Conrad Black: I have found serenity through Catholicism in jail

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The Telegraph:
**Conrad Black: I have found serenity through Catholicism in jail **
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Conrad Black, former owner of the Telegraph, has found spiritual serenity through Catholicism in his Florida prison, he tells The Catholic Herald in an article published today.
“The Catholic life in the prison where I write is active and intellectually stimulating,” writes Lord Black, a convert to Roman Catholicism and major shareholder in the Herald.
“Confidence that there is at least some sort of an organising principle in the world, the experience that worship sometimes produces - which can enhance an understanding of travails and observations - and some metaphysical background, do provide a hinterland for perceptions, and with it, relative serenity and proportionality, even, and perhaps especially, in times of extreme tension, poignancy, and adversity. And there have been some.”
Lord Black is not, however, admitting guilt: on the contrary, Catholicism helps him deal with what he regards as his unjust conviction for fraud by an Illinois court in 2007. As he writes:
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To our UK brethren:
Who is Lord Black?
When did UK papers start using the US spelling of ‘gaol’? I noticed a few years ago that the BBC started referring to 1,000,000,000 as a billion, US-style, rather than ‘a thousand million’.
 
“Lord” Conrad Black (his formal title is Baron Black of Crossharbour) is a Canadian citizen who at one time was the third biggest media magnate in the world. He inherited a newspaper empire from his father and in the late 1990s owned more than 400 newspapers.

In 2007 he was found guilty of mail fraud and obstruction of justice in a U.S. federal court in Chicago, in relation to some highly questionable business dealings. He was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison and has appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He tried but failed to obtain a pardon from President Bush before he left office.

Speaking from personal experience in the newspaper business and acquaintance with people who worked for newspapers he owned, his protestations of innocence ring pretty hollow. He basically plundered most of the properties he owned for his own personal benefit, and he left the Chicago Sun-Times – which would otherwise have been financially solvent – with more than $600 million in unpaid tax debt to the IRS. His repeated insistence that he did nothing wrong and he’s just being persecuted is very similar to that of ex-Gov. Blagojevich, and about as credible :mad:
 
Lord Black is a former Canadian citizen. He was raised to the peerage by Queen Elizabeth II, on the advice of Tony Blair. Canadian PM Jean Cretien, however, opposed this, citing a clause in the 1919 Nickel Resolution. Eventually, he would renounce his Canadian citizenship for his title.

However, he is more famously known for comitting mail fraud and obstruction of justice. Black was found guilty of diverting funds for personal benefit from money due Hollinger International when the company sold certain publishing assets. He obstructed justice by taking possession of documents to which he was not entitled. He is serving 78 months in federal prison, forced to pay Hollinger $6.1 million, and a $125,000 fine.

He was largely a media magnate, and owned hundreds of newspapers.

I hope his conversion is sincere. My old man always says to give everyone the benefit of a doubt, so that’s what I’ll do.
 
No he did not convert in prison. He was a believing Catholic before.

He came from a very rich Canadian family. It was the typical Upper Canada College Private School upbringing (you could tell the kids at university that came from UCC) with a typical WASP upbringing for him. He is much older than this poster but I know his provenance, the Rosedale neighbourhood (Canadian spelling) in Toronto. He suffered from anxiety attacks in college, which I think he mentioned in his autobiography

He is incredibly bright. His finest asset is his vocabulary and wit. He became Catholic in the 80s. Canadian Television did a drama on him and insinuated a bit about his first marriage to a woman he separated from in the early 90s. They had children but throughout the 90s he was always a Defender of the Faith. Because of the pettiness of one of Canada’s liberal prime ministers, Black could not accept a lordship in the U.K. without renouncing his Canadian citizenship. (Had he not renounced, he may have still been here).

While managing the Daily Telegraph in England, he became infatuated with a female journalist Barbara Amiel, whom I knew about earlier as she had written fierce right-wing anti-communist columns in the Toronto Sun when I was a kid. They married (her fourth marriage). She came from a tragic upbringing but succeeded. She is Jewish; hence my surprise to read Black speak of Judaism as “tribal” and such in the column cited.

They garnered much criticism for what was deemed to be their opulence and living beyond their means.

