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Wednesday 26 February 2014

Harriet Harman: The Herald fails again

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

On Tuesday, February 25, in response to an article in the Herald (same date) I sent in the Letter to the Editor copied below.

Dear Sir

In 1997, Peter Tatchell wrote, in part, to the editor of another newspaper: “While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.” (Guardian, June 26, 1997)

This echoed what Dr Edward Brongersma, a Dutch politician and academic wrote in the The Magpie, the Mag(azine) of the P(aedophile) I(nformation) E(xchange) in the late 1970s: “A sexual relationship between a child and an adult does not harm the child and may be even beneficial providing that the adult partner is considerate, loving and affectionate.”

The Paedophile Information Exchange had been affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberty from 1975. That affiliation was not terminated until eight years later when it had become an embarrassment.

In 1976, the NCCL filed a submission to a parliamentary committee considering a proposed Protection of Children Bill — proposed over  concerns related to child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children  — claiming that the Bill would lead to ‘damaging and absurd prosecutions’. Then echoing their good Dr Brongersma and presaging their good friend — then as now — Tatchell, it stated: “Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage. The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage.’

Harriet Harman, who had been employed as a solicitor by Brent Law Centre since 1974, and therefore must have been fully aware of all that the NCCL was up to, was appointed the NCCL Legal Officer in 1978. Her husband, Jack Dromey, Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, sat on its executive 1970-79.

Can either point to anything they did, said or wrote at that time that distanced themselves from these disgusting positions? A letter of resignation for example?

Yours etc

Today (Wednesday, February 26) they found it fitting to find room for letters on: food banks (one); litter (two); Coronation Street (one); phoning BT (one); Giraltar football (one), and; Mauchline and curling (one). I cannot and do not complain about the five published all much longer than mine relating to Scottish politics and flying visits by UK and Scottish cabinets to Aberdeen. But a topic which this morning has seen several other newspapers take up or continue the story, and The Times of London devote an editorial to it, is not deemed worthy of (less expensive) comment by The Herald? Surpassing strange. Bearing in mind that on the last occasion I submitted a Letter to the Editor which they saw fit to publish, they also saw fit to delete a very telling point against the homosexualist lobby  homosexuals fell outwith the ambit of the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, and thus had no part in the Final Solution and their attendance at Holocaust Memorials was an affront to common decency; they were not marked out for extermination and were sentenced to hard labour and NOT the gas chambers; and, yes, many did die of starvation, untreated illness, other neglect and by murder at the hands of their gaolers, and quite possibly other prisoners but the numbers involved were more likely to be in the hundreds and not the thousands, let alone many thousands (I did not go into it to this length)  I am left to wonder whether The Herald is in hock to that lobby?


First Franciscan Consistory

Some interesting assignments of churches

Two assignments have a Scottish connection.

Cardinal Nichols is not expected to visit the Barras any time soon despite having been assigned as his titular church Santissimo Redentore e Sant’ Alfonso in via Merulana, the Redemptorist church in Rome dedicated to their founder. Neo-Gothic in design, that design was authored in the early 1850s by a Scot, George Wigley, the building being erected between 1855 and 1860. Wigley is often mistakenly identified as English because he was one of the thirteen founders of the Society of Saint Vincent DePaul in London in or about 1844 after he had written, at his friend Frederick Ozanam’s suggestion, some letters to The Tablet, then still a Catholic publication, about the organisation newly formed at Paris. (For non-Scottish readers, the Barras,a major mixed street/indoor market in the East End of Glasgow, is located in the parish of St Alphonsus. Many Catholic visitors to one of a Sunday take the opportunity to visit the other.)

The Korean Cardinal, Andrew Yeom Soo-jung (70, South Korea), was assigned the church of San Crisogono (the martyr Chrysogonus). This was the titular church of Gioacchino Pecci, Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903). This Pope Leo’s first formal act on the first working day following his coronation (Monday, March 4, 1878) was to sign Ex supremo Apostolatus apice, the Apostolic Letter by which the Episcopal Hierarchy in Scotland was restored. A further Scottish interest derives from the fact that Archbishop Leo Cushley’s first boss when he was missioned to Burundi was Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig (67, Swiss). He was later Apostolic Nuncio to South Korea, and Mongolia, 2004-08.

San Crisogono had earlier been the titular church of Camillo Borghese, Pope Paul V (1605-21). This particular Borghese Pope is admired in some quarters for purportedly having put out a contract on the life of a canon lawyer who had seriously discomfited him, Fr Paolo Sarpi, and, in others, for having founded “il Banco di Santo Spiritu” (The Bank of the Holy Sprit). This was the first national bank in Europe (being the bank of the Papal States) and the first bank in Rome in which the general public could lodge funds (and receive loans from). (The Vatican only lost control of the bank when it was nationalised by Mussolini’s Fascist government in 1935).

The photograph below of the Korean Bishops and His Excellency Archbishop Tscherrig was taken in St Peter’s Basilica on the morning of Monday, November 26, 2007. The second consistory of Pope Benedict’s pontificate had been held on the Saturday before. The Korean bishops were on their ad limina pilgrimage. I believe Cardinal Yeom Soo-yung is third from the right (the second prelate on the right).



Before the consistory, there were 157 titular churches in Rome and 13 of them had no cardinal protector. However, 16 of the new cardinals were being assigned to the order of Cardinals Priest (the presbyteral order of cardinals). In consequence, three of the new cardinals were assigned new titular churches established on the day (February 22, 2014) especially for this consistory: Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin (59), Santi Simone e Giuda Taddeo a Torre Angela (Saints Simon and Jude Thaddeus); Chibly Langlois, Bishop of Les Cayes, Haiti, San Giacomo in Augusta, and; Fernando SebastiĆ”n Aguilar (84, Spain), Sant’ Angela Merici.

One of Pope Francis’s first acts as Pope was to appoint his former Auxiliary Bishop (2002-08) Mario Aurelio Poli (66) to succeed himself as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He has now also assigned him his own former titular church, San Roberto Bellarmino.

Philippe Nakellentuba OuĆ©draogo (69, Burkino Faso) was assigned Santa Maria Consolatrice al Tiburtino, which had been Pope Benedict XVI’s titular church.