BishopAccountability.org
	More News About Bishops And Porn Seller Enlightened Catholicism November 22, 2011 http://enlightenedcatholicism-colkoch.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-news-about-bishops-and-porn.html he Catholic church in Germany is to sell Weltbild, its bookselling arm, after the unit admitted last month to publishing pornographic novels, the company says. Weltbild is one of the Germany's main book enterprises, with annual sales of 1.6 billion euros (2.1 billion dollars) and a workforce of 6,400. Its interests include general publishing, a main national bookshop chain and book clubs. Catholic leaders were outraged that the profitable company's book range included steamy pulp novels with titles like "Boarding School for Sluts" and "The Lawyer's Whore" and advice on how to practice esoteric superstitions that are condemned by Catholic doctrine. Germany's 27 bishops met this week to press the 12 bishops who co-own Weltbild to end the investment after Weltbild had defended its commercial policy of publishing whatever books meet market demand. Weltbild, based in the southern city of Augsburg, said it welcomed the decision to seek new ownership "without delay." Pope Benedict XIV, who urged German bishops in September to get rid of worldly wealth, appeared to influence the debate, telling Catholics they should be "energetically opposing the distribution of erotic and pornographic material." ************************************** The Weltbild story has been much bigger in Europe than it has in the States. It turns out lay activists had been pressing the case for ditching Weltbild over it's porn sales for quite some time. They almost accomplished it in 2008 but the twelve bishops whose dioceses solely own Weltbild didn't get an offer for the company that met their demands. I suspect price will be less of an issue this time around. What's even more jaw dropping are these excuses for all that porn being missed by those German bishops. This is from a Tablet article: "But as protests from conservative Catholic groups grew, and more dubious titles on www.weltbild.de were found and their names published, the German bishops admitted that a “filtering failure” had allowed dubious titles to stray into Weltbild’s lists. Weltbild’s management has meanwhile threatened to sue certain far-right online networks for slander for publishing headlines such as “Catholic Church earns a fortune with porn”. The Catholic Church bought Weltbild more than 30 years ago. In 1998 it merged with five other publishing houses. In 2008, at the height of its success, the German bishops considered selling the concern. The Weltbild group’s chairman, Carel Halff, said then that the size of the company had “gone beyond the bishops’ original concept”. At that time Weltbild had 7,400 employees and a turnover of ˆ1.94bn, while one of its subsidiaries, www.buecher.de, listed 4,364 erotic titles. Criticism from conservative Catholics regarding these titles is said to have persuaded the bishops to try to sell. But their efforts came to nothing, apparently, because they were not offered the sum they were hoping for." Why is it I think the operative number was 1.4 billion euros, and not the 4,364 erotic titles? Perhaps what ever those filters were filtering they must not have been programmed to flag titles that made money and that's why 4,364 dubious titles 'strayed' into Weltbild's list. No wonder the 'do as I say not as I do' crowd are winding up with a lot of egg on their faces. It was just too hard for those twelve bishops to yank their little red hands out of that particular cookie jar.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.