There’s Just No Pleasing John Cornwell

HERE’S THE PROOF.

Man, what a sourpuss.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

16 thoughts on “There’s Just No Pleasing John Cornwell”

  1. Good grief. Did this guy get one thing right in his entire article?
    I’d go back and look for myself, but I don’t think I can stand to read it again.

  2. I hear ya Tim. I could only get through a few paragraphs before I had to stop due to the errors/misrepresentations.
    Good grief, indeed.

  3. First sentence of fourth paragraph: “His chosen name invokes the great 9th-century monk-saint who preserved Christian civilisation through the Dark Ages.”
    Huh?
    I think the only famous Benedict of the 9th-century was Pope Benedict III (reigned 855-858). He was apparently a nice guy, but neither a monk or a saint to my knowledge.
    St. Benedict of Nursia, father of Western monasticism, lived ca. 480 to ca 547, making him 5th- or 6th-century.
    The article should, perhaps, be an epilogue to The Davinci Code.

  4. Thanks for the laughs, Jimmy. This article must be the best “poisoned pen” article I’ve read in a long time! There is nothing Benedict could do which Cornwell would like.

  5. Old Zhou, it is funny that you should mention the Da Vinci Code in connection with John Cornwell.
    Apparently, both Cornwell and Dan Brown set out, initially, to debunk the central theses of their respective books ie; that Pius XII was sympathetic to Hitler and Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen; but each found themselves faced with compelling evidence to support these claims.
    What do you suppose this evidence was? Call me cynical, but if I were a “symbologist” I would present the evidence thus: $ and £.

  7. My personal favorite:
    “The new papal secretary is a tall, athletic Bavarian called Monsignor Georg Gänswein, very close to Ratzinger for 12 years. Gänswein, 49, mischievously dubbed Gay-Org by the Vatican denizens”
    Um, Mr Cornwell, “Gay-org” is in fact the correct pronounciation of the German version of George.
    –arthur

  8. arthur, that was exactly what I was going to post. GOOD GRIEF! The guy got out of the bed on the wrong side. What a cranky old man.
    ‘thann

  9. Holey cats! This guy likes to twist things, doesn’t he?
    Or maybe he’s just bitter that everything nasty he said was truth in Hitler’s Pope has since been proven totally wrong!
    Someone should give him a good & proper fisking. And then turn their attention to the article!

  10. I find his fondness for JPII odd given the fact that both Hitler’s Pope and Pontiff in Winter (or something like that) were in fact criticisms of JPII’s papacy. Now he writes about him like an old friend whose “shoes are pointed heavenward.” Good grief!
    This man is not only a stupid liar, but he’s a bona fide fake.
    I thought his reference to faithful Catholics being poor and ignorant was pretty telling too. Typical culture of death secularist looking down his nose at intellectually inferior believers.
    He couldn’t fit an ounce more ego on that page even if he glued a mirror to it.

  11. What does his membership in Hitler’s Youth have anything to do with Cardinal Ratzinger’s elevation?
    I remember I bought Hitler’s Pope for a dollar and before I was Catholic and I only got part way through it because it was so unbalanced. I especially did not appreciate how he made all these judgements on a person’s motivations for action.
    However, Mr. Cornwell has stated that his book was unfair to Pope Pius XII. For that, I give him credit.

  12. Haven’t read anything so cynical and vitriolic since Rita Skeeter’s efforts at character assassination of Harry Potter and Dumbledore in _HP_and_the_Goblet_of_Fire_!!

  13. I really hate when supposedly professional writers tear off articles that read like a gossip column. For a Brit, his grammar is surprisingly poor. (My favorite is “Opus Dei, the self-flagellating extreme conservative Catholic group”. Extremely?)
    But possibly my favorite part was when he mentioned “Whispers in the Loggia” right after mentioning gossip from the Vatican. Does he NOT understand satire?

  15. Okay: WHY am I supposed to read this? I’d rather watch television. No, scratch that; I’ll just take a nap.

  16. Curiously, Gänswein — who likes flying private planes — seems to have fallen out of the sky. There is no record of his earlier education. Has it been expunged, ask the Vatican gossips (try the website Whispers in the Loggia, http://www.whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com, for a taste of Georg-fever and pin-up pics).
    *DIES*

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