B.C. & A.D. to be Replaced by BBC for C.E. & B.C.E

[Teddy Bear]

An excellent article by James Delingpole at the Daily Mail and some terrific observations on how Orwell's 1984 seems to have been used by the BBC as an operation manual.

'Newspeak': 1984 author George Orwell speaking on BBC Radio

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This capture of the language for political ends was exactly what George Orwell warned us of more than 60 years ago

Who controls the language controls the culture. Who controls the culture wins the war.

How the BBC fell for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within

By James Delingpole

Last updated at 11:42 PM on 24th September 2011

When you mention to a Muslim or Hindu that the year is 2011, do you ever feel a twinge of guilt about your closet religious chauvinism? When you watch the old Raquel Welch film One Million Years BC, do you blushingly avert your gaze from the title sequence? When you catch your children reading 2000AD, do you furiously insist that they read something less offensive, such as The Beano or The Dandy, instead?

Well, the BBC thinks you should and it is taking action on your behalf. No longer will its website refer to those bigoted, Christian-centric concepts AD (as in Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord) and BC (Before Christ). From now on, it will use initials which strip our traditional Gregorian calendar of its offensive religious context. All reference to Christ has been expunged, replaced by the terms CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era).

But the BBC isn't doing this because it has been flooded with complaints, you understand. Nor is it responding to public demand. No, as it primly explains on the Q&A page on the section of its website bbc.co.uk/religion, it is doing it to be 'in line with modern practice'.

'Whose modern practice?' you might well ask. Do you know anyone outside the BBC or the fields of Left-wing academe who has even heard of CE and BCE? Or anyone who seriously finds them preferable to the perfectly innocuous term 'AD'?

Almost certainly not. And this is what gives the lie to the BBC's weaselly, passive-aggressive excuse. The implication of 'in line with modern practice' is that anyone who disagrees with the change must be reactionary, backward, fuddy duddy. Note, too, how the phrase is careful to evade responsibility for the decision. Nothing to do with us, it's 'modern practice'.

And so yet another small part of our tradition, language and culture takes a step closer to extinction. We didn't ask for it; we didn't want it; yet still it's happening because a tiny minority of politically correct busybodies have wormed their way into institutions such as the BBC and taken control.

Their goal is to create a world where Left-wing thinking – on 'fairness', on race, on sexual equality, on the role of government – becomes the norm. So far, they are doing brilliantly.

This capture of the language for political ends was exactly what George Orwell warned us of more than 60 years ago in his book 1984. In the appendix he described how Big Brother devised its language Newspeak to make it impossible for people to think in the 'wrong' way.

'Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought,' he wrote. 'It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable.'

'BC' and 'AD' are just the latest examples of the Oldspeak that the linguistic commissars of the BBC are so desperate to expunge. But the process has been going on for decades, accelerating under New Labour. Tony Blair's rejection of history ('We're a young country' he once nonsensically claimed) and his embrace of modernity may have seemed vacuous but they were part of a deliberate political strategy.

Who controls the language controls the culture. Who controls the culture wins the war.

So it was, for example, that a traditionally free market cap¬italist word such as 'investment' was suddenly being hijacked to mean 'government spending'. 'Diversity' no longer meant 'plentiful variety' but 'an excuse to nurture grievance at tax¬payers' expense'. 'Discrimin¬ation', formerly used to mean 'discernment', now meant 'yet another excuse to nurture grievance at taxpayers' expense'.

Once the original meanings of these words have been lost, it is hard to reclaim them – as you may have noticed with the word 'elitism'. Elitism ought to be a desirable thing: Who would you rather the SAS recruited – elite soldiers or shirkers with two left feet? Who would you rather did brain surgery on you – an elite specialist with years of training or a drunk plucked at random from the street?

Yet thanks to more than a decade's abuse of the word by New Labour Ministers, 'elitism' has acquired an almost wholly pejorative sense. Education Secretary Michael Gove's free schools, for example, are damned for their supposed 'elitism'. But isn't that exactly what most of us want: schools that strive to be the best – in everything from manners to academic standards and sporting achievement?

