Highlights from the latest Spectator | 1 April 2010

The latest issue of the Spectator is out today. Here are my top five features:

1. Can Catholicism save British Christianity? It’s our Easter issue this holiday weekend, so we’re trying out a new artist on the cover (left). And in the magazine is one of the very best pieces we’ve run since I’ve been in the editor’s chair. It’s by Matthew Parris, and is a denouncement of the Catholic Church – but on the grounds that it defies what Jesus stood for. Now, I disagree with his argument