Catholicism

There are two untraditional ways to take your leave of this world in Britain. The bleaker is the ‘direct cremation’ method whereby, with no prayers and no mourners, a funeral director will take your remains from mortuary to crematorium to be burnt without troubling your friends and relations. The other is the ‘celebration’. According to Co-op Funeralcare in its new report, called ‘Go Your Own Way’, no fewer than 68 per cent of people it polled regard funerals as a celebration of life, up from 58 per cent five years ago. Out go prayers, black funeral dress and solemnity; in come Doctor Who themes, glittery coffins and guests dressed in football shirts. Or as the report puts it: ‘Personalisation is key.’ The venues are quirky too.

The Hollywood adaptation of Conclave, Robert Harris’s thriller about a conspiracy to rig a papal election, won’t be in cinemas until November. But judging by the trailer released last week, its starry cast, crafty plot and spectacular cinematography – jets of smoke scattering cardinals as an explosion shatters the Sistine Chapel – will instantly erase memories of The Two Popes, Netflix’s risible Oscar-nominated fantasy in which Benedict XVI secretly chooses Cardinal Bergoglio as his successor.

You need a personal public service number to get married in Ireland, but in order to get one, you need to be married. It’s one of the most intractable double binds on offer here and it’s very frustrating when you’re trying to beat the Grim Reaper by getting hitched. I got a PPS number when I bought the house in West Cork. My solicitor arranged it. A different but equally bedevilling Catch-22 applied to that. So I thought, all right, I will. I better get married, make a will and prepare for the end In order to buy a house in Ireland I needed a PPS number. But to get a PPS number I needed to have an address in Ireland.

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.

‘Please, I’ll do anything,’ I told the plumber. ‘I’ll give you all the money I have if you just come back here for one day and connect the new hot water system.’ The plumber said no bother, he would come this weekend. But he says that every week, and every weekend when he doesn’t come he says he’ll come the next week. And the next week he says he’ll come at the weekend, and so on. And this has been going on for months. Which is nothing, apparently. Frankly, the builder boyfriend could go to college and get a degree in plumbing faster than we could get a plumber It is well known, and was made quite clear to us before we bought this beautiful old rundown Georgian house, that you cannot get a plumber in Ireland.

‘We thought the house would make the most fantastic centre for climate action,’ I heard myself telling the cat rescue lady as she let the two moggies out of their carriers into the living room. I was trying to reassure the socially conscious liberal who had brought the two cats we were adopting that she was leaving them in what she would consider a good place. I said: ‘We want it to be somewhere schoolchildren can come to learn about biodiversity…’ What was I on about? Still, pretending I was turning my house into a climate crisis hub was a bit much.

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.

Pope Francis threw down the gauntlet earlier this month by removing Joseph Strickland from his position as bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, after the conservative church leader reportedly refused to resign. Now, reports the AP, the Pope is enacting similar vengeance on another of his critics by revoking Cardinal Raymond Burke’s “right to a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary in the second such radical action against a conservative American prelate this month.” Strickland, an outspoken traditionalist, has long been a thorn in liberal Francis’s side.

The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced that a parish priest has been demoted for allowing pop singer Sabrina Carpenter to film her new music video in the sanctuary of the church. Money provided to the church from Carpenter's production team will also be re-donated to a crisis pregnancy center. Carpenter's music video for her single “Feather”, which was partially filmed at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brooklyn, New York, dropped on Halloween last week. In the video, Carpenter is seen dancing provocatively in black underwear in the church sanctuary and in front of the altar, which were decorated with pastel and neon props that featured obscene language.

On board Aello She was built in 1921, a beautiful wooden ketch that is as graceful to look at as she’s uncomfortable for fat cats accustomed to gin palaces. I’ve sailed her over many years, the last time giving her to my children as I was in plaster having fallen from a balcony in Gstaad. This time it was worse. In fact it was the greatest no-show since Edward VIII skipped his coronation and showed up on the French Riviera instead. Michael Mailer had hinted that some Hollywood floozies were eager to sail around the Greek isles, but arrived empty-handed. The absent floozies were missed, but were immediately replaced by my son and his son, and off we went, four males looking for mates down the Peloponnese coast.

New documents uncovered this week revealed that FBI director Christopher Wray was completely full of it when he testified to Congress that attempts to investigate traditional Catholics were limited to one rogue FBI field office. Earlier this year, a former special agent released a memo from the FBI's Richmond field office warning that so-called "radical traditionalist" Catholics were potential sources of domestic extremism. The memo asserted that there is "growing overlap" between white supremacist groups and traditional Catholics who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). According to the FBI, these individuals are "antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT and white supremacy." The memo suggested infiltrating these traditional Catholic groups and developing "sources" within them.

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.