Friday, August 10, 2012

Archbishop says paper is holding Catholicism up to ridicule

The Age newspaper was holding Catholicism up to ridicule in an article published in the paper yesterday, Archbishop Denis Hart, of the Archdiocese of Melbourne, said in a statement.

The article, headlined "Every flock needs a shepherd", reports that at a Mass conducted by a group called Inclusive Catholics, the Blessed Sacrament was given to a dog.

Archbishop Hart said: “anyone who would feed the Eucharist to a dog is an abomination.”

In a letter to the editor of The Age yesteerday, the Archbishop said “Your article is in bad faith. It is the most fundamental and defining belief of Catholics that what you call ‘the consecrated bread and wine’ is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

“That you should choose to report the matter in the way that you did can only be understood as an attempt to hold Catholicism up to ridicule. Your integrity in this matter can be judged by asking whether, if something sacred to Judaism or Islam had similarly been desecrated, you would have treated the matter with such flippancy.”