Holy Smoke

In this week’s copy of The Spectator, Dan Hitchens argues that a lesser reported aspect of Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private schools is who it could hit hardest: faith schools. Hundreds of independent religious schools charge modest, means-tested fees. Could a hike in costs make these schools unviable? And, with uncertainty about how ideological a decision this is, does the government even care? Dan joins Damian on the podcast to discuss.  Raisel Freedman from the Partnerships for Jewish Schools also joins later, to discuss how the measure could threaten Jewish independent schools, when they provide a haven for students from a climate of rising antisemitism. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

06/09/2024 • 24:30

Writer Guy Stagg threw in his job to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome - choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up only by his rucksack.  On this episode of Holy Smoke, from the archives, Guy explains why his journey was a pilgrimage, not just travels. And Damian Thompson talks to Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, about why he’s irresistibly drawn to church buildings while remaining an unbeliever - albeit an agnostic rather than an atheist.

29/08/2024 • 22:39

In this week's Holy Smoke episode Damian Thompson welcomes back Eduard Habsburg, Hungary's Ambassador to the Holy See and also, to give him his family title, Archduke Eduard of Austria. Last year he published The Habsburg Way: 7 Rules for Turbulent Times, which offered advice on how to live a good life based on the panoramic history of his dynasty.  One reason it was such a success is that Eduard has a cult following on X, formerly Twitter, made up of people who initially followed him because he's a Habsburg but stayed to absorb his spiritual wisdom and good cheer. In this episode, with Damian speaking as someone who frequently gets drawn into (or starts) catfights on that platform (his words!), he asks if Eduard has any advice for struggling social media sociopaths. And he does. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

19/07/2024 • 24:25

The other day I received a press release about an intriguing album of keyboard music by 16th- and early 17th-century composers, three Englishman and a Dutchman, played on the modern piano by Mishka Rushdie Momen, one of this country’s most gifted and intellectually curious young concert pianists. It’s called Reformation, and before I’d heard a note of the music – which is performed with thrilling exuberance and subtlety – I knew I wanted to interview Ms Rushdie Momen.  That’s because Hyperion had included with the press release a strikingly perceptive essay by the pianist putting this ostensibly secular keyboard music in the context of what she rightly calls the ‘vandalism’ of the English Reformation, shockingly illustrated by the demolition of the great shrine of Walsingham. At the same time, she recognises the unnerving pressures facing both Catholic and Protestant composers in an era of bewildering and violent cultural upheaval – but also one in which we can glimpse  elements of toleration and compromise.  Here’s my Holy Smoke interview with Mishka Rushdie Momen, which begins with a track from her album: a little galliard called La Volta, danced at Elizabeth I’s court even though the Queen knew that its composer, William Byrd, had remained faithful to the Catholic Church.

01/07/2024 • 20:31

Here's an episode of Holy Smoke to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner later this year. This embarrassingly eccentric genius was, perhaps, the most devoutly Catholic of all the major composers – but you don't have to be religious to appreciate the unique consolation offered by his gigantic symphonies. On the other hand, it's hard to appreciate the unique flavour of Bruckner without taking into account the influence of the liturgy on his sublime slow movements and what the (atheist) composer and Bruckner scholar Robert Simpson called the 'calm fire' of his blazing finales. If you make it through to the end of this episode, you'll hear exactly what he meant.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons

23/05/2024 • 30:23

When did supposedly religious funerals turn into ‘celebrations of life’ that are more about entertaining the congregation than mourning the dead person – who, these days, hasn’t died but ‘passed’?  In this episode of Holy Smoke I’m joined by one of my favourite American priests, Fr Joe Krupp, a self-described ‘redneck’ from Michigan who reaches millions with his powerful ministry and wisecracking podcasts. He puts his finger on what’s gone wrong. Wait for the horror story at the end. He had me laughing so much that I could hardly get my questions out. Don’t miss this one! 

