The advert referred to by Fine Gael TD Jim O'Keeffe is an appalling piece of inaccuracy. The theme of the ad is that God wants us to vote against the Lisbon Treaty.
A sentence in the advertisement runs, "Please help us to fight and win for God and for Ireland! Can you send whatever you can today?" And that means asking for money of course.
The first sentence in the advert reads, "We are in the middle of a fierce battle for the very soul of Ireland".
On page five readers are told that this newspaper is classed as a charity and therefore receives funding from Revenue. Difficult to see how it is a 'charity'.
Another headline tells readers that "Irish Times making up news". Surely that's close to libel!
But Alive does tell its readers that it now accepts credit card donations and payments!
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3 comments:
Sadly, ALIVE! is simply a conservative tabloid religious rag wearing a cloak of Catholic respectability due to its clerical/Dominican provenance. Equally sadly, if a similar liberal tabloid religious rag were to be produced there would, in all probability, be an absolute furore from the Irish hierarchy: one could practically guarantee it would NOT be available in the porches of churches up and down the country.
Catholic press is Ireland is a vast wasteland. Just look at the Letter to the Editor page of the Irish Catholic (I am going on its content before its current change). These are hardly reflective of the nature of the Catholic Church in Ireland nor of the diversity of opinion among its members.
Even within religious magazines there is little of which to be proud. REALITY is a standout, largely due to the imagination and courage of its editor.
There is a crying need for some kind of publication that could actually touch the minds of thinking Catholics, which could be a force for good, and could conceivably represent a Catholic 'public sphere' wherein some kind of serious and intelligent debate could take place about matters of Church life.
Even with clerical/religious circles, the emasculation of Intercom some years back has resulted in an anodyne output, one without any challenge at all.
All of which means, of course, that ALIVE! is ostensibly the public press face of the Catholic Church in Ireland and not a note of criticism from the leaders of the Church. How sad. How revealing. How hopeless.
Thank you and excellent - maybe even more so, becasue I agree with you.
Why not a group of like-minded people meet up to talk about setting up a publication. We could begin on the web - people could contribute articles.
Backing not impossible!
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