If democracy was perfect, and a wise electorate elected a good government, it would, even so, not be worth the life of one innocent unborn child.

An imperfect political system that has delivered abortion, Thatcherism, Blairism, Homosexualism, poltroons like Crossland, education ministers like Shirley Williams, and the ruin of state education is not worth the life of a maggot.

A pox on't!