24/04/2024 • 21:20

In this episode of Holy Smoke, I'm joined by The Spectator's features editor William Moore, who asks in this week's issue of the magazine whether the Church of England is 'apologising for Christianity'. A report by the Oversight Group, set up by the Church Commissioners to make reparations for African slavery, not only wants to see unimaginable sums transferred to 'community groups' – its chair, the Bishop of Croydon, thinks a billion pounds would be appropriate – it also deplores the efforts of Christian missionaries to eradicate traditional religious practices. But, as Will's article points out, those traditional practices included – at their most extreme – idol-worship, twin infanticide and cannibalism. Are these part of the religious heritage that the C of E patronisingly wants African Christians to rediscover? Did missionaries and early converts to the faith who gave their lives for the faith die in vain? 

15/03/2024 • 17:03

At a press conference in Rome last week, an ex-nun claiming to have suffered ritual sex abuse at the hands of Fr Marko Rupnik turned the heat on Pope Francis. How much did he know about the stomach-turning charges levelled at the Slovenian mosaic artist, who was a Jesuit until he was thrown out of the order? And, more important, when did he know? Why is Rupnik still a priest? The Pope's allies in the media are desperate for this story to go away. But, as this episode of Holy Smoke argues, the scandal is growing and threatens to engulf Francis himself. 

26/02/2024 • 16:21

Can the Church of England escape from the deadly grip of bishops and bureaucrats who spend their entire time genuflecting to the metropolitan Left? Why does Archbishop Justin Welby wade obsessively into secular political battles when his churches are emptying? And do worshippers realise that eye-watering sums of money are being siphoned off from their parishes in order to fund worthless exercises in social engineering? In this episode of Holy Smoke, the Rev Marcus Walker, Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, reveals the scale of the crisis facing the Established Church. His analysis is devastating. Among the subjects he addresses is the cultural cringe that led Welby and gang to value the opinions of Paula Vennells, the disgraced former head of the Post Office who nearly became Bishop of London, over those of qualified theologians and parochial clergy.  Under its current Rector, the ancient parish of St Bart's has become a beacon of hope for proud traditional Anglicans. Marcus tells me how he's reaching out to a new generation of Christians bored out of their minds by episcopal jargon – and also what he thinks of Pope Francis's attempt to crush the Latin Mass. It's a rollercoaster of an interview with one of the great clerics of our age. Don't miss it!

09/02/2024 • 27:46

Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year's US presidential elections. That's a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians in Iowa and New Hampshire and some commentators are speculating that we're seeing a resurgence of the so-called 'religious right'. Does he have born-again Christians to thank for his astonishing progress so far? In this episode of Holy Smoke my guest is Ryan Burge, the American political scientist whose Graphs on Religion substack is an authoritative guide to religious allegiance and voting patterns. You may be surprised by what he has to say. 

26/01/2024 • 22:38

Just before Christmas, the Vatican's new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church's teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for years been Pope Francis's protégé – but for how much longer? The new gay blessings, supposedly blessing the couple but not their union, have been decisively rejected by all the Catholic bishops of Africa, forcing Francis to backtrack and say they could ignore Fernandez’s decree. Then, last week, it was revealed that in 1998 Tucho published a book on, of all things, the theology of orgasms. It is jaw-droppingly graphic, has been widely described as ‘creepy’, and has encouraged leading cardinals hoping to succeed Francis to distance themselves from this pontificate. Listen to this episode of Holy Smoke if you want to know about the new crisis tearing apart the Catholic Church – but be warned: the erotic musings of the future Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith are not suitable for children. 

15/01/2024 • 21:57

In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we're taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years.  They've failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical theatre, has produced an album entitled Christmas Merry and Bright in which he sings well-loved Christmas songs and carols in spectacular big-band arrangements inspired by one of his musical heroes, Frank Sinatra. And in one track, 'Feliz Navidad', he's joined by its composer – his friend the legendary José Feliciano. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. One thing's for sure: you'll never hear 'White Christmas' the same way after you've heard Raymond tell the story of how it came to be written...

22/12/2023 • 21:36

You might imagine that a political project to place modern nation states under the supreme authority of the Catholic Church would stand zero chance of success anywhere in the world, including in traditionally Catholic countries. And you'd be right. Even so, a movement known as Integralism – whose 20th-century incarnations were closely related to fascism – has gripped the imaginations of ultra-conservative Catholics in America, and especially on campuses. The Eastern Orthodox political philosopher Kevin Vallier has written a book, All the Kingdoms of the World, about this bizarre development. It's thoughtful and fair-minded – but Integralists have not taken kindly to his analysis and Vallier has found himself drawn into some unnerving exchanges on social media. I'm all the more grateful to him, therefore, for agreeing to be my guest on this episode of Holy Smoke. 