This is what the Left's capture of the word 'elitism' has achieved. 'Equality' – 'state-enforced mediocrity' as you and I might see it – is made through the power of language to seem like the only acceptable social norm.

Taken in isolation, these episodes of linguistic capitulation might seem harmless. Does it really matter whether we call it 'AD' any more? We may have been using it for nearly 1,500 years and even multicultural organisations such as the UN use the Gregorian calendar, which takes as its starting point the birth of Jesus. But it's not as though many of us go to church any more, the liberals say.

And isn't it only fair that we should be a bit more considerate to the sensitivities of other races, religions and creeds?

No, it's an act of cultural suicide. Most of us may not realise this but the ideological Left certainly does, for it has long been part of its grand plan to destroy Western civilisation from within. The plan's prime instigator was the influential German Marxist thinker ('the father of the New Left') Herbert Marcuse. A Jewish academic who fled Germany for the US in the Thirties, he became the darling of the Sixties and Seventies 'radical chic' set.

He deliberately set out to dismantle every last pillar of society – tradition, hierarchy, order – and key to victory, he argued, would be a Leftist takeover of the language, including 'the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care etc'.

In other words, those of us who believe in smaller government or other 'Right-wing' heresies should be for ever silenced.

Marcuse's teachings were de rigueur among student radicals on the campuses of the Sixties; his teachings formed the intellectual bedrock for every revolutionary group from the Black Panthers to the Baader-Meinhof gang. And also for that generation of long-haired students who now occupy senior positions in universities, in the judiciary, in government, in the civil service and, of course, at the BBC.

They may no longer define themselves as Marxists but they have absorbed the lessons of Marcuse unquestioningly.

At the time, Marcuse may have seemed like one of those fashionable Left-wing academics whose silly ideas you grow out of once you've got a job. Only now are we beginning to appreciate just how lethal he was.

Thanks to the sterling work done by his acolytes, Marcuse's most fervent desires – and Orwell's darkest predictions – are coming true. There was a time when we used to complain about it – remember our outrage when nursery children were taught to sing about 'Baa baa rainbow sheep'? – but now we've grown so used to it that we tend to shrug our shoulders, mutter under our breath about 'political correctness gone mad' and accept it as the way things are.

This complacency is fatal. Great civilisations do not die from the sudden arrival of the barbarians at the gates. They succumb much more slowly than that, from the death-by-a-thousand-cuts permitted from within by those who have forgotten why their traditions and cultural values are worth defending.

[Teddy Bear]

Another article on the subject, this time seeing this as further attempt by the BBC to neutralise the effect and power of the Church. As this reverend puts it; Like Stalin or Pol Pot, the BBC would like to abolish all reverence for the past and for the institutions created by that illustrious past

I totally agree.

I notice also that Andrew Marr has declared that he will still continue to use the more traditional terms in defiance of the BBC edict.

The BBC just loath anything that smacks of tradition

by REVEREND PETER MULLEN

Last updated at 6:27 PM on 25th September 2011

No one should be surprised that the BBC has stopped using the abbreviations all us have always known: BC for Before Christ and AD for Anno Domini - the years of our Lord.

Because the BBC is the very vanguard of the secularizing tendency which has declared itself as wanting to obliterate Christianity from public life and the public discussion of important moral and political affairs.

This hatred of our Christian heritage is what is symbolized and represented by all the spiteful attempts to persecute people who wear the cross at their till in the supermarket or dangle a rosary over the dashboard of their taxi cab.

The odd thing about this hatred of Christianity is that it is confined to Europe.

The Christian faith is booming worldwide. It is proving a problem to the officially atheistic regime in China - precisely because churches are overflowing there.

I am not by nature or disposition a happy clappy God- breathing charismatic Christian. But I can have nothing but admiration for the revival of Pentecostal Christianity in Southern and Central America where it is turning millions of impoverished people from drugs, crime and prostitution, to lives of decency, hard work and thrift - to what the BBC despises of course as 'Victorian' or, worst of all 'Thatcherite' values..

