Avro Manhattan

I try to resist the temptation of taking the piss out of the Independent’s religious coverage. But the long John Walsh interview with Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor contains some really horrendous examples of ignorance and prejudice on the part of the subs. The fact box has a quote about the church’s finances from one “Avro Manhattan”, which is more or less equivalent to using Radio Riyadh as your source for facts about the Jews. Avro Manhattan really did exist: I came across his works in a rabid Protestant bookshop in Belfast, and he has a thriving presence on the web, from which you learn that his books included

Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom

C.A. Watts, London 1952, 2nd edition, 1959;

Terror Over Yugoslavia, the Threat to Europe

C.A. Watts, London, 1953;

The Dollar and the Vatican

Pioneer Press, London, 1956, 3rd edition, 1957.

Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century

Zondervan, Michigan, 1965.

The Vatican Billions

Chick Pub., Los Angeles, 1983.

Catholic Terror in Ireland

Chick Pub., Los Angeles, 1988.

Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance

Chick Pub, 1982.

Vietnam . . . why did we go?

Chick Pub, Los Angeles, 1984.

The Vatican’s Holocaust

Ozark Books, Springfield, MO.1986.

Murder in the Vatican: American Russian and Papal Plots

Ozark Books, Springfield, MO. 1985.

It’s interesting to know that Zondervan, regarded as the respectable end of evangleical publishing, was prepared to print this kind of thing in 1965 (two years after the assasination of the Catholic JFK). But whichever intern Googled for this should really have been reprimanded. It shows what gets lost when newspapers no longert have proper libraries.