' Not balanced '

He said that the report in Salient was hardly a balanced account either, since it did not quote any other speaker than Dr Geiringer.

Mr Dyce said that Mr Michael Hirchneld, a Jew, who, with Barbara Foot, a Catholic, and well-known student leader Tony Haas, made up the team defending the Pope's encyclical, was judged the evening's best speaker.

Mr Dyce is also curious to know how Dr Geiringer came to be on one of the teams. The other members on his side were Messrs Peter Blizard and Rod Alley. Both are university staff members and the debate was supposed to be a staff v. students affair. Dr Geiringer is not on the staff.

The Tablet has seen the Salient report, which it finds most distasteful and not calculated to improve the already sick image of university students.

It discussed it with Dr Geiringer, who said that he had nothing to do with setting the subject. He 'elt that he had been very badly eported, but he understood that his main thesis—that the Pope was anti-Christ —had been left out because the university censor felt that to publish it would be to insult a reigning sovereign—in this case the Pope.

"I am very annoyed that they reported it so badly," he said.

The Tablet wonders why they reported at at all.