Scottish Catholic Observer

BBC Scotland assured the Bishop of Paisley that they are open to Catholic voices during a meeting that followed the publication of an online video that ridiculed the Blessed Sacrament.

Bishop John Keenan requested the meeting with the corporation’s director Donalda Mackinnon in April after it published a video on its online platform The Social, titled ‘Homophobia in 2018, Time for Love,’ which described the Sacrament of Holy Communion as tasting ‘like cardboard’ and smelling ‘like hate.’

Bishop Keenan said the video was ‘really quite beyond the pale’ in his letter requesting a meeting with Ms Mackinnon, urging the BBC to guard against adding fuel to the fire’ in the ‘current climate of growing hostility to Catholics.’

Speaking after the May 14 meeting, Bishop Keenan said: “I found her to be open to the point that I had made. Sensitive to them, she accepted them.”

He said Ms Mackinnon’s ‘sensitivity’ allowed for a deeper conversation about why Catholics were concerned and how the BBC could engage more with Catholics in the future—an area she conceded the BBC struggle with.

“She mentioned that they often found it difficult to get Christian filmmakers to come forward. She found that there seemed to be more confidence, creativity and assertiveness in the secular—for want of a better word—of the views that we complained about,” Bishop Keenan said.

Bishop Keenan said: “[The BBC] found less of the same assertiveness and confidence coming forward from Christians.”

“I mentioned that there are some good young Catholic filmmakers out there,” he added. “She said the BBC would be very interested to hear from them. I also said that even though the background of this meeting was controversy, in fact we want to be involved in order to give something to society.

“Ultimately we don’t want to get something from the BBC but rather to give something. I would be very happy to be involved and engage in a dialogue with them so they could better understand our concerns and possibly understand how we can work with them.”

Bishop Keenan pointed to the BBC Two Scotland show Timeline as an example of Christian views being ­marginalised. Timeline featured a discussion on the controversial video that sparked outrage from Catholics, and producers had invited an LGBT activist to take part, but neglected to invite ‘anyone from our side of it,’ Bishop Keenan said.

He added that presenter Shereen Nanjiani ‘expressed some surprise that there could be any controversy or negativity’ around the video.

“She said ‘When you look at how far we have come.’ That universal statement has led people to be afraid of making any kind of argument because it closes off the issue,” the bishop said. “She [Ms Nanjiani] was simply saying that we all accept that all of this is universal progress. Anyone who might think to question that she feels is idiotic or offensive.”

Bishop Keenan advocated that courage was the appropriate Christian solution to the problems of living in a secular world.

“Sometimes in this oppressive atmosphere Christians have just got to take it and we’ve got to go like the early apostles,” he said. “They were persecuted but at every stage they shook the dust from their feet and went back out again with a new confidence.”

Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews & Edinburgh will meet with the BBC later this year, and Bishop Keenan said that discussion would focus on how the BBC can further engage with the Church.

“I was confident that she would make our concerns known and I think she took it seriously,” he added. “Therefore, her staff will be aware of it going forward.”

Bishop Keenan said he wanted to leave Christians with the message that ‘a lot can be done even in an oppressive environment’ and that we would ‘win because of the truth.’

“The truth won’t win because it is written down in the Catechism; it always won because the people had truth and courage. We will only succeed when the truth is spoken by disciples.”

A BBC Scotland spokesman said: “We had a productive and informative discussion about various aspects of our output and we are happy to continue that dialogue.”