Holy Smoke

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. 

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

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

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

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...

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'.

Last week, out of a mixture of curiosity and boredom, I ended up watching an online Church of England Eucharist from a parish church in Hereford. The text of the liturgy was almost identical to that of the Catholic Mass I had attended the night before. We'd even sung the same hymn, and the celebrant’s vestments were indistinguishable from those of a Roman Catholic priest. But the person wearing them was a woman, and it reminded me that since that particular battle ended nearly 30 years ago I had been present at only one C of E Sunday Eucharist. So in this episode of Holy Smoke I ask William Moore, The Spectator’s features editor, what it’s like to attend Anglican services outside London, as he does weekly with his young family in Sussex. I think you’ll enjoy what he has to say. 

Ten years ago the Catholic Church happily celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Most people thought it was a good thing – and those who had their doubts were careful to express them diplomatically.  Sixty years on, by contrast, Vatican II is the source of rancorous division in a collapsing Church. Liberals, describing themselves as 'The People of God', are invoking it to propose surreal changes to the doctrine that would have scandalised the Council fathers. They like to portray the forthcoming two Synods on Synodality – whose consultations attracted only a minuscule number of lay Catholics – as the fulfilment of Vatican II. Even, in some circles, as a sort of Vatican III.  Meanwhile, traditionalists, assured by Benedict XVI that they could attend the Latin Mass without rejecting the Council, are now regularly mocked by Pope Francis for their 'rigidity'. He's busy banning their Masses, claiming that they're incompatible with Vatican II. And some traditionalists are wo

This headline may seem sensational, but the evidence is overwhelming. The Catholic Church is experiencing a bewildering range of crises, some of them long-term and familiar, such as demographic collapse and the continuing scandal of sex abuse. Others are being manufactured by a Pope who is allowing a faction of Catholic boomers to push an incoherent 'New Age' agenda. Whether Francis truly supports their ideas is anyone's guess – but he's increasingly willing to spout their inanities. On Saturday the Pope's official Twitter account told the faithful: 'The plant paradigm takes a different approach to earth and environment. Plants cooperate with all the surroundings [sic] environment; even when they compete, they cooperate for the good of the ecosystem. Let’s learn from the meekness of plants!' This was tagged #TimeofCreation. But creation of what? Yesterday, Luke Coppen of The Pillar reported that the Diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam in the Netherland – where plant-based spirituality has been trendy for decades

Is western society in the grips of a progressive hysterical epidemic comparable to the Salem Witch Trials?  My guest on Holy Smoke this week, Andrew Doyle, argues precisely that in his book The New Puritans. He suggests that gender ideology, and particularly the dogmas of trans activists, together with the fantasies of Critical Race Theory, are dragging society into an alternative reality that resembles a fanatical religion. But it's one that doesn't have to employ its own ideological police – because actual police forces, along with other powerful institutions including the churches, have signed up to the New Puritanism (usually without understanding it).  Andrew Doyle has a doctorate in Renaissance poetry from Oxford University, so he's well acquainted with the postmodern manipulation of language and epistemology that equip proponents of so-called cancel culture. He'e also someone the new puritans would dearly love to cancel, in his roles as broadcaster, comedian and the creator of Titania McGrath, the hi

In this episode of Holy Smoke, I look at the ever-deepening mysteries surrounding Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who was given a job assessing Vatican finances after he was forced to resign from his diocese in Argentina following allegations of abusive behaviour and financial mismanagement. This year Zanchetta received a lengthy jail sentence for abusing seminarians. But he’s serving his time in a comfortable monastery, while the clergy who investigated him are the targets of a mysterious Vatican investigation. Now one of the abused seminarians has spoken out, accusing the Pope of protecting Zanchetta. This is potentially the biggest scandal involving a reigning pope for decades – and yet the mainstream media seems to be looking the other way. But I’m not. Don’t miss this episode. 

The Catholic Church is half way through a two-year consultation exercise that will culminate in a 'Synod on Synodality' in the Vatican next year. A synod on what? Don't worry if you're confused. No one in Rome seems to be able to define synodality, either. What will the world's bishops discuss? Probably not the figures revealing how many Catholics have taken part in this exercise, because they're acutely embarrassing. The English and Welsh bishops couldn't even get 10 per cent of Mass-goers to take part in a consultation process that many observers suspect has been shamelessly rigged by Pope Francis's bureaucrats. And in Belgium, a country where some six million people identify as Catholic, the number of participants is somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000. My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke is Ed Condon, editor of the influential Pillar website. His judgment is as impartial as ever – but, make no mistake about it, we're looking at one of the most expensive and self-indulgent fiascos in recent Catholic

In this week's Holy Smoke I offer some thoughts on the impressive and distinctive Christian faith of the Queen – impressive because it's so refreshingly direct compared to that of many of her politics-obsessed bishops, and distinctive because Elizabeth II is one of a dwindling band of Low Church but not Evangelical Anglicans whose favourite Sunday service is old-fashioned Matins. Questions of churchmanship aside, however, there is no doubting the intensity of her convictions, about which she has spoken with increasing candour and confidence in recent years. Will she turn out to be the United Kingdom's last robustly Christian monarch?