15/12/2023 • 28:26

When I was in Rome last month, I watched the 'synod on synodality' fizzle out while the Marko Rupnik sex scandal took another sinister turn (and various Catholic journalists shamefully tried to suppress the story). But don't worry: this episode of Holy Smoke is devoted to more uplifting matters. I visited the ancient little church of Saints Cosmas and Damian on the edge of the Forum, which incorporates the remains of a pagan temple and a secular Roman basilica or meeting place. The contrast between the darkness of one and the light of the other had powerful theological significance for those Roman Christians who were encouraged to build their first official churches by Constantine. And I was lucky to have it explained to me by one of the world's leading architectural historians, Dr Elizabeth Lev. We spoke, sometimes sotto voce, inside the little church, with tour guides and visitors swirling around us. So, apologies for the inevitable background noise, but I hope you'll agree that it doesn't get in the way of Liz's gripping narrative. 

13/11/2023 • 16:16

Pope Francis's much-hyped 'synod on synodality' began in Rome this week and to say that it has got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. On Monday, five leading conservative cardinals bounced Francis into making a highly ambiguous statement apparently opening the door to gay blessings. Meanwhile, and this subject is being played down by certain media outlets, allegations of sexual abuse surrounds one of the Pope's friends. The world-renowned mosaic artist Fr Marko Rupnik has been expelled from the Jesuits after women claimed he sexually abused them – but he remains a priest and for some reason Pope Francis has yet to allow him to be prosecuted canonically. In this episode of Holy Smoke, I look at the basic facts, the possibility of a cover-up and suggest that the subject of Rupnik and what the Pope knew may overshadow the more fashionable topic of blessings for same-sex couples. 

05/10/2023 • 14:55

Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported:  While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine in Iran by destroying ancient irrigation systems and catapulted diseased corpses into towns they besieged, a technique which reportedly introduced the Black Death into Europe.Why were the media suddenly writing about blood-crazed 13th-century warriors? Because, incredibly, Pope Francis – on a strange visit to Mongolia's minuscule Catholic community – had just been rhapsodising about the enlightened tolerance of Khan's Empire, without mentioning that its conquests came at the price of 40 million lives. Judged as a proportion of the global population at the time, that's the biggest slaughter in human history.  This came just days after Francis, talking to young Russian Catholics by video link, told them to glory in Russia's imperial past, singling out the figures of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine II, both of whom were committed to the destruction of the Ukrainian nation and culture. This is the same pope who nurtures delusions of acting as a peacemaker between Moscow and Kyiv. Good luck with that, your Holiness. Ukrainian Catholics feel utterly betrayed by Francis. Putin, on the other hand, was thrilled by the unhinged papal comments. And there's more. In his flight to Mongolia, Pope Francis was allowed to use Chinese air space. Not coincidentally, he has recently surrendered the appointment of official Chinese Catholic Bishops to the Communist Party. Naturally he thanked Beijing effusively and, after Mass in Ulan Bator, departed from his script to send 'a warm greeting to the noble Chinese people' and urged them to be 'good citizens'.  In this episode of Holy Smoke, I try to make sense of these unnerving developments. Why does the Pope feel so warmly towards dictators past and present – and why is he relentless in sniping at American Catholics who have never crushed anyone under their imperial heels? 

07/09/2023 • 20:33

King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980 church attendance has more than halved – and that's broadly the situation in most of Western Europe.  In the traditionally God-fearing United States, in contrast, roughly 20 per cent of people are practising Christians. But there, too, the statistics now point to a steady decline in religious belief; the figures are worrying for American Protestants and catastrophic for American Catholics.  My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke is Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who posts twice-weekly reports on the state of US religion on his Graphs About Religion website. He's also a pastor in one of the least doctrinally conservative Baptist denominations, the American Baptist Church. As you'll hear, he identifies with the enormous number of Americans – probably a clear majority of the population – who feel alienated by an increasingly sectarian 'progressive' atheism and, on the other, by the dogmatic views of many Evangelical and Catholic leaders on the subjects of homosexuality and abortion.  At every stage in our conversation, Ryan produces statistics that socially conservative Christians would rather not think about. Indeed, we know they haven't been paying attention to them because the pro-life movement was so obviously unprepared for the current backlash against the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade even among churchgoing Republicans.  You may not agree with Ryan Burge's opinions, but it's hard to envisage a future for Western Christianity unless believers confront the huge body of research on which they're based. 

