Tablet publicity spinoffs

Damian Thompson has very kindly arranged an appeal for me to defray the cost of purchasing a set of rose vestments for the parish. Any surplus will go towards some silver candlesticks for the Lady Altar. (See: How Holy Smokers can help repair the damage done by the Tablet's nasty article about Fr Tim Finigan's parish). I spent a part of this afternoon in between Masses opening my post and reading various kind and encouraging letters, many of them with donations included. If you want to send something, the cheque should be payable to "Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen" and the postal address is

330a Burnt Oak Lane
SIDCUP
Kent
DA15 8LW

Sorry I haven't got a parish "Paypal" button yet - I'll try and get that going.

One priest put "Friendly" on the back of the envelope which enclosed the kind letter he sent me - thank you Father. In fact, I have had very few hostile messages either by post or by email. Ah! email. I am about 150 emails behind at the moment but will get around to them all in due course. Thank you all for your support.

Someone has set up a Facebook group and someone else has put up a petition asking the Tablet to apologise (don't hold your breath!)

When the Tablet's publisher wrote to me (and copied to the paper's lawyers) his complaint about my breach of copyright (in quoting the Curti article in full and commenting on it) he invited me to send in a letter to the editor. I have no intention of doing so. If they want a letter, here is the text:
"Dear Ms Pepinster,

Cf. http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/

Yours etc."
One of the things that attracted me to blogging is that it provides an opportunity to respond to the print media without being edited out. And in fact, despite the polyanna attitude over there at the Klosters, the Catholic blogosphere is not a "tiny conservative world". One of the things I have to thank the Tablet for is a rise in readership of this blog such that I can now post these two statistics for comparison (click to enlarge):



Now add in Fr Z (as many visits in a day as I have per week), DT etc I, etc II, etc III, and others that I have probably missed and the readership is very many times that of the Tablet.

Nevertheless, many thanks to all those who have written in. It will be most interesting to see what is allowed to appear on the Tablet letters page. Having received copies of many letters that have been sent in, I will be publishing a selection of those that do not get past the editor.

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