New York Times new President/CEO says Christianity is based on objective truth

Tomorrow, Mark Thompson takes over as the new President and CEO of The New York Times. Thompson is a practicing Catholic who believes "that the truths of the Christian faith are objective truths, rather than being entirely subjective."

The position is primarily focused on running the business aspects of the Times. Thompson turned the British Broadcasting Company into a global online media powerhouse, and the Times management feels that he could do the same here.

The New York Times Company announced on August 14th that Thompson would become its new President and CEO. Thompson left the position as director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation on Friday, September 14th. Times Company's chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., told analysts last month that Mr. Thompson "possesses high ethical standards, and is the ideal person to lead our company." However, questions about Thompson's ethics arose in October.

Soon after, Thompson left the BBC, a scandal broke out over how the British media enterprise had handled charges of pedophilia made against Jimmy Savile, one of its most famous show hosts in an earlier era. Thompson says that he did not know specifically how BBC news was handling the Savile scandal, though he was told that a program exposing Savile was shelved shortly before his media enterprise ran a celebratory program about Sevile. At the Times journalists say that they will ask Thompson if he did all he could to get to the bottom of the Savile affair. Did he live up to his Catholic ethics to protect the vulnerable? Or did he stick his head in the sand?

Thompson has also faced questions about his editorial sensibility in regard to religion reporting. In 2005 BBC aired a controversial program "Jerry "Springer: the Opera" which contains some satire against Christianity. Last spring, Thompson talked with Oxford University professor Timothy Garton Ash about the role of his Catholic faith in journalism. Below are some of the most interesting points and the full interview in the video provided by Ash's organization freespeechdebate.com.

“Almost all people who have religious belief are realists about the belief…They believe their faith refers to things that have an objective reality.”

“I am a practicing Catholic, and I would probably describe myself as a critical realist in religious matters but I’m a realist and I believe, as it were, that the truths of the Christian faith are objective truths, rather than being entirely subjective."

“Around the world, it would appear that, if anything, secularism is rather in a decline actually.

Because secularists privilege their beliefs on the public square, they often don’t understand the deep offensiveness of their ridicule of religious belief.

“One of the mistakes of secularists is not to understand the character of what blasphemy feels to some one who is a realist in their religious beliefs…For a Muslim a comic or demeaning depiction of the Prophet Mohammed might have the force, be the emotional force, of a piece of grotesque child pornography…Religion as it is lived is not simply about a kind of interplay of propositions , two plus two equals four versus two plus two equals five. It is a felt experience with a big emotional charge.”

How does a publisher, producer or editor decide whether to run an offensive characterization of someone else’s religion?

The decision is based upon “whether the level of offense that it is likely to cause is justified by the intended artistic expression involved…”

Would you treat Christian beliefs and Muslim beliefs the same way? BBC broadcast "Jerry Springer: the Opera" which contained several sideswipes against Christianity.

Muslims in a majority Christian country "may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against, and...they may well regard an attack on their religion as racism by other means". Thompson agreed with the statement that he "wouldn't dream of broadcasting something comparably satirical if it had been the Prophet Mohammed rather than Jesus."

He's a ringer in place for the coming assault on the Catholic Church when, like Henry VIII, King Barry takes the property of the Church and parcels it out to his nobles. There will plenty of non-Catholics cheering him on, too, so they'll have to learn the hard way again.

Again? Well, another lesson, even though very few have been honest enough to see the lesson of the last round of non-Catholics cheering on the government when it attacked Catholics. It was anti-Catholic folks spreading anti-Catholic propaganda who screwed up what amounted to a voucher system that was the most common way to provide public funds for education back in the 1870s. As a result, we now have exactly what the Catholic Bishops predicted we would get; secular public schools working to destroy Christianity.

Christians are under attack and putting a Catholic face on the current target and/or the pagans working for the government doesn't change the fact that all of Christianity is the target. People refuse to believe that, otherwise there would be more institutions bringing suit against the Federal government and a class action suit against the Federal government on the behalf of individuals as well. Like all traitors, this guy will make plenty of noise by running articles rationalizing the HHS mandate and portraying his fellow former Catholics as being fully qualified to change Church Doctrine and Dogma. He will, in effect, but just another Protestant who decides for himself which portions of Scripture apply to him and what Scripture means without any regard for Church teaching.

Just like the head of HHS who pretends to be Catholic while mandating Catholics pay for the murder of infants, these CINOs are put in place by the democrat fascist party as part of their propaganda efforts. There's no sense in pretending either one of them are Catholic when they both support abortion and contraception as well as a long list of Church Doctrines that don't fit their democrat fascist lifestyle.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him expand or otherwise highlight the religion section of the paper just in time for the mandate to go into effect.

NO problem.

In fact, I was going to do that this morning because I read the article when I was drifting off to sleep then forgot about going back to do that.

Today is one of my bad days, though, so typing is a real pain which means I don’t usually go back and edit much so stuff can get messy. I’ll find the notes I made when I read that and comment shortly.

Regards

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