Holy Smoke

In this week's Holy Smoke podcast I suggest that Pope Francis has a more profound appreciation of classical music than any of his predecessors. I've been saying this for years and everyone assumes that it’s a wind-up or that I'm confusing him with Benedict XVI. Not so. The Pope doesn't just enjoy listening to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner: he has strong views on the best recordings of their work, and very sound views they are too. You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear the details, but here's a taster: Francis not only recognises Wilhelm Furtwängler as the supreme interpreter of Wagner's Ring cycle, but he asserts the superiority of the live 1950 La Scala recordings to those taped for Italian radio in 1953. And he’s right. Fortunately all the recordings that receive the papal imprimatur are out of copyright, so you’ll hear extracts from the performances. And I reveal what members of the Sistine Chapel choir told me about Francis’s obsession with an opera whose symbolism has always made Catholics

Is Dr Jordan Peterson about to convert to Christianity? If so, it’s a big deal. The earnest but sardonic Canadian psychologist is already the most effective advocate for the moral precepts of Christianity in the English-speaking media. But, until now, his penetrating exposition of the Bible has been inspired more by Jungian symbolism than by actual religious belief. That may be about to change, albeit not in the happiest of circumstances. In recent months Peterson has suffered from a combination of medical conditions that have left him in wretched pain, both physical and psychological. This has left him wondering whether it’s time to submit to the dogmatic assertions of orthodox Christianity. He explains his complex reasoning in an extraordinary podcast, in which he presents himself to his friend Jonathan Pageau, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, as something close to a broken man. He certainly sounds and looks like one. The contrast with the Jordan Peterson who politely humiliated the sneering Cathy Newman o

Beijing's new rules for clergy of all religions in China have been published in English – and, disastrously for the Vatican, they make no mention of any role for Pope Francis in approving the appointment of Chinese Catholic bishops. So it looks as if the Vatican's secret deal with China, which gave the Pope nominal spiritual sovereignty over party stooges operating as bishops, is dead in the water. President Xi appears to have reneged on the agreement – having achieved his aim of breaking the back of the underground Catholic Church in China.   Reports of the debacle have come at a very inconvenient moment for the Pope, who this week is planning to visit persecuted Christians in Iraq. My guest this week is Fr Benedict Kiely, founder of Nasrean.org, a charity that helps dispossessed religious minorities in the Middle East. He reveals that some Iraqi Christians are worried that Francis will use his trip not to throw a spotlight on the their desperate situation but, instead, to call for 'dialogue' with their Musl

This week's Holy Smoke examines the fragmentation of American Catholicism following the election of pro-choice Catholic Joe Biden. It focuses on the strangest current of thought among the many conservative Catholics calling for an urgent change of approach in order to confront what promises to be an authoritarian liberal administration. It's called integralism, a label previously attached to distinctly un-American European Catholic reactionaries such as Action française and General Franco's Falangists. In its US incarnation it's less nationalist but in some ways equally extreme. Its proponents want to turn the United States into a nation in which, in the long run, only Catholics will be full citizens eligible to hold office. This new integralism is a medieval fantasy built around the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas. It has been labelled 'clerico-fascist' by its critics – and also, more convincingly to my mind, 'Catholic Sharia'. No one is going to vote for it, of course, but as you'll hear in this episode it

In 1930, the American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote these chilling words: 'The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.' It's an idea that, for many of us, is harder to shrug off now than it was a year ago. Loneliness has many dimensions and, after nearly a year of intermittent lockdowns, its consequences are piling up. We've talked before on Holy Smoke about the lockdown's devastating effect on churchgoing – but, as my guest Mary Kenny points out, there's been an across-the-board suspension of the small-scale social activities that mean so much in particular for older people. As she says, many Britons in their 70s and 80s are wondering if they'll live to see another coffee morning. A depressing topic then, but, this being the irrepressible Mary, our conversation veers off in all sorts of quirky directions. The best quote comes from her late husband, the brilliant maverick war cor

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ambitious left-wing archbishop of Chicago, must have imagined that Joe Biden's inauguration last week would be a moment to savour. He and a small number of his liberal colleagues, known as 'the Biden bishops', have been working tremendously hard to make sure that, once their candidate was elected, any mention of his radical support for abortion would be sotto voce and preferably inaudible. They thought they'd succeeded. But then things went spectacularly wrong. The president of the US bishops' conference, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, drafted a statement on behalf of his colleagues that not only mentioned Biden's pro-choice activism but also drew attention to the fact that the new administration planned to remove certain legal protections or 'conscience rights' from Americans who won't participate in abortions or other affronts to their traditional morality.  The Biden bishops were horrified, and pulled a fast one: they contacted the Vatican's left-leaning Secretariat of

