independent newspapers anti catholic pogrom

The Independent Newspapers campaign of destruction against the Catholic church continued on Tuesday.

The Irish Independent has staked its nadirous reputation on bringing down a group of targeted Bishops.

Copious inuendos relating to the Irish Bishops meeting with the Pope in Rome filled four full pages of the loss making Daily this morning.

Inuendo.

Not coverage.

Not reporting.

Just inuendo.

They should rename The Irish Independent, The Irish Inuendo.

The name doesn't quite capture their venom and malignancy.

But it says something.

The reports in question featured paraphrased accounts from John Cooney of a sermon by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The reports are oddly dissonant with the accounts of the same sermon in the equally anti Catholic Irish Times.

Why it's almost like they were listening to two different sermons.

I wonder who was lying, John Cooney of the Irish Independent or Patsy MacGarry of the Irish Times.

Or perhaps both of them.

Sometimes we hear what we want to hear, eh lads.

And lo.

The Irish Independent had finally obtained a picture of Bishop Martin Drennan, the heroic and courageous man they have been trying to hound from office.

Yesterday's edition was full of photographs of sad looking Bishops with headlines intended to mislead the public into thinking these really were pictures of Bishop Drennan.

Today they finally had one.

It was an innocuous photograph of Bishop Drennan kissing the Pope's ring.

The Irish Independent published it on the cover.

Inside the paper, John Cooney wrote a long article analysing the body language of the Pope and Bishop Drennan.

John Cooney's article is a typically jeering piece of agit prop.

As well as being totally untrue.

I know the Irish Independent won't mind me publishing part of it, as Irish Independent hacks and editors have been ripping off my work for years.

Ripping me off with gay abandon.

We might think immediately of ersatz journo Ian O'Doherty's attempt at a humour column, or of the lifting of my headline from the Leinster Leader about a sports victory "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," or even of Olaf Tyrannsen's more recent mawkish imitations of my humorous writings, or even of the facsimiles of my financial column Layman Finance which the Irish Independent ran a few years ago under the title Freeman Finance.

Ah we were younger men then.

This is what John Cooney wrote on Tuesday about the photo of the Pope with Bishop Drennan:

"The body language of Pope Benedict when he finally came face to face with the Bishop of Galway Doctor Martin Drennan, does not augur well for the former Bible scholar named in the Murphy report. The habitually aloof Bishop Drennan is eagerly stooping forward to greet the head of the Catholic Church, who has the sole power to remove him from office. Note too how the usually formal Bishop was offering the Pontiff not a steady handshake. His gesture is not really a handshake at all. It is more like a quick grasping greeting worthy of a Dail politician. But look at the even more significant sign if a less than cordial welcome from the Holy Father. Pope Benedict's frosty stare and searching eyes are those of a boss weighing Drennan up."

So John Cooney dribbles on.

It's all drivel.

Schoolboy drivel.

But full of hate nonetheless.

Full of hate for a Bishop who committed the capital crime of not resigning when John Cooney wrongly, malignly, crassly and disgustingly, tried to compel him to do so by pillorying him in a national newspaper.

A national newspaper.

The Irish Independent.

It's getting less national by the second.

A collapsing readership.

And around one and a half billion in debt as far as I remember.

Going bye byes.

Sinking giggling beneath the waves.

And they want to bring a few Bishops down with them.

It's their last hurrah.

So John Cooney gives us the benefit once more of his skills in the Olympic sport of synchronised sneering.

The photo of the Pope and Bishop Drennan is genuinely innocuous folks.

There's nothing strange about the way Bishop Drennan greeted him or about the way the Pope responded.

John Cooney, who styles himself a religious correspondent, should surely know that many Bishops greet the Pope by kissing his ring.

The Pope rarely bursts into applause when they arrive.

Everything John Cooney wrote about the image was a lie.

A lie couched in speculative inuendo.

A lie designed to malign a decent man.

A lie with no purpose other than destruction.

You've got to hand it to John Cooney.

At least he's consistent.

But not for very much longer.