What word except 'heroic' can describe the continued commitment of Christians in hostile Muslim states - from Pakistan to Iran; from Iraq to, well, any of the sordid and chaotic regimes across north Africa which we are supposed to admire as 'the Arab Spring' - that fatuous illusion which will soon reveal its true colours when the fundamentalist Muslim tyrannies emerge after the I-phone and blackberry revolution so admired by the bien pensants in the western media - and particularly in the BBC.

To be honest, I don't think the BBC's undoubted loathing of our Christian heritage is the main issue.

They just loath anything that smacks of tradition and value and Englishness, of all that most of us were brought up to respect.

Like Stalin or Pol Pot, the BBC would like to abolish all reverence for the past and for the institutions created by that illustrious past, and to make policy from year zero - a desolate, heartless, rootless public realm dominated by the banal celeb culture, pop music and the banal display of depravity which fills the air waves - and for which, of course, we all forced to pay through the malicious tax called the licence fee.

[Teddy Bear]

Though there's quite a few articles on the MSM about this by the BBC, this one especially stands out. Melanie Phillips in her opening lines puts her fingers on what I believe is the real reason the BBC is doing this.

Our language is being hijacked by the Left to muzzle rational debate

By Melanie Phillips

Last updated at 10:39 PM on 25th September 2011


One of the most sinister aspects of political correctness is the way in which its edicts purport to be in the interests of minority groups.

This is despite the fact that, very often, they are not promulgated at the behest of minorities at all, but by members of the majority who want to destroy their own culture and who use minorities to camouflage their true intentions.

The latest manifestation stars once again that all-time world champion of political correctness, the BBC. Apparently, it has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ) must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

Actually, this edict seems to have been laid down merely by some obscure tributary of the BBC website rather than from on high.

Nevertheless, the terms CE and BCE are now increasingly finding their way onto news bulletins and on programmes such as University Challenge or Melvyn Bragg’s Radio Four show In Our Time.

The reason given on the website is that, since the BBC is committed to impartiality, it is important not to alienate or offend non-Christians.

Well, I am a Jew, so I am presumably a member of this group that must not be alienated.

It so happens, however, that along with many other Jewish people I sometimes use CE and BCE since the terms BC and AD are not appropriate to me.

But the idea that any of us would be offended by anyone else using BC and AD would be totally ridiculous.

How could we possibly take offence, since these are the commonly used and understood expressions when referring to the calendar?

Moreover, I most certainly would not expect society in general to use these Common Era terms rather than BC and AD.

Indeed, I would go much further and react with undiluted scorn and disapproval to any attempt to do so.

That is because I feel passionately that a society should be allowed to express its own culture – and this attack on BC and AD, fatuous as it may seem on the surface, is yet another attack on British culture and the Christian underpinnings which provide it with its history, identity and fundamental values.

The impulse behind changing such established terms – obviously as familiar to us all as the names of the days of the week – is part of the wider desire to obliterate Christianity in British culture.

The fact remains, however, that whatever terms are used the British calendar is calibrated from the birth of Jesus.

As Ann Widdecombe remarked, whatever next - abolishing the calendar itself on the grounds that it too therefore offends non-Christians?

The reasoning behind this linguistic legerdemain is entirely spurious. There is no evidence whatever that any non-Christian group is offended by BC and AD, nor that they would like it to be replaced.

Even if they did, it cannot ever be right for minorities to seek to replace fundamental majority cultural expressions or values with their own.

To do so has nothing whatever to do with impartiality – indeed, quite the reverse. For what about the need not to offend or alienate Christians?

To ask the question is to realise how far we have travelled down this invidious road. For Christians in Britain are now routinely offended and alienated – indeed, positively harassed, and with their religious rights denied – and all in the Orwellian cause of promoting ‘diversity’.