The English parish has been a source of spiritual consolation, and a certain amount of social comedy, for more than 1,000 years. So it's very old – and, it turns out, frighteningly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Countless parish churches, both Anglican and Catholic, will quietly shut their doors forever over the next few months. Bishops will blame Covid-19, but they bear a heavy responsibility for the fragile state of parish life before it was hit by the epidemic.  In this episode of Holy Smoke, former Church of England vicar Dr Gavin Ashenden tells us what it was like running a parish, and reveals his strategies for dealing with difficult personalities in the congregation, some of whom really did resemble the stereotypes of British sitcoms. He's convinced that many parish churches have effectively been killed by their bishops' uninspiring management techniques, and more recently their embarrassing infatuation with woke culture.  But you may be surprised and comforted by the optimism that breaks in at the e

Every day there’s some sort conspiracy theory being aired by right-wing Catholics on social media involving the globalist agenda of the Pope’s UN/Chinese/Masonic/Soros foundation puppet-masters. No surprise, perhaps, given the fervour with which the Pope promotes a globalist agenda while his diplomats kowtow to Beijing. Some left-wing Catholics are into the conspiracy business, too: in their imaginations it’s the feisty conservative broadcaster EWTN taking the role of the Soros Foundation. Catholic pundits with furious views have become a major headache for the Vatican – one it richly deserves, you might think, given what Cardinal George Pell describes as the ’Technicolour corruption’ lurking in the Curia, most of which goes unreported by a tame Vatican press corps. But is there any excuse for promoting conspiracy theories? Of course not, especially if a fantasy could have serious consequences for society. So we need to take a close look at the conservative Catholic campaign against coronavirus vaccines, wh

Rarely has a religious culture collapsed more rapidly than that of Catholic Ireland, which just 30 years ago seemed indestructible. Incredibly, it looks as if the Irish Church will have ordained more bishops than priests in 2020. It goes without saying that the Irish abuse crisis has hugely accelerated the process of secularisation in what was once the most Catholic of countries. Young people in Ireland now refer to the clergy with a withering disdain verging on hatred.  My guest today, the celebrated Irish journalist, broadcaster and playwright Mary Kenny, offers a more nuanced analysis of the powerful and paradoxical world in which she grew up: one in which Catholic clergy and lay people could be simultaneously fervently pious, warm-hearted and yet paralysed by petty snobbery. She talks about how the Irish Free State handed far too much power to bishops and priests. In effect, they replaced the disappearing Anglo-Irish nobility as the new aristocracy of rural Ireland, exercising an authority over people's

It's the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson is joined by his fellow composer Sir James MacMillan to discuss a side of Beethoven that the postmodern artistic establishment prefers to ignore: his unwavering faith in God and the surprisingly strict morality that arose from it.  Beethoven may not have gone to Mass very often, but before he died he asked to see a priest and during years of intense suffering composed one of the greatest of all settings of the liturgy, the Missa Solemnis. He was more proud of this masterpiece than of any of his symphonies; before he wrote it he meticulously researched the Latin text, and he also plunged into a study of the polyphonic masters of the 16th century.  Sir James MacMillan is currently presenting a Radio 4 series on the religious faith of four composers: Tallis, Wagner, Elgar and Bernstein. If the BBC has the good sense to make another season, then he's planning to do a programme on Beethoven. But you do

The next president of the United States is, we are told, a devout Catholic who scrupulously attends Sunday Mass. This is in sharp contrast to the current president, who has never been more than an occasional churchgoer with, to put it politely, ill-defined religious views. So why are many Christians worried that a Joe Biden presidency poses an unprecedented threat to  America’s constitutional guarantee of religious freedom?  In this episode of Holy Smoke I talk to Andrea Picciotti Bayer, director of the Washington-based Conscience Project, about the continuing ideological assault by US officialdom on religious believers whose passionately held convictions challenge the closest thing the 21st-century United States has to an official creed – identity politics. For the past four years these believers, mostly Christian, have enjoyed an unusual degree of support from the Trump administration, which has prioritised religious liberty both at home and abroad. But is America’s second Catholic president about to pull

In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson says the Vatican's report on allegations of sexual assault by Theodore McCarrick is a whitewash. 

Has there been a single Covid death as a result of someone attending a socially distanced church service? The answer is no, as you'd expect it to be. But, despite this, the Government will ban public acts of worship from Thursday.  This decision is so perverse that even the Catholic bishops of England and Wales – who fell over each other during the last lockdown in their eagerness to shut churches – have written to the government asking for the scientific evidence indicating that properly supervised Masses pose a threat to the people attending them. So far they haven't received the courtesy of a reply, probably because there is no evidence.  In this episode of Holy Smoke, Fr David Palmer, a Catholic priest from Nottingham, tells me that his church will be open this Sunday, cleverly exploiting a loophole in the government guidelines. If the police try to stop him saying Mass, or administering any other sacrament, then he's willing to be arrested. Other clergy, including some in the Church of England, have