He was charged by a U.S. court, burned his bridges with William Buckley and Kissinger after they didn’t provide full-on support, and is now in prison. What he writes now in prison could have also been written by him before prison. He was always an intellectually-minded Catholic.

He is the type of person that one simultaneously admires much while being in awe of his haughtiness. It was the latter characteristic that evoked indignation from many as an example of his superciliousness and dread at the plebs.

He is also most-assuredly assured of himself. Hence, his absolute refusal to plea bargain with the prosecution and insistence on innocence to the end. I do know that perhaps he was made to serve as a corporate example of how tough the Feds could be on white-collar crime. I just think he may have been able to bargain a lesser conviction. (And I have not read enough to wager on whether he was guilty or not).

I don’t know how he keeps his sanity in jail after the lifestyle he became accustomed to. It is a true riches to rags epic as it stands but I am not sure how the drama will end. I feel sympathy for him at the same time that I am disappointed in him. I am amazed at where he is now compared to 5 years ago.
 
Update post:

Conrad Black was born and raised in Canada. He operated a newspaper empire for decades but was recently convicted of fraud and sent to jail in Florida. He currently writes articles for the National Post (which he had founded) from his prison cell.
This link is from the National Post. It’s the abbreviated version of the piece the original poster provided:
network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/09/29/conrad-black-why-i-became-a-catholic.aspx
(again, the full version of the essay is in the original post of this thread.)

What I’m doing here is providing the link for the follow up…Mr Black’s response to the feedback from the initial article.
network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/10/conrad-black-casting-stones.aspx
 
Arrgh! Did Lord Black ever say he was sorry to the employees who went without salary increases, forced to make due with insufficient supplies and, in many cases, lost their jobs due to his plundering?
 
dennis01 said:
Arrgh! Did Lord Black ever say he was sorry to the employees who went without salary increases, forced to make due with insufficient supplies and, in many cases, lost their jobs due to his plundering?
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Short answer NO. He would take issue with you calling it “plundering”.😉 I think he is currently in the process of appealing and to this day maintains his complete innocence and awaits Vindication. I don’t know. It seems the issue revolves around the Non-Compete Clauses put into purchases and sales of his newspaper businesses. I’m just too lazy to read in detail the exact nature of his defense and whether there was any error in fact or in law in the initial case justifying appeal.🤷
 
KyivAndrew said:
Thanks for the link. Whatever may be said of Black, he surely is a most learned man.
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Wouldn’t a learned man know that the first Christians were also devout Jews? And that Christ wasn’t a Christian but a devout Jew?
 
Phemie said:
Wouldn’t a learned man know that the first Christians were also devout Jews? And that Christ wasn’t a Christian but a devout Jew?
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I see you are Catholic. Wouldn’t a Catholic understand that Christ said He was the Messiah and like God could forgive sins – blasphemy to the Sanhedrin?
 
“It seems the issue revolves around the Non-Compete Clauses put into purchases and sales of his newspaper businesses.”

Not sure what those meant in relation to his dealings, but I know from experience in the newspaper business that some publications HAVE taken non-compete clauses to ridiculous heights (or depths).

Sometimes TV or newspaper reporters or columnists have a non-compete clause written into their contract that says if they quit, they cannot then go to work for any other TV station or newspaper in the same city or general area for a set amount of time, usually 6 months to a year. The idea, as it was explained to me, is to prevent them from working on some big blockbuster story for Newspaper or Station A, cultivating all sorts of inside sources while there, then quitting and going to work for Newspaper or Station B and breaking the story so that Newspaper/Station B ends up getting credit for it.

Now this rule does make some sense when applied to well-known anchor people, investigative reporters, and columnists/commentators that are a big draw for a station or publication. However I have encountered newspapers that apply the exact same no-compete rules to EVERY single position, down to the copy editors, photographers, the people who sell classified ads, the people who write obituaries, etc.

I know of at least one case in which a single mom making $20,000 a year at best quit her job selling classifieds for one such newspaper to take a better paying job at a newspaper in a town about 15 miles away; her former employer sued to make her abide by the no-compete clause and wait a full 6 months before she could start her new job! This makes no sense to me and IMHO is completely unjust. However, it would not surprise me if Black’s newspapers operated like this.
 