18/08/2023 • 33:06

Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his 'Year Zero' – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year's Eve.  Events are moving fast. This October, the world's bishops will gather for a synod in which left-wing lay activists have been given an advisory vote by the Pope and permission to discuss ultra-sensitive topics such as women's ordination and blessings for same-sex couples.  It's true that Francis has rejected attempts by the ultra-progressive (and ultra-empty) German church to pursue a liberal Protestant agenda without reference to Rome. That's not surprising: one largely unreported feature of this pontificate is an extreme concentration of power in the papal office. Any alterations to Church teaching and pastoral practice will be initiated by Francis alone – and he has a distinctive modus operandi. Rather than proposing specific changes, he rarely misses an opportunity to undermine the historic guardians of orthodoxy. Now he has taken a dramatic and irreversible step. In the past, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has had the job of protecting the Church from heresy and other theological misjudgements. But at the beginning of July the Pope handed control of this doctrinal watchdog to his Argentinian protégé Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal) Victor Manuel Fernandez. And he did so with the instruction that Fernandez should shift its emphasis from rooting out error to more creative endeavours.  Fernandez needed no encouragement. Even before taking office, he has mothballed a ban on same-sex blessings that was issued as recently as 2021 and was assumed to have Francis's full support. In an interview marking his appointment, Fernandez said that 'if a blessing is given in such a way that it does not cause that confusion [i.e., does not appear to be a gay wedding], it will have to be analysed and confirmed.' What on earth does that mean? You can see why Fernandez's appointment has alarmed conservative Catholics more than anything else Francis has done, and that includes his notoriously savage restrictions on the celebration of the Latin Mass. The Pope himself describes it as a 'turning point'.  In this week's Holy Smoke I discuss the possible consequences with the moral theologian Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith. He shares my view that an earthquake has hit the Catholic Church – but he also asks: given the indifference of so many Catholics to matters of doctrine, have they even noticed? 

25/07/2023 • 33:19

For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I'm talking about North Korea, of course – a regime even more abhorrent than Stalinist Russia, but which attracts suspiciously little attention from Western governments and churches unless they feel threatened by its nuclear arsenal.  My guest in this episode of Holy Smoke is Timothy Cho, a Christian human rights activist who escaped from North Korea. Even as a child, he was sentenced to forced labour for the crime of watching a James Bond film. In school he was subjected to hysterical anti-Christian propaganda, but found his faith when he was thrown into a Chinese jail. (North Korean refugees are routinely rounded up by Beijing, which then returns them to the Kim family's giant prison camp.)  Listen to his extraordinary testimony, and then ask yourself: why are Western governments so relaxed about the human rights abuses of this diabolical regime?

07/07/2023 • 15:19

In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people led to scenes in which protestors attacked clergy in the middle of the service, sending the sacred vessels crashing to the ground. As a result, the cathedral was closed – and remains so, six months later. This liturgy war is a hideous embarrassment for the Vatican, because the Syro-Malabar Church is the second largest Eastern Church in Communion with Rome. Traditionally dated back to St Thomas the Apostle's mission to India, it has four millions members worldwide. Members are known for their missionary zeal – the Syro-Malabars are one of the few thriving Catholic communities in Britain – but also passions that in the last few years have spilled over into violence, allegations of corruption and hunger strikes. At the root of the dispute is an attempt by Rome to impose a uniform liturgy on congregations that bitterly disagree about whether the priest should face East or West during the Holy Qurbana, the Syro-Malabar name for the Mass. Bishops have been burned in effigy.  My guest in this episode of Holy Smoke is Luke Coppen, senior correspondent of the Pillar and one the few journalists outside India who has been following the escalation of the Christian world's most spectacular liturgy war. If you thought the Vatican's attempt to crush the Latin Mass was a nasty business, just wait until you hear what Luke has to say about the situation in India, which the Pope seems powerless to control.

