As readers of Catalyst know, anytime we spot one of the anti-Catholic ads of the Eternal Gospel Church in a newspaper, we immediately ask the publisher to refrain from accepting such ads in the future. Fortunately, most newspaper publishers listen to reason and do not intentionally seek to promote bigotry.
Our latest victory is the Columbian, southern Washington’s largest daily. An official with the newspaper told us, “We’d like to assure you that we would not run that advertisement in the future. In retrospect, it was inappropriate.” Now that’s responsible journalism.
We no sooner won on this when we learned that the same ad was run in the Fresno Bee. Then we learned that another splinter group, the Sweetwater Seventh Day Adventist Church, ran a similar ad in the North Port Sun-Herald in Florida and The Record in New Jersey. The publishers of all three newspapers have been asked to not to accept these ads again.
