Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator
The Vatican Synod of Bishops on the Family begins on Sunday amid a degree of chaos unprecedented in recent Catholic history. And I’m afraid it’s the Pope’s fault. Francis kicked off proceedings in February by asking the retired German Cardinal Walter Kasper to address the world’s cardinals. Kasper used the opportunity to float his proposal – which he’s
On 10 October, the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford will host the first concert in ‘the biggest ever celebration of the life and work of Franz Schubert’. Over three weeks, all 650 songs (or thereabouts) will be performed, most of them in England’s oldest concert hall, the Holywell Music Room just around the corner from the
Well! Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian was impressed by David Cameron’s conference speech and no mistake. The campaign for 2015 has begun. On Wednesday, in what may well have been his sharpest, most effective speech since becoming prime minister, David Cameron fired the starting gun. In the process, he lodged at least a couple of
Cardinal Nichols this morning faces his biggest crisis since he became Archbishop of Westminster in 2009. On Saturday Bishop Kieran Conry – head of evangelisation for England and Wales – resigned as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton after (at least) two affairs with women became public. Now Conry has told the Mail: In some respects I
Update: The Mail has now published its allegations against Bishop Conry. They’re much more serious than I imagined. He appears to have behaved disgracefully; by his own admission there is more than one woman involved. I’ll quote only the last paragraph, which goes to heart of the matter: the responsibility of the Catholic Church for allowing
The other day someone tweeted at me the words ‘J£w$ Got Mon€¥’. And I was just about to tweet back: ‘Get stuffed, you anti-Semitic scum’. But I clicked on the link and realised I’d got the wrong end of the stick. The tweet came from Sasha Andreas, who’s made a documentary about poor Jews, mostly
Professor Tom Gallagher, a Scottish Catholic historian, wrote a post here yesterday accusing the Catholic hierarchy of Scotland of covertly supporting the Yes campaign. Now there are two pieces of evidence to support his claim. The first is a letter from Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow to departing First Minister Alex Salmond. Never have I
Yesterday Pope Francis preached one of the most extraordinary sermons ever delivered by a pope, one that demonstrates the laziness of those commentators who think he is a typical Latin American liberal. It put centre stage a teaching of the Church that I’ve never heard discussed in a Catholic homily: the physical resurrection of all saved Christians
Here is a picture of Cardinal Raymond Burke, whose grand title of Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura is matched only by the magnificence of his ecclesiastical dress. He is famous for his willingness to don the cappa magna, the astonishingly long silk cloak often worn by bishops before the Second Vatican Council but now confined
A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the Telegraph, married the beautiful Lida Mirzaii, his girlfriend since university. The service was in Wardour Chapel in Wiltshire, a neoclassical masterpiece described by Pevsner as ‘so grand in its decoration that it seems consciously to
Just over a week ago I wrote a piece in the Spectator asking if we were on the verge of an anti-Muslim backlash that could spread beyond the strongholds of the aggrieved white working class in Barking and Rochdale and into the home counties. After the gloating videotaped murder of David Haines, a British aid worker, the
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the ebullient Archbishop of New York, has welcomed the ‘wise decision’ by organisers of the city’s St Patrick’s Day parade to lift their ban on gay groups marching under their own banners. He has ‘no problem with it at all’. His predecessor, Cardinal John O’Connor, who supported the ban in 1990, must be
British public opinion has never really turned against Muslims. According to Pew’s 2014 Global Attitudes survey, 26 per cent of us have ‘unfavourable’ attitudes towards Muslims in this country; compare that to 46 per cent in Spain, 53 per cent in Greece and 63 per cent in Italy. Our national tolerance has, so far, proved
Satire died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, said Tom Lehrer. Now irony has followed it to the grave. GQ’s Philanthropist of the Year is Tony Blair. And no, this isn’t some cunning wind-up by the magazine. They gave the former PM a bauble at a ceremony last night. I’d like to say that
I rejoiced at the news of Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip. Not because I’m a Ukip supporter (I haven’t made up my mind) but because it highlights the slippery dishonesty of the Tories’ modernisation programme – ‘the political equivalent of botox’, as Charles Moore puts it in today’s Telegraph: The pattern of the leader’s actions conveys a message
Isis has the Ebola bomb. So be very, very afraid. If you’re a nutjob, that is. The conspiracy website Before It’s News reports that ‘whistleblower and former police officer’ Greg Evensen has discovered that ‘Isis now has the weaponised Ebola virus, here in America!’ Evensen also reveals who’s pulling the strings of Isis. Yup: Barack
Only one person sitting around the cabinet table truly understands how Islamism works – and David Cameron has silenced him. I’m referring to Michael Gove, who in addition to studying radical Islam for many years was waging war against it in British schools – often surreptitiously, in order not to alert the enemy. The defenestration
This year marks the centenary of a pianist whom London orchestral players nicknamed ‘Ashtray Annie’. Only at the keyboard did she have a cigarette out of her mouth. Annie Fischer (1914–1995) was one of those female pianists who, despite their spinsterish appearance, possessed far richer imaginations than splashy male virtuosos. Clara Haskil and Marcelle Meyer
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Damian Thompson and Freddy Gray discuss Pope Francis’s plans” startat=904] Listen [/audioplayer]If you want to understand how Pope Francis is planning to change the Catholic church, then don’t waste time searching for clues in the charming, self-effacing press conference he gave on the plane back from South Korea on Monday. It’s easy to
Satan-worshippers are planning to hold a Black Mass in Oklahoma next month. My usual reaction to this news would be: go right ahead. On your own head be it. Those camp Anton LaVey rituals are so 1970s. But there’s a twist – one that truly deserves the adjective ‘satanic’. The nutjobs organising the ceremony on