Ask yourself: who are the most vulnerable and marginalised people in British society? My answer would be young adults suffering from learning disabilities, who attract sympathy when they are children but, once they enter their 20s, simply drop off the map of public consciousness The consequences of this are dreadful: 95 per cent of them are unemployed.  But four years ago that situation began to change, when Rosa Monckton founded Team Domenica, named after her daughter, now aged 25, who has Down's syndrome. Domenica was the last godchild of Diana Princess of Wales, who was a close friend of Rosa's. The two women mixed in the same exclusive social circles: Rosa was the Chief Executive of Tiffany, no less, and I remember first meeting her there at an impossibly smart party in their Bond Street store at some point in the 1990s. (To say that I was a fish out of water is putting it mildly.)  Years later I watched her shepherding learning-disabled young people across the streets of Brighton in foul weather befo

There was a point in the Watergate scandal when revelations came so thick and fast that journalists struggled to keep up with them. And we seem to have reached an equivalent point in respect to the scandals engulfing Pope Francis's Vatican.   Last week I interviewed Vatican expert Ed Condon about the sacking of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, accused by the Pope of stealing or misusing unimaginable sums of Church money, something he denies. Since Ed and I spoke, there have been two developments, both in their own way hard to believe.    First, Angelo Becciu is now accused of overseeing the transfer of large amounts of money to Australia during the trial on fabricated sex abuse charges of his arch-adversary Cardinal George Pell, who had rumbled him.    Second, the Pope has announced the setting up of a commission to decide which Vatican financial transactions should remain confidential. And, incredibly, the man he has asked to run it is Cardinal Kevin Farrell, formerly one of the closest associates of ex-Cardinal Theo

The Vatican is this week in the grip of a paranoia reminiscent of the days when Renaissance popes (and their dinner guests) were forced to employ food-tasters.  Cardinal Angelo Becciu, until 2018 the sostenuto at the Secretariat of State – that is, the Pope's hugely powerful chief of staff – has been sacked by Francis, who has accused him of stealing vast amounts of money. The Pope, who once showered him with favours, stripped Becciu of all the privileges associated with the position of cardinal – a twist of the knife worthy of a Netflix drama, or perhaps one of the Godfather films.  And now, in an equally extraordinary sequel, Becciu's arch-foe Cardinal George Pell, until recently languishing in an Australian jail cell, is heading back to Rome to advise Francis on resuming the Pell financial reforms that Becciu torpedoed. My guest for this episode of Holy Smoke is the journalist who can take the most credit for uncovering Becciu's activities: Ed Condon, Washington Bureau Chief of the Catholic News Agen

Boris Johnson's package of Covid restrictions announced this week included a rule that weddings will be limited to 15 people and funerals to 30 – numbers plucked out of thin air that will have questionable effect on the transmission of the virus. You might think that a ruling that affects only weddings and funerals isn't such a big deal for the churches, but that is to underestimate the fanatical zeal of their leaders for implementing, and expanding, restrictions on their own worship. The control-freak Archbishop of Canterbury, predictably, seemed quite thrilled by the government's intervention.  My own reaction, informed by conversations with many clergy outraged by their bishops' baffling willingness to accept any curtailment of church life, was to wonder whether some Christians will be forced to 'go underground' – that is, find a way of worshipping that quietly disobeys their own leaders. To an extent this is already happening: at the height of the pandemic, Catholics were holding secret Masses that re

The row over the evisceration of Westminster Cathedral Choir has erupted again. The cathedral's excellent music administrator, Madeline Smith, has resigned from her post, accusing the choir school – which, incredibly, is the ultimate source of the threat to the choir's musical standards – of misleading parents and creating a 'toxic' atmosphere that drove out the master of music, Martin Baker.    This week's Holy Smoke gives you the background to the story and argues that the downgrading of Westminster Cathedral Choir is an act of spiritual as well as musical vandalism. There's a powerful contribution from Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen and former chorister at Canterbury Cathedral.    The choir isn't singing at the moment, because of Covid: Westminster Cathedral has been predictably craven in its response to the pandemic, embracing and adding to the Government's control-freakery. When services resume, we can expect the long-planned dumbing down of the world's premier Catholic choir to be bla

Damian Thompson is joined by Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, Hungary's ambassador to the Holy See. A member of one of Europe's most historically influential families, Eduard explains how his religious practices have adapted to the acceleration of new technologies, and tells Damian how the Habsburgs keep in contact.

Next month, the Vatican will talk to Beijing about renewing its 2018 deal with the Chinese Communist Party that effectively allowed President Xi to choose the country's Catholic bishops. He has used this power to force Catholics loyal to Rome to join the puppet Catholic church set up by Chairman Mao in the 1950s. They can no longer refuse on the grounds that they recognise only the Pope's Church because Francis himself has validated the orders of Xi's party stooges.  But the Holy Father has done more than that: he has ostentatiously failed to condemn China's savage assaults on human rights, the worst of which is its attempt to eradicate the country's Muslim Uyghurs ethnic minority by herding them into concentration camps and forcing Uighur women to have abortions.  As I say in this episode of Holy Smoke, the Pope's behaviour is not just a disgrace but also a mystery. The Catholic Church has gained nothing from the 2018 pact. On the contrary, it has given Beijing a handy excuse to intensify its harassment