Saturday, May 16, 2009

Thanks for the link, Damian!

Damian Thompson does us the favour of linking to our story 'Bread Worship in Cumbria' about the bizarre letter in The Tablet purporting to describe a spontaneous lay eucharistic celebration in a Catholic parish church. The Tablet has issued another 'clarificatioin' in its letters page:

"A letter from Michelle Street entitled 'Act of memory' was published in the Tablet on 11 April. It described a moment in a church where parishioners took over the celebration of the Eucharist when the priest was unable to attend to celebrate Mass. This letter caused great interest, as well as consternation, among some readers. We published the letter in good faith, but it has since emerged after lengthy enquiries that the address in Grasmere, Cumbria, given on the letter does not exist, which causes us to be concerned that the letter might not have been genuine. We therefore apologise to readers and assure them that there will be even greater vigilance in future to establish that correspondence is authentic."

We were just about to post on this when Damian T. beat us to it, linking to us too - which is particularly gentlemanly since, he says, we are 'not fans of mine or this blog, I should add'. It is of course worth linking to CAUK for the 'full story' because we are the only publicly accessible place on the internet which has the full text of the original letter: you have to be a Tablet subscriber to see it on their website.

It's true that we've criticised Damian Thompson on occasion, but we've also given him credit where it is due. Perhaps Damian, like many people who post comments on this blog, can't understand how anyone in the blogosphere should have a good word for someone when they do something good, and criticism when the same person does something bad. Our approach seems obvious to us but it seems that almost no provocation would get Catholic Truth to say something nice about the bishops, or the Hermeneutic of Continuity to recognise when Joanna Bogle had made a mistake. That's the Punch and Judy nature of the medium, perhaps.

No comments:

Pope Leo XIII's Prayer to St Michael

Holy Michael, Archangel, defend us in the day of battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust down to Hell Satan, and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen