Nonsense, John Halpin

This strikes me as spin. Trying to spin gold out of not dross, but BS.
Emails out of context, fine.
Larger point, fine.
Rupert Murdoch's a bad guy, fine.
Explain this phrase, fine.

This is so typical of what's put out there by the conglomerate of agenda-driven media and political hack spin-meisters, lots of words explaining away everything EXCEPT  WHAT  PEOPLE  ARE  REALLY  OFFENDED  BY.

“It’s an amazing bastardisation of the faith."

Maybe it is. I don't know Murdoch, I don't know what he believes. He strikes me as an insincere opportunist, but he didn't convert, he merely allowed his children to be perhaps raised in the Faith, so he can't be all THAT attracted to it....

"They must be attracted to the systematic thought"

See above. (Though it must be asked at this point, is there something attractive about unsystematic thought that I'm missing, which makes attraction to the systematic objectionable?)

"and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”

Okay, there we are.
Can a reference to the Church's Severely. Backward. Gender Relations. when expressed by an activist for a political movement that seeks to, (and so far has been pretty damned successful at it,) redefine marriage, masculinity and femininity ever really be "simply a fleeting reaction from within the Catholic tradition to something [he] read"?

How can it be anything OTHER than, I would agree, not "an expression of contempt for people of faith" as he maintains, but an expression of contempt for the Faith itself, (his faith, putatively) which is the source of the outrage.

This is so common from both sides - someone says, or does something awful, someone else expresses outrage, first person refutes accusation no one was making, first person's allies say, "see?"

It doesn't wash, John Halpin.