Mr. Black suffers the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune.

LONDON • Hollinger chairman Conrad Black has attacked another religious leader for inappropriate and biased meddling in his affairs. In a recent interview, he decried the "reckless guilt-mongering" and "luddite assault" on capitalism contained in a book by a high-ranking Catholic official which Black blasted as a "naive, sophomoric mishmash."

In the interview, Mr. Black insisted that he is still a devout Catholic, but added that he felt it was his Christian duty to excoriate "trendy clerics mouthing socialist platitudes."

And he does seem to have a vocation for it -- last month, incensed by the Catholic Bishop Fredrick Henry's comments about the strike at the Calgary Herald, Mr. Black responded with an erudite epistle calling the Bishop a "jumped-up little twerp."

In the latest incident, Mr. Black is outraged by a book by Catholic teacher J. Christ that has overtly socialist prescriptions such as "your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality." Mr. Black warned that Mr. Christ's book, The Bible, signals an "attempted NDP coup d'etat" in the Catholic hierarchy.

If successful, the totalitarian priest's anti-business pogrom will "insolently strive to communize industry, confiscate wealth, and discourage economic growth," fumed Mr. Black.

"All this crypto-communist claptrap about the meek inheriting the earth and that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven, just promotes envy and failure," snarled Mr. Black. "Won't work. It's not the way to run any enterprise."

"Who the Hell does this Jesus character think he is," asked Mr. Black "to tell me 'sell everything you have and give to the poor' and to proclaim 'the deceitfulness of wealth.'" Black sneered that His "'caring and compassion,' however well-intentioned, would more accurately be called plundering and bribery."

Several passages in the book also contain borderline defamatory assertions about Mr. Black and his National Post, according to the press baron's lawyers. They are exploring the possibility of a libel action against Mr. Christ for maliciously and fraudulently claiming that "he who lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him" because, in fact, Post profitability is "just around the corner."

In addition, Mr. Christ abused His power and slandered Mr. Black's position as Director of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce by casting the money lenders out of the temple and calling them 'a den of robbers.'