Holy Smoke

In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson says the Vatican's report on allegations of sexual assault by Theodore McCarrick is a whitewash.  Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more. For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts . Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pri...

Has there been a single Covid death as a result of someone attending a socially distanced church service? The answer is no, as you'd expect it to be. But, despite this, the Government will ban public acts of worship from Thursday.  This decision is so perverse that even the Catholic bishops of England and Wales – who fell over each other during the last lockdown in their eagerness to shut churches...

Ask yourself: who are the most vulnerable and marginalised people in British society? My answer would be young adults suffering from learning disabilities, who attract sympathy when they are children but, once they enter their 20s, simply drop off the map of public consciousness The consequences of this are dreadful: 95 per cent of them are unemployed.  But four years ago that situation began to c...

There was a point in the Watergate scandal when revelations came so thick and fast that journalists struggled to keep up with them. And we seem to have reached an equivalent point in respect to the scandals engulfing Pope Francis's Vatican.   Last week I interviewed Vatican expert Ed Condon about the sacking of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, accused by the Pope of stealing or misusing unimaginable sums o...

The Vatican is this week in the grip of a paranoia reminiscent of the days when Renaissance popes (and their dinner guests) were forced to employ food-tasters.  Cardinal Angelo Becciu, until 2018 the sostenuto at the Secretariat of State – that is, the Pope's hugely powerful chief of staff – has been sacked by Francis, who has accused him of stealing vast amounts of money. The Pope, who once showe...

Boris Johnson's package of Covid restrictions announced this week included a rule that weddings will be limited to 15 people and funerals to 30 – numbers plucked out of thin air that will have questionable effect on the transmission of the virus. You might think that a ruling that affects only weddings and funerals isn't such a big deal for the churches, but that is to underestimate the fanatical...

The row over the evisceration of Westminster Cathedral Choir has erupted again. The cathedral's excellent music administrator, Madeline Smith, has resigned from her post, accusing the choir school – which, incredibly, is the ultimate source of the threat to the choir's musical standards – of misleading parents and creating a 'toxic' atmosphere that drove out the master of music, Martin Baker.    T...

Damian Thompson is joined by Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, Hungary's ambassador to the Holy See. A member of one of Europe's most historically influential families, Eduard explains how his religious practices have adapted to the acceleration of new technologies, and tells Damian how the Habsburgs keep in contact. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spect...

Next month, the Vatican will talk to Beijing about renewing its 2018 deal with the Chinese Communist Party that effectively allowed President Xi to choose the country's Catholic bishops. He has used this power to force Catholics loyal to Rome to join the puppet Catholic church set up by Chairman Mao in the 1950s. They can no longer refuse on the grounds that they recognise only the Pope's Church b...

The new Holy Smoke episode is a significant departure from our usual formula. It’s a discussion about the profound and neglected meaning of Christian art. Professor Ben Quash of King’s College London is interviewed not by me but by Carmel Thompson – my sister, who has appeared twice on Holy Smoke to talk about her battle with ovarian cancer but is determined not to be defined by her illness. This...

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell made the headlines even before he was enthroned last week, when he ‘revealed’ that Jesus was black. This came as news to everyone except the far left, race-baiting fanatics of Black Lives Matter. This week, I talk to Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, about the implications of this disastrous appointment, which means that for the first time in the histor...

Damian speaks to Edward Pentin, a veteran Rome correspondent whose upcoming book,  The Next Pope , runs the rule over the runners and riders for Francis's successor. Click here to try 12 weeks of the Spectator for £12 and get a free £20 Amazon gift voucher. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more. For more Spectator...

With Professor Richard Landes, an expert on millennial or apocalyptic movements. Presented by Damian Thompson. Click here to try 12 weeks of the Spectator for £12 and get a free £20 Amazon gift voucher. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more. For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts . Contact us:...

Today’s episode of Holy Smoke exposes the extent to which ordinary Christians have been betrayed by their own bishops. This is a process that began decades ago – but it is only this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, that we’ve seen just how corrupted church leaders have become by secularisation. The need to close churches for public worship during the lockdown meant that, for the first time i...

When the shadow of the coronavirus is finally lifted, the British public will have a long list of people to thank: doctors, nurses, cleaners, shop assistants, charities and – maybe – Boris Johnson. But there won’t be a round of applause for the parish clergy, that’s for sure, and it's not really their fault: the bishops, especially the Catholic ones, have mishandled the Covid crisis spectacularly....

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the strange and unstable world created by digital technology: one in which distinguishing between truth and falsehood is becoming almost impossible. My guest is the American journalist and businessman Robert Wargas. Robert is adamant that, despite the largely uncensored babble of social media, the boundaries of what it’s permissible to say in public are shri...

Last week I was sent a copy of a devastating 7,000-word letter accusing the Catholic bishops of England and Wales of grossly mishandling the coronavirus crisis by lobbying the government for a complete shutdown of their own churches, even for private prayer. As you'll hear in this week’s Holy Smoke podcast, McDonald really stuck the knife into the Church’s officials, producing document after docum...

In this week’s episode of Holy Smoke, I get to interview my personal heroine – my younger sister, Carmel Thompson. She was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in November 2018. She’s now undergoing a second round of chemotherapy after coming out of remission. And she’s enjoying life. In our conversation she explains how the Coronavirus pandemic presents us with an opportunity to treasure the...

Harry Mount, the editor of The Oldie, is appalled that thanks to the coronavirus regulations, he can't seek spiritual comfort in any of Britain's glorious churches. And he's not a religious believer.  In this week's Holy Smoke podcast, Harry tells me why the ban on even entering a church is so pointless: he describes it as a giant exercise in 'our old friend, virtue-signalling' by the Anglican and...

This week's Holy Smoke podcast is a celebration of what must surely be the most inspiring piece of music ever written by a sick man recovering from illness – the slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 132, which he entitled 'A Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity by a Convalescent'.  The relevance of this sublime music hardly needs spelling out. But what makes this episode particularly spec...

Do you sense that something is missing in the churches' response to the coronavirus? In this week's Holy Smoke episode, Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, argues that the bishop's attitude of 'wash your hands and be nice' reflects the churches' polite surrender to secularisation – but suggests that ordinary believers now have the opportunity to show the public what Christianity rea...

With Ed Condon, Washington bureau chief of the Catholic News Agency. Presented by Damian Thompson. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more. For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts . Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s Holy Smoke podcast, Damian talks to Jon Anderson, an expert on religious and political sects, about the collapse of Christian Science – whose followers included Joyce Grenfell and Doris Day – and the scary lessons it holds for today’s mainstream religions. Presented by Damian Thompson. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/...

The dust has still not settled after Pope Francis unexpectedly – and very pointedly – ignored pleas from liberal Catholics to ordain married men as priests. They had a fully worked-out plan in place, but the Pope had pressed the 'delete' button. So what happened? With Vatican expert Dr Ed Condon, Washington bureau chief of the Catholic News Agency and a canon lawyer. Presented by Damian Thompson....

With writer Norman Lebrecht, whose book Genius and Anxiety takes a look at the exceptional intellectual contribution of Jews from 1847 to 1947, to the worlds of medicine, music, philosophy, engineering and more. Presented by Damian Thompson. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more. For more Spectator podcasts, go to...