Secret_Square said:
Not sure what those meant in relation to his dealings, but I know from experience in the newspaper business that some publications HAVE taken non-compete clauses to ridiculous heights (or depths).
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Uhh, no the Non-Compete Clauses did not center on individual employees but around the sale of an entire Newspaper Group in Black’s case, i.e. that Black would not compete with the new owners of a Paper he just sold to them. The purchaser must pay for such a non-compete clause.

From the CBC’s newspage on Black and his company Hollinger:
If you’ve been following the Black trial, you’ll know that non-compete payments are at the heart of the prosecution’s case. These are payments that went directly to Black and some former Hollinger executives when Hollinger International sold its Canadian and U.S. newspapers.

Non-compete payments are designed to compensate the seller in return for agreeing not to compete against the buyer in certain markets for a period of time following the sale. There’s nothing terribly unusual about these payments. But in the case of Black and his co-accused, the prosecution says the payments should have gone to Hollinger International and all of its shareholders, not to Black et al.

Hope this clears it up slightly.
 
When it appeared he would be convicted in the U.S. courts he made inquiries about regaining his former Canadian citizenship,and was basically dismissed amid uproarious guffaws and laughter.
It appears that the person in government to whom he made the appeal was a former classmate at Upper Canada College who had to rewrite a very difficult examination as Black,while a student in the same class had secured copies of the exam and was selling them to classmates.He was caught after the fact and the whole class had to submit to an arduous rewrite.Black was expelled.
He originally left Canada in a fit of pique and high dudgeon as it is against Canadian law for Canadians to accept titles from Britain.He asked for an exception from then Prime Minister Jean Chretien and was denied.No Lords,Ladies,Sirs or any of that class-ridden crapola here.He renounced his citizenship to become Lord Black of Crossharbour and to take a seat in the House of Lords in the U.K.
He is a very wealthy and successful man but hardly self made.Daddy gave him $20,000,000 as a grubstake.He is also an egomaniac who once attended a costume ball as Cardinal Richilieu while his wife,the beauteous “Lady"Black,Barbara Amiel,conservative journalist and no slouch in the ego department herself,attended as Marie Antoinette.How ironic. " When Black was lobbying Tony Blair for the appointment, he casually remarked to Dan Colson, an old school chum then in operational charge of the Daily Telegraph, that he wasn’t certain whether he really wanted the honour.
“Oh come on, Conrad,” the answer came back, “you’d crawl over broken glass for it.””

“As he left Canada to take up his title, Black dismissed the country of his birth and source of his original fortune as “uncompetitive, slothful, self-righteous, spiteful - an envious nanny-state hovering on the verge of dissolution and bankruptcy”.
At the time, he didn’t mention its much more kindly prison system which permits parole after half a sentence, as opposed to after 85 per cent in the U.S.”

More recently, he has emerged as the ultimate born-again patriot, hoping to have his citizenship returned. “Canada is one of the world’s most important countries,” he recently said, presumably with a straight face."

To quote one R.Burns,“things go oft aglay for mice and men”

Buh-bye,Connie.
 
Heheh it’s intriguing when you look into it…

What catches my attention in all this, is that someone with his privileged, proud and ambitious disposition somehow recognized the Truth (Catholic teaching), accepted it (converted to Catholicism… and yes I’ve read his conversion details), and now publicly defends the faith from prison…it appears to me, for no monetary or political gain…
I wouldn’t advance the cause for canonization but he’s certainly been humbled, and that means God is welcomed, so …publicly he’s been losing, but privately and spiritually it’s a victory for him…Anyhow… God sees his soul unlike us, we don’t know his heart…
 
I would NEVER presume to judge him,his heart or his soul.But I certainly can and will judge his actions.
I am delighted that he has converted to the Truth.Actually it was Emmet Cardinal Carter who evangelised him.I hope that his wife Barbara Amiel,a Jew,follows him across the Tiber.
 
Agreed, agreed…It’s the actions…It’s that I’m curious about the incongruency if you know what I mean
…Yes I remember the Carter brothers
 
Lost_Found said:
Agreed, agreed…It’s the actions…It’s that I’m curious about the incongruency if you know what I mean
…Yes I remember the Carter brothers
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No one is perfect.We are all sinners,including Conrad.
 
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