Roman Catholicism

The nuns were wrapping up their night prayer when I entered the chapel at Tyburn Convent. I couldn’t see them but heard their soft voices singing the last phrases of the “Salve Regina”: “O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.” Across the road in Hyde Park, an outdoor concert heaved. What was I doing, spending my Friday night here instead? I had come to see if the rumors of a “nun girl summer,” as it’s being called on TikTok, were true. Earlier this year, a video of two nuns discussing their ultimate frisbee skills went viral: “Sister, you are so good at that!” “Sister Miriam, you also are!

As any Catholic master of ceremonies will tell you, it takes only the tiniest sartorial mishap to lend a Python-esque flavor to moments of the utmost solemnity. On July 1 the rebel traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) created four new bishops in defiance of Pope Leo XIV during a five-hour open-air Latin Mass in a Swiss alpine meadow. The consecrating prelates wore dark-red velvet chasubles over scarlet-and-gold dalmatics with matching gloves. They descended from their thrones bearing sacred chrism. Afterward the new bishops stood in a row, miters perched on their heads for the first time. Liberal bishops wear stumpy headgear.

Everyone in the world, it seems, believes they’re entitled to an opinion on US immigration policy. That includes Pope Francis. The Supreme Pontiff made clear his displeasure with the administration’s resetting of America’s approach to immigration in a letter addressed to the US Catholic bishops, but clearly directed against the new Trump administration’s efforts to enforce existing US immigration laws — with a particular emphasis on deporting immigrants who are criminals or who have committed crimes as well as others judged not to have valid claims to refugee status.

Papa don’t preach! It’s not every day that the Supreme Pontiff, the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion souls on earth, deigns to weigh in on a social media spat involving the vice president of the United States. But Pope Francis is no ordinary pontiff — and he’s just launched an extraordinary broadside against the new Trump administration, including a clear rebuke of J.D. Vance over his recent Twitter row with the British politician-cum-podcaster, Rory Stewart. Last week, as Cockburn noted, J D Vance appeared to "pwn," as the kids say, Stewart in a row over Christian principles and the issue of immigration. "Google ‘ordo amoris,’" Vance told the equine-mouthed Stewart on X, as he cast an uncharitable (albeit accurate) aspersion on Stewart’s intelligence quotient.

Pope Francis this week apologized for decrying the "frociaggine" — or "faggotry" — in the Vatican and in Catholic seminaries for the second time in a matter of weeks. On Tuesday in a private meeting, Francis mentioned the "air of faggotry" in the Vatican, which followed his May 20 comment that "nella chiesa c'è troppa aria di frociaggine" — "in our Church there is too much of an air of faggotry." The Spectator reached out to Frédéric Martel, an anchor at Radio France, a professor at the ZHdK University in Zurich and the author of twelve books, including In the Closet of the Vatican, his explosive New York Times bestseller about the widespread hypocritical homosexual behavior rife in the higher echelons of the Church.

The mass freakout over Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech to Benedictine College is a revelatory incident. For one, it’s another sign of the impatient obliviousness of our media landscape. The speech is a mere twenty minutes long, but it’s readily apparent that most commentators on the remarks didn’t bother to watch it. CNN’s Jonah Goldberg put the speech in the context of a reactionary attitude among men toward women in the workplace, which is just absolutely ludicrous if you watch the speech — most of which is an indictment of the current Catholic priesthood — in a segment where the CNN commentators ordered Butker to “stick to kicking.

The Alaska Department of Corrections has instituted a new policy that banned the use of altar wine during religious ceremonies, effectively barring Catholic Mass from being offered at correctional facilities. "No altar wine or other alcoholic beverages will be used by anyone who is involved with any activity. The use of a non-alcoholic substitute (juice) for altar wine may be considered," the interim policy established on June 6 reads. 816.01-IPPMDownload The interim policy effectively bans Catholic masses, which require a priest to consecrate and consume both bread and wine in order for the Mass to be considered valid.

As the pro-life movement in the United States looks with optimism to the very possible overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court later this year, the tide seems to be flowing in a different direction down south. First came Argentina, where the Senate passed a highly contested bill in early 2021 legalizing abortion in the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy. The vote was preceded by months of protests, debate, and even a series of personal pleas from the world’s most famous Argentinean, Pope Francis. In September, Mexico’s Supreme Court struck down abortion bans in two states, effectively paving the way for decriminalization nationwide. Most recently, Colombia effectively legalized abortion in the first twenty-four weeks of pregnancy.

Pop sensation and slave-4-her-father Britney Spears sent papists into a frenzy on Thursday night by mentioning her Catholic faith to her nearly 33 million Instagram followers in a photo caption. 'I just got back from mass...I’m Catholic now...let us pray,' the 39-year-old star wrote. 'huge draft get,' tweeted the Atlantic's Elizabeth Bruenig. Cockburn thinks the signs have been there all along. Not only did Britney grow up in Louisiana, where Catholicism is far more widespread than elsewhere in the South due to its former status as a French colony, she's been dropping subtle hints in her art. Take the music video for her breakout single '...Baby One More Time'. How different the schoolgirl chic she adopted looks in the light of her newly announced faith.