In the latest example, police have threatened a Christian cafe owner with arrest – for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen which are said to incite hatred against homosexuals.

Why stop at a TV screen, one might ask. For in such a climate, it is hardly frivolous to wonder how long it will be before the Bible itself is banned.

At the weekend, a campaign was launched by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, to press for greater legal protection for Christians against such attacks.

The pressure on Christians, however, is merely part of a far wider onslaught on Western culture through the hijacking or censorship of language.

Thus Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval’.

Last week, it was reported that Southwark council has renamed its Guy Fawkes fireworks display ‘The Colour Thief: A Winter Extravaganza Celebrating the Change of the Seasons’.

This ludicrous gesture is presumably aimed at being more ‘inclusive’ of Catholics upset by references to the 17th-century Popish gunpowder plot.

What is actually does is exclude Britons by airbrushing out part of their history.

Even more bizarre are the latest edicts by so-called ‘equality’ experts, who say that the traditional black garb of witches in children’s stories leads to racism (yes, seriously).

Witches should therefore be given pink hats, and fairies dressed in dark colours.

Meanwhile Anne O’Connor, an ‘early years consultant’, advises that ‘white paper’, especially in schools, provokes racism since it does not reflect the range of hues of the human race.

Maybe Ms O’Connor needs especially strong spectacles. Has anyone ever seen a human being with skin as white as paper?

And finally, teachers are told they should be ready to lie, if necessary, when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer ‘black’ or ‘brown’.

Can you believe this? What on earth has our society come to when grown individuals in receipt of public money descend to such mind-blowing imbecility?

Calling children as young as two ‘racist’ is simply grotesque. Helping them ‘unlearn’ negative associations with dark colours is to try to brainwash them in ways reminiscent of Soviet Stalinism.

But then, political correctness is all about dictating what people are permitted or forbidden to say as a way of controlling and reshaping a society and its values.

Look at the way the Labour leader Ed Miliband has refused to call people who defraud the welfare system ‘benefit cheats’.

He has condemned abuses of the welfare system and said it must be stopped. So why does he say he cannot accuse the people who behave in this way of being ‘cheats’?

The answer is surely that political correctness means you can’t criticise anyone who does wrong if they belong to a group of people who are considered marginalised or oppressed.

This is effectively to give such groups a free pass for any bad behaviour. And anyone who dares criticise is accused of ‘demonising’ such groups.

This means, of course, that those who criticise such bad behaviour are themselves demonised.

Indeed, they can be positively victimised and even threatened with their lives by vicious campaigns on Twitter or the internet – all on the grounds that they have ‘demonised’ some ‘victim’ group or other. If this wasn’t so terrifying, it would be hilarious.

The result of this hijacking of the language is that debate becomes impossible because words like rights, tolerance, liberal, justice, truth and many more have come to mean the precise opposite of what they really do mean.

The result of this inversion of right and wrong is that morality itself has been reversed or negated. Politically correct language is thus a way of shifting the very centre of moral and political gravity.

So what was once considered far-Left has become the centre-ground; and those who stand on the real centre-ground are now dismissed as extreme.

The attack on BC and AD is merely the latest salvo in the war of the words, part of the defining madness of our time.

[Teddy Bear]

The Office for National Statistics has polled 413,000 people in this country and determined that 69% of our population consider themselves Christians, whether regular church goers or not.

Might come as a shock to the BBC, who would like it to be about 1% and declining. Apparently too, the BBC reckoned the homosexual population was as high as 27%. Turns out that's only 1%.

Bet the percentage of those at the BBC are far higher - that's probably where they got the 27% from.

The absurdity of statistical surveys: it's just a numbers game
by STEPHEN DOUGHTY

Last updated at 6:42 PM on 29th September 2011

Some eight years ago, a Whitehall consultation paper assured us all that between five and seven per cent of the population are homosexual.

These figures, supplied by the gay lobby group Stonewall, were used in drawing up civil partnership law.