23/06/2023 • 23:14

A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they're going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I'm heartbroken that Succession has come to an end – but if you're missing the back-stabbing melodrama then you could always start following the real-life struggle to shape the Catholic Church after Francis. Plenty of cardinals would like to swap their red cassocks for a white one. But, as I suggest in this episode of Holy Smoke, whoever eventually takes the job will have to confront at least five nightmare situations, most of them created by the camera-friendly but privately ferocious current occupant of the See of Peter.

30/05/2023 • 14:26

The Sicilian Mafia is one of the most murderously amoral organisations on the planet – yet babyishly sentimental when it comes to Italian peasant Catholicism. And, like other branches of Italian organised crime, questions exist over whether they have allies in the Vatican, some of whose senior officials are as keen on money-laundering as the Mafia, only not so good at covering their traces.  The relationship between the hitmen and the hierarchy casts an exotic shadow over a new series of thrillers by Alexander Lucie-Smith, the first of which, The Chemist of Catania, has just been published. To quote A.N. Wilson, Lucie-Smith's plots are fast and his characters unforgettable. 'Menace, suspense, lust, love and fear all enliven his narrative. I can see him becoming a real cult author.'  Some scenes describe acts of stomach-churning depravity. Others display a surprising degree of theological literacy – surprising, that is, if you don't know that the author is a Catholic moral theologian and hard-working parish priest of Arundel and Brighton. I hope you enjoy our conversation and buy Father's book. But be warned: page 95 is not for the faint-hearted. 

26/05/2023 • 34:41

The Coronation in Westminster Abbey is the only occasion at which our monarch declares himself or herself to be a Protestant, thus ensuring that no Catholic can sit on the throne of the United Kingdom. Yet, paradoxically, the Coronation is the only English Royal ceremony which is replete with Catholic symbolism – the King will even wear robes whose origins lie in the vestments of the Catholic clergy. My guest in this episode of Holy Smoke – the historian Dr Francis Young of Oxford University – explains how this strange anomaly came about and why, for example, profoundly Protestant monarchs (and they included our late Queen) felt it necessary to take part in a distinctly un-Protestant ceremony. How Protestant is King Charles III? As Francis explains, that question is surprisingly difficult to explain. His comments are quite gripping. If you want to understand the unique ceremonial in the Abbey, and the changes His Majesty has made to it, then you really need to listen to this episode. 

05/05/2023 • 30:18

Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, 'I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought me comfort.' One of his closest friends, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was made a cardinal (before being ordained priest and bishop, something inconceivable today). To mark Rudolf's enthronement as Archbishop of Olomouc in 1819, Beethoven wrote a great Mass, and took such trouble over the setting of the Latin words that he delivered the work three years late. Yet, so far as we know, not once did the adult Beethoven actually attend a church service. Why? Norman Lebrecht, my guest on this episode of Holy Smoke, offers an explanation in his magnificent new book Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces.

14/04/2023 • 38:12

This week we heard the unfamiliar sound of one of the Catholic Church's most influential cardinals turning the handle of a door that has remained firmly shut for 2,000 years. It's marked 'Catholic women priests', a development – such is the pace of chaotic change under this pontificate – that is now a real long-term possibility. Pope Francis says he's against this innovation, but he relentlessly promotes bishops who favour it. Until now, they've been discreet about their views. Now, to use a fashionable cliché, they're saying the quiet bit out loud. As I point out in this episode of Holy Smoke, Catholic conservatives are confident that women will not – indeed, cannot – be ordained to the Catholic priesthood. Unfortunately for them, not just favoured cardinals but a majority of Mass-goers in the West think differently. 

