LORD BEAUMONT, whom Heaven preserve, has no need to apologise for or to explain his comments. They were clear and to the point. I have for years received, unsolicited, Fr Van Straaten's Newsletter. It is consistently, bitter, contemptuous and condemnatory of everything that happens in the countries of the Eastern Bloc.
It rarely has anything to say about the operation of world capitalism, polarises the world, Reagan fashion, into good and evil and endlessly holds up for scathing comment those opinions in the church today with which Fr Van Straaten happens to disagree.
All this is indisputable fact. What his motivations are must be a matter of opinion.
Mgr Bruce Kent Islington, London NI