Many at the time thought this was a very conservative estimate.
The numbers are important because the gay lobby needs to defeat the mainstream churches and their stubborn insistence that sexual abstinence and fidelity are a good thing.

The numbers are important because the gay lobby needs to defeat the mainstream churches and their stubborn insistence that sexual abstinence and fidelity are a good thing.

The claims of Alfred Kinsey that 13 per cent of men are exclusively homosexual and seven per cent of women exclusively lesbian were still widely believed.

Even last year, the BBC website continued to publicise figures suggesting that the gay population was over three per cent and might be as high as 27 per cent.

Well, now we know.

For the second year running, the Office for National Statistics has produced estimates putting the population of exclusively homosexual or lesbian people at one per cent, with a further half a per cent bisexual.

The figures were drawn from the biggest social survey ever conducted in Britain, based on questions answered by 413,000 people.

To get an idea of the level of accuracy likely in a survey like this, bear in mind that a typical political poll uses a sample of 1,000.

And since it was conducted in confidence, and the level of stigma that goes with acknowledging you are gay is now extremely low, it is hard to believe the findings were much skewed by people lying about themselves.

Why does this matter?

It should not matter. Gay people have a right to proper treatment no matter how strong their numbers, and everybody else has a duty to behave properly towards gays.

I have seen plenty of examples of bullying of homosexual people, and it isn’t pretty, and it brings shame on those who do it.

But you can tell that the numbers do matter because of the great expense to which the ONS must have gone to get them and the silence of the gay lobby on the results.
For the second year running, the Office for National Statistics has produced estimates putting the population of exclusively homosexual or lesbian people at one per cent.

For the second year running, the Office for National Statistics has produced estimates putting the population of exclusively homosexual or lesbian people at one per cent.

The problem for the myriad gay pressure groups is this: how do you keep collecting fat taxpayer grants in an age when nobody is scared of Aids any more and the large body of supposedly oppressed people you represent keeps shrinking?

And for ministers and civil servants, there is a question of how you justify continued gay equality legislation when the general public is finding it increasingly irksome.

Not to mention seriously damaging, as in the equality rules that have shut down 10 Roman Catholic adoption agencies at a time when numbers of adoptions of young children are disastrously low.

The reasoning provided by Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone - ‘we are a world leader for gay rights but there is still more we must do’ – has to stand against the claims of Christians who object strongly to the extension of marriage to same sex couples and who fear their churches will be compelled to celebrate gay weddings.

Of course, Christianity is in steep decline, isn’t it? No, it’s not.

The idea that Christianity is disappearing comes from the same statistical fantasy world that provided a tenfold exaggeration of the gay population.

The ONS survey that gave rather more convincing figures on the gay population also found that 69 per cent of people are Christian, and that the ratio of Christians to non-believers is three to one.

And don’t try the line that young people are deserting Christianity. Numbers of Christians under 25 are higher than among 30-somethings, the ONS found.

The numbers are important because the gay lobby needs to defeat the mainstream churches and their stubborn insistence that sexual abstinence and fidelity are a good thing, and homosexual activity a bad one.

This is the reason why the gay movement has worked so hard for 25 years to turn or break the Church of England: you cannot persuade the majority of people that homosexual behaviour is good while the established Church and its dignitaries maintain that that is not so.

The gay lobby has plenty of allies who will try to smooth over the little problem with the numbers. Starting with the BBC, which I may have mentioned above.

At the weekend we learned that the Corporation wishes to replace the terms AD and BC with CE and BCE, for Common Era and Before Common Era.

This may make no rational sense at all, but the BBC religion and ethics department has said that ‘as the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians.'

There was puzzlement at this because nobody could find anyone who was offended by AD and BC.

But perhaps there was, and they amount to a bunch of taxpayer-subsidised lobby groups who can claim to represent no more than one in 100 people.

[Teddy Bear]

Richard Littlejohn writing in the Daily Mail goes more into what the real statistics from the ONS shows, with special focus on various BBC decisions in light of it.