31/03/2023 • 16:10

The Abrahamic Family House is the name for three giant concrete cubes – a church, a mosque and a synagogue – that have just officially opened their doors in Abu Dhabi. The project is the fruit of a controversial agreement signed there in 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, that disturbed many Christians with its statement that the existence of separate religions is God's will. But it's a spectacular coup for the government of the United Arab Emirates and will no doubt reassure expats that there's freedom of religion in the UAE. In fact, I wonder how many of them are even aware that 'apostasy' – for example, a Muslim converting to Christianity – remains a capital offence in the Emirates.  But is this sort of carping justified? Since Sharia was adopted by the UAE in 1978, no one has actually been executed for apostasy. And surely the big story here is that Jews, for so long the targets of Muslim anti-semitism, are now welcome to practise their religion in an officially Islamic country. The synagogue of the Abrahamic Family House is the first purpose-built Jewish house of worship to open its doors in the Arab world since the 1930s. There's no doubt that the UAE is moving quickly in the direction of religious toleration, and perhaps we shouldn't be too worried by the boilerplate multi-faith jargon emanating from the pompously named 'Higher Community of Human Fraternity' that presides over the Abrahamic Family House.  In this episode of Holy Smoke I weigh the pros and cons of this lavish project with Nathan Eckersley, who's joining the podcast as our new researcher. He's excited by the Abrahamic Family House. I think the jury's still out and I remain to be convinced that the concept of 'Abrahamic faiths' is anything more than an irritating fiction. But listen for yourself. 

17/03/2023 • 19:08

Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Pope's famously ambitious liturgy chief, has stepped up his campaign against the Traditional Latin Mass, which he's been trying to suppress ever since he was Bishop of Leeds 15 years ago. This week he persuaded Francis to back his ruling that the ancient Mass can only be celebrated in parish churches with his permission – thus taking the decision out of the hands of the world's bishops, many of whom are furious at being undermined in this way.  Traditionalists are in despair; they aren't optimistic, to put it mildly, that 'Uncle Arthur' will grant permission and they fear there is worse to come. In this week's Holy Smoke I talk to moral theologian and parish priest Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith about the mounting chaos in the Vatican. He says these sort of manoeuvres remind him of the last days of Pope John Paul II, when over- mighty cural chiefs took advantage of the pontiff's advanced age and poor health to wage turf wars.  The Catholic Church, he argues, is turning inwards, waging a pointless war over liturgy and wasting time on a meaningless 'Synod on Synodality' instead of addressing the catastrophic fall in Mass attendance, especially in Latin America and Europe. It's a powerful interview; don't miss it. 

24/02/2023 • 31:00

The fallout from the death of Benedict XVI has been unexpectedly dramatic. Pope Francis's behaviour at his predecessor's Requiem on Thursday struck many observers as graceless. The liberal Catholic journalist Robert Mickens, a long-time opponent of many of Benedict's policies, wrote that Francis 'looked unpleasant throughout the liturgy and, surprisingly (shockingly, some would say), he did not attend the interment of Benedict's body in the crypt after the Mass. The Vatican did not observe a single day of mourning ... There are many of us who were never particularly enamoured of Joseph Ratzinger. But the man was the Bishop of Rome for nearly eight years. And for that alone, he deserved better than this.' In this episode of Holy Smoke I look at the disastrous rupture between the pontificates. The most active Catholics (as opposed to ordinary Mass-goers) are now so divided between the competing theological visions of the two popes that one can speak metaphorically of the 'Church of Benedict' and the 'Church of Francis'. It's a complicated business, but do not assume that because Francis has survived the Pope Emeritus he now has the upper hand.

10/01/2023 • 16:03

It's time for the Holy Smoke Christmas episode! The studio is decorated like a Dolly Parton festive special c. 1977, and my guest is the fearless and feisty Anglican church organist Lois Letts. Our theme is the urgent need to save children from the agitprop 'worship songs' that crop up in nativity and carol services even in Church of England primary schools, all of which make even Miss Parton's cheesiest numbers sound like Handel's Messiah. But be warned: Lois illustrates her point by singing one of them...

22/12/2022 • 27:16

In this episode of Holy Smoke, I interview Fr John Lovell, who is one of a growing number of American Catholic priests who claim to have been suspended from ministry simply because their conservative views offend their bishops. Fr Lovell's Coalition for Cancelled Priests is gathering support among US traditionalists – which is hardly surprising given the Kafkaesque experiences of some priests at the hands of the authorities.  But there’s a problem: some of the coalition's supporters believe in far-right conspiracy theories that hand ammunition to left-wing bishops and their allies in the liberal Catholic media. I thought Fr Lovell might take offence when I raised this subject in our conversation – but, as you'll hear, he talks with refreshing frankness about the conservative ideological infighting that has proved such a gift to 'Team Francis'.

16/12/2022 • 47:11