Damian Thompson

Professor Richard Dawkins has written a book called Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Its aim is to save children and young people from belief in the sky fairy. A couple of weeks ago he was plugging it on Channel 4 News. ‘Facts are so wonderful… and such a treat!’, he trilled, sounding not unlike the late Queen Mother. Indeed. Which is why a thread that appeared on Twitter on Saturday is so delicious. It was written by George Heath-Whyte, a researcher at Cambridge. It begins: ‘Reading @RichardDawkins new book “Outgrowing God”, and as an Assyriologist I've had a couple of major face-palms moments.

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast discusses two looming disasters for Pope Francis.  The first is the ‘Amazon Synod’ in October, at which the world’s bishops will discuss a bizarre plan to ordain Amazon ‘village elders’ as priests. The framework for the synod has already been published; my guest Dr Ed Condon uses the word ‘Orwellian’ to describe the language it employs.  The second threat to Francis is more personal. When he became Pope he lost no time making his friend Gustavo Zanchetta a bishop in Argentina. Bad move. Within a short time Zanchetta was facing allegations of sexual and financial impropriety. The Pope was informed of these allegations (and if you Google them you’ll discover that they were pretty lurid).

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the hypocrisy of ‘woke’ capitalism. Netflix, Disney and other corporations are both ruthlessly capitalist and ruthlessly liberal – at least when it comes to America. They’re throwing a fit because there’s been a conservative and Christian backlash against gruesome late-term abortions. They’ve also become risibly obsessed with Pride month and openly contemptuous of just one religion: Christianity. But their liberalism is conveniently moved to the ‘trash’ folder when there’s a chance of making money in communist or Islamic dictatorships. I’m joined by Tim Stanley of the Daily Telegraph and Fr Ben Kiely, a leading defender of persecuted Christians.

In the new Holy Smoke podcast episode, I finally get something off my chest. For 30 years I've been bored senseless by the public pronouncements of bishops – Anglicans and Catholics. Why do they feel the need to speak in such dreary jargon? Why do interesting clergy never make it to bishop? I'm joined by Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, who shares my views. But I'm the one who names names, including that of a certain Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, so our conversation could get me into trouble. Listen to it in case you never hear from me again...

The photo above is of my sister Carmel and me having tea a few days after our mother’s funeral. She looks cheerful, doesn’t she? That’s because she was: although we both missed our mother intensely, and always will, we had done most of our grieving before she died, as we watched her tortured by Parkinson’s disease and severe dementia. Carmel looks well, too. And she thought she was. Ovarian cancer plays that trick on women. The first symptoms tend to be annoying rather than alarming. A few weeks after this photograph was taken, I was reassuring her that Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a common response to bereavement – which it is. But that’s not what was wrong with her.

Every Monday and Thursday afternoon when I was growing up, a drum roll would sound throughout suburban Britain. ‘Damian? Blue Peter!’ my mother would call out, in a voice that made it clear that my presence was required in front of the television. Blue Peter — 60 years old this week — was top of the very short list of programmes of which my parents approved. We lived in Woodmansterne Road, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey. You can’t beat that for a Blue Peter-ish address. Our house was mock Tudor; my father worked for the Prudential. My younger sister and I, pupils at modest private day schools, slotted perfectly into the middle-middle-class demographic at which the show seemed to be aimed, though its reach was far wider.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who is under intense pressure to explain what he knew about his disgraced predecessor, the sex abuser and ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Wuerl had asked to resign. He knew his position was untenable: not only is there widespread scepticism about his claim that he didn’t know McCarrick routinely assaulted seminarians, but he’s also under fire for alleged mishandling of abuse cases when he was Bishop of Pittsburgh. His departure hasn’t come as a surprise: he is past retirement age anyway.

This is a slightly misleading headline for today’s Holy Smoke podcast, because Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, Lara Prendergast and I didn’t spend a lot of time duscussing episcopal rudeness. The episode is actually about snobbery in church circles. Fr Alexander muses on clergy who name-drop like dowagers while Lara picks her way through the minefield of wedding invitations. But rude bishops do crop up, because it's something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for years. That’s a bit rich, I know, given some of the articles I’ve written. But I reckon most journalists would rather deal with a slimeball from the Palace of Westminster than an over-promoted middle manager in a mitre (or cardinal’s red hat).