Whatever the BBC say, Britain is still mainly white, Christian and straight

By Richard Littlejohn

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. And then there’s the Integrated Household Survey from the Office of National Statistics.

The Government spends a small fortune on this annual exercise, which is designed to identify social trends in Britain. This year was the biggest ever, with a record 420,000 respondents.

According to the ONS, it is the definitive study of ‘sexual identity, religion, ethnicity and perceived general health’.
A survey has found that 70 per cent of Britons claim to be Christian even if they do not attend church

Surprising? 70 per cent of Britons claim to be Christian even if they do not attend church

Presumably, it is intended to reinforce the officially endorsed portrait of Britain as a vibrant mosaic of multi-cultural, religious and sexual diversity.

Certainly, that’s how it has been greeted on the Left. The Independent, for instance, was ecstatic. ‘Official statistics show big rise in number of Britons unsure of their sexuality’ it declared yesterday.

Under the headline ‘More varieties of sex, please, we’re British’, the paper rejoices: ‘Britons are becoming more sexually adventurous, with fewer defining themselves as “straight” and an increasing number answering “don’t know” when asked to define their leanings.’


Undoubtedly, if you ignore the facts, the Indy’s got a point. Over the past 12 months, there was a fall of 0.2 per cent in the number of adults who say they are ‘straight’.

That’s right, 0.2 per cent. His name is Reg, he lives in Rotherham, he hasn’t had a girlfriend for five years on account of his halitosis and he thinks he might have a bit of a crush on that bloke out of Torchwood.

But that doesn’t exactly suggest Britain is entering an enlightened era of hedonistic sexual flexibility.

I’d have thought the new figures would come as something of a disappointment to the high priests of homosexual equality. Only 1.3 per cent of men who replied to the survey say they are gay and just 0.6 per cent of women identify as lesbian.

That’s well short of the seven per cent claimed by the gay rights organisation Stonewall. And nowhere near the alleged 27 per cent who were reported by the BBC website last year to be either gay or bisexual.

Ninety four per cent of men and women consider themselves 100 per cent heterosexual. Another four per cent said they couldn’t or wouldn’t answer the question. In other words: mind your own damn business.

It’s the same when it comes to religion. Despite the oft-repeated mantra that Britain is a secular society, in which the only faith which matters is Islam, the ONS reports that 70 per cent of us regard ourselves as Christians.

OK, so we may not all be regular churchgoers, but we are still cultural Christians, who broadly buy into the Ten Commandments — if only in the breach rather than the observation.

Islam accounts for 4.4 per cent of the population, although this often seems like an under-estimate — especially if you live in London or one of our other great cities.

Nevertheless, the survey contradicts the accepted picture of 21st-century Britain peddled by the vested interests of the social-engineering industry and endorsed whole- heartedly by the BBC. Practising Christians are regarded as a dangerous minority cult to be persecuted and harassed at every turn, while self-appointed spokesmen for Islam are treated with kid-glove reverence.

Only this week the BBC announced it was scrapping references to AD and BC because it didn’t want to offend, or discriminate against, non-Christians. To hell with the millions of Christians who pay the licence fee.

The BBC projects an image of Britain which is unrecognisable to most of its inhabitants. Its news bulletins and dramas are all refracted through the prism of diversity, multi-culturalism and political dogma.

No soap or police series is complete without a prominent, proselytising gay storyline — even The Archers, which these days is little more than an everyday story of Islington folk.

News reports and documentaries are all presented from a Leftist, metropolitan perspective. What must people living in Norfolk and Northumbria make of every school classroom they see featured on the BBC being packed full of little girls in Muslim headscarves?

I’ve written before about Question Time audiences bearing no relation to the demographic of the towns and cities from which the programme is being broadcast — instead resembling a Guardian leader writer’s fantasy of what Britain should look like.

Of course I understand how these attitudes become ingrained. If you live in London, the picture of Britain painted by the BBC and the Guardianistas seems pretty accurate. I’m reminded of the remark attributed to the Earl of Arran in the Sixties, when he was asked to explain why the House of Lords had legalised homosexuality but refused to impose a ban on badger-baiting: ‘Not many badgers in the House of Lords.’

