John Allen, the widely respected Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, takes his British colleagues to task for a story that got some notice earlier this week.

Seems that The Times of London reported -erroneously, Allen says-that an Anglican-Catholic ecumenical commission was close to saying that Anglicans would soon answer to Rome and the pope. Before the ink had dried on the page, the commission put out a statement saying the Times report was wildly inaccurate.

What Allen is saying-and mincing no words while he’s at it-is that this is not unusual for the tabloid culture of the British press. It’s not only irresponsible, he says, but dangerous. “when the British press sneezes, the rest of us catch cold,” Allen writes.