The gentleman is a subscriber to The Tablet. Yes, he is very elderly and we all know the reputation of The Tablet for being a Catholic version of Saga Magazine, only with less Catholicism, but he's been very ill in hospital for a while and now he is recovering his strength, so I've been taking the magazine to him because he likes it and that's his free choice. I haven't been hospitalised myself much in adulthood but I remember when I was little my mum and dad bringing my favourite magazine to me while I lay in hospital.
Obviously, I don't feel very happy when I hand over his weekly copy of The Tablet because I know, having read it through a few times recently, that its about as spiritually edifying as a big bag of porn.
Nevertheless, hand it to him I do, so that he can read it, because, at the end of the day, it gives the man a little happiness and that's that. He's ill, for Heaven's sake, seriously ill and he deserves to be able to read through his favourite Catholic weekly even if the majority of the magazine questions Church teaching, doctrine and practise pretty much maniacally and obsessively, week in, week out. Perhaps even the crossword is suspect. The question is, when I hand over the latest copy of a magazine that makes 'The Watchtower' seem like a doctrinally sound piece of religious journalism, am I committing a mortal or a venial sin? Readers of The Tablet will struggle with that question, I know, but my opinion is that it is mortal because reading The Tablet kills the life of the soul and separates the soul from God and His Church.
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