BBC producers, quangocrats and Left-wing political activists only ever meet other people like themselves.

Where the problem arises is when they impose the prejudices of their own, self-regarding demi-monde on the rest of the country.

That’s why they seek solace in anything which ‘proves’ Britain is increasingly sexually adventurous and culturally diverse, however tenuous the evidence.

It’s also why every government and council job advert always seeks applications from sexual, racial and religious minorities who are said to be ‘under-represented’.

What the Integrated Household Survey actually shows is they are probably vastly over-represented,

Britain is still overwhelmingly white, Christian and robustly heterosexual.

According to the National Office of Sex, Lies and Statistics.

[Teddy Bear]

The Vatican has given their opinion about the BBC stance - I wouldn't call it a blessing

Vatican attacks BBC's 'senseless hypocrisy'
The Vatican has condemned the BBC’s suggestion that religiously “neutral” terms should be used instead of “BC” and “AD” during discussions of history on air.

By Tim Ross, Religious Affairs Editor

The semi-official newspaper of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano, described the guidance from the BBC’s ethics advisers as “enormous nonsense” and accused the broadcaster of “senseless hypocrisy”.
The guidelines suggested that the modern phrases “the common era” and “before the common era” should be considered as potential replacements for Anno Domini and Before Christ to avoid offending non-Christians.

Some of the corporation’s highest profile presenters reacted with dismay and promised to ignore the idea.

The row erupted last month after the guidance emerged on the religion pages of the BBC website, which stated: "As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians.
"In line with modern practice, BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) are used as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD.”

The corporation has insisted that there was no management directive ordering producers and editors across the institution to follow the secular date descriptions.

However, some popular programmes including University Challenge, hosted by Jeremy Paxman, and Radio 4's In Our Time, presented by Melvyn Bragg, have used the phrases.

The beginning of the so-called “common era” is dated from the same point as the Gregorian calendar but it removes any explicit reference to the birth of Jesus.

In a front-page editorial, the Vatican newspaper stated that the birth of Jesus was widely accepted as a “historically revolutionary moment”, including among Muslims and Jews.

“It is by now very clear that respect for other religions is only an excuse, because those who wish to erase every trace of Christianity from Western culture are only a few secular westerners,” the paper said.

“The BBC has limited itself to changing only the description, rather than the computation of time, but in doing so, it cannot be denied that it has made a hypocritical gesture: the hypocrisy of those who pretend not to know why years began to be counted precisely from that moment.
“To deny the historically revolutionary function of the coming of Christ on the earth, accepted even by those who do not recognise him as Son of God, is enormous nonsense.
“There is nothing more anti-historical and senseless.”

During his visit to the UK last year, Pope Benedict XVI urged the British to resist the “aggressive secularism” and defend religious freedom. He warned that the attempts to eliminate God made by totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century should provide “sobering lessons” on tolerance.

L’Osservatore Romano echoed this argument, citing the attempts of Lenin and Mussolini to change the calendar as evidence that the BBC’s action has “very bad precedent”.

Among the stars to have objected to the BBC’s suggestion were James Naughtie, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, his colleague John Humphrys, and Andrew Marr.

Critics said that as the secular terminology still uses the birth of Christ as its reference point, switching to the term “common era” would make little difference.
The corporation has insisted that individual programmes were free to choose which terms were used.

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC's head of religion and ethics, said: "The BBC, like most people, use BC and AD as standard terminology. But we recognise that it is possible to use different terminology, and that some people do.
"For our religion and ethics programming on BBC television and radio we generally use AD and BC."

Writing on a blog before the Vatican criticism emerged, he said: "It is a shame that people seeking to make mischief should cast a shadow over the wonderful celebration of our Christian religious heritage that is Songs of Praise." Songs of Praise celebrated its 50th anniversary last weekend.