Suppressio Veri, Suggestio Falsi Department (from which title the author wanders at length)

From Fr Z's blog:

I want everyone to know about this.

This was posted at the blog Protect The Pope, which was run by Deacon Nick Donnelly.

Diocese of Lancaster’s statement about Deacon Nick Donnelly
BY M DONNELLY, ON MARCH 13TH, 2014
The Bishop’s office of the Diocese of Lancaster has kindly sent Nick the statement they issued to the press about him and Protect the Pope which is copied below.

“After learning that a notice had been placed upon the Protect the Pope website on 7 March saying: ‘Deacon Nick stands down from Protect the Pope for a period of prayer and reflection’ the Bishop’s Office at the Diocese of Lancaster was able to confirm that Bishop Campbell had recently requested Deacon Nick Donnelly to voluntarily pause from placing new posts on the Protect the Pope site.

Meanwhile, it was also confirmed that the Bishop asked Deacon Nick to use this pause to enter into a period of prayer and reflection on the duties involved for ordained bloggers/website administrators to truth, charity and unity in the Church.

Deacon Nick has agreed to the Bishop’s request at this time”.

I, for one, can imagine that a lot of pressure was exerted on the Bishop of Lancaster to have gone to such an extreme as to command a cleric under his charge not to think aloud in public.

I see now, however, that “M Donnelly” is posting at the blog. I take it that this is Missus Deacon. Good for her.

Boy, howdy.  The Church of Nice gets more open and inclusive by the minute.

But The Inn should still be safe.  Relatively safe.  We are, after all, not a cleric and very unlikely to be on any episcopal radar screens.  And, of course,  nobody else in or out of holy orders knows The Inn is here anyway.  That might be remedied if I ever got round to posting something on any sort of regular basis.  But I haven't, so it hasn't been, and so most of the traffic comes from occasional visitors who googled drawings from old missals or biographies of saints posted in 2005.

 I suppose if I actually wrote as obstreperously as I think, perhaps I would annoy  more people.  And at one time I probably did.  When The Inn first showed up, weblogs with a Catholic point of view were still pretty thin on the ground.  And ones with a traditional focus even more so.  But that was a dozen years ago.  There's a lot more out there now and weblogs are doing a lot more things than I ever could and doing it a lot better than I could ever attempt.  When you have blogs like Rorate Cæli, Creative Minority Report, and Orwell's Picnic  (to name just my favourites) you don't really need The Inn to chime in on a regular basis to say "Me, too!"  Oh, and The Remnant has been expanding its web presence making it a regular stop.

And so you get a lot of piping and some Scottish dancing.  And tea.  And . . . hmmm . . .where was I?  Oh, yes.  Deacon Nick's blog was suppressed  the other day by his bishop.  (Yeah, yeah, I know: he abstained for a period of reflection.  Right.)  Read the rest at Fr Z's site, which also links to Deacon Nick's site.

(Some day I'm going to wander so far off the topic I'll never find my way back.  Contrary to all appearances my muse is not Laurence Sterne and The Inn is not a sort of updated Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.)