My guest on Holy Smoke this week is, many people believe, a victim of the intolerant progressive ideology currently gripping the Church of England. He's Calvin Robinson, a name possibly familiar to you from the row over the Diocese of London's decision not to ordain him.  Calvin is a young TV presenter with conservative Christian views that conflict with the liberal opinions of the hierarchy. He's been told they are too divisive – which is a bit rich coming from an organisation whose senior bishops routinely express opinions far to the left of those of the average churchgoer. Particular offence was caused by his insistence that the C of E isn't 'institutionally racist'. The fact that he's mixed race and London's bishops are white made no difference: he had expressed a heretical opinion. So much for 'diversity'. Do listen to what he has to say.

So Roe vs. Wade is as good as dead. Americans are about to lose their constitutional right to an abortion. Five out of the nine Supreme Court justices have drafted an opinion in their forthcoming ruling on a Mississippi abortion case which strikes down the 1973 Roe ruling as 'egregiously wrong from the start'. As we all know it’s been leaked – but it’s expected to be issued pretty much unchanged in the next few weeks because, even if they wanted to, the justices can't change their votes without appearing to succumb to political pressure. The unprecedented leaking of that draft opinion has been greeted by jubilation from religious conservatives and the degree of outrage that I don't think I've ever seen before by liberal opinion and the mainstream media, which amount to the same thing, really, in America. And in Britain too, at least on this topic: I haven’t seen certain BBC hacks so distressed since Trump got elected.  In this episode of Holy Smoke, I concentrate on one specific aspect of this extrao

Few things are more depressing than the art, architecture and furnishings of the average modern church. The glorious aesthetic of light and colour of the Middle Ages and Renaissance has been replaced with an infantile modernist decor more suited to a primary school than a place of worship.  In the Catholic Church, especially, bishops who may privately have reasonably good taste happily commission cringeworthy 1970s-style art because they think it's demanded by 'the spirit of Vatican II'.  Is there any way Christian art can escape from the grip of mediocrity? My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke thinks there is. She's the charismatic Rome-based art historian Dr Elizabeth Lev, whose TED talk about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is both erudite and, in places, hilarious. Liz's plan to rescue Church art is ingenious and, I think, achievable. But to find out more you'll have to listen to the podcast. 

My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke was an Anglican bishop for 37 years – one of the Church of England's foremost scholars and its leading witness for persecuted Christians. He was also an evangelical who, as bishop of the ancient see of Rochester, ordained women priests. But, as of this month, his title is Monsignor. I am, of course, talking about the Pakistani-born Michael Nazir-Ali, whose decision to join the Ordinariate has come as an enormous, if surprising, boost to the fortunes of that small but dynamic organisation for ex-Anglicans set up by Pope Benedict XVI. This will be his first Easter not just as a monsignor – he has just been made a Prelate of Honour by Pope Francis – but as a Catholic. I hope you enjoy our wide-ranging discussion in which, inevitably, I ask Mgr Nazir-Ali whether he's changed his mind about women priests.

Did you know that in the last year more Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world combined? In 2021, at least 6,000 Christians died for their faith, and 80 per cent of those were Nigerians. Their murderers were – you may not be too shocked to learn – almost to a man Islamists. But, this being Nigeria, a supposedly secular state where northern provinces impose Sharia on their populations, the situation is chaotic.  Four different groups are implicated. They are: the notorious Boko Haram; the so-called 'Islamic State in West African Province'; armed bandits; and an ethnic group of Fulani militants, often described in the media as herders – which they traditionally are, but these days they seem to more interested in slaughtering Christians than in their livestock. To quote the Christian charity Open Doors, 'killing Christian men is a key strategy for these groups because it destroys livelihoods, with men tending to be the family's main breadwinner, and depopulates C

Cardinal George Pell has given a wide-ranging interview to The Spectator's Holy Smoke podcast in which he criticises the Vatican's 2018 deal with Beijing and especially the secrecy surrounding it.  The unpublished pact allows the Chinese Communist Party to choose Catholic bishops, whose appointments are then rubber-stamped by Pope Francis. 'I know high-up people in the Vatican are very dissatisfied with the way things are going,' says Pell, the former Vatican Prefect for the Economy. 'The agreement is there to try to get a bit of space for the Catholics. Obviously that's praiseworthy. [But] I don't think we've gained anything. The persecutions seem to be continuing. In some places they've got worse.' Nobody 'outside a small circle' knows the details of the agreement, 'which seems to me to be quite irregular.' The cardinal was imprisoned in his native Australia on trumped-up sex charges before being acquitted by the country's High Court. It is widely believed that his enemies in the Vatican played a p

Four million Christians in western Ukraine belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which since the end of the 16th century has adhered to a Byzantine rite while recognising the authority of the Pope. For this reason these Ukrainian Catholics are despised by the Russian Orthodox and its political masters: Stalin tried to force them to become Orthodox again and threw their leader, Cardinal Slipyi, into jail, where he remained from 1945 until 1963.  And how was his heroism rewarded? Pope Paul VI denied him the title of Patriarch and, after Vatican II, the Catholic Church set about Westernising their traditions – for example, discouraging them from having married priests. Rome saw Greek-rite Catholics as an obstacle to reunion with Eastern Orthodoxy, and in 2016 Pope Francis met Putin's stooge Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Havana, of all places, to issue a declaration that undermined the spiritual identity of this brave community. Does that sound familiar? It must ring a bell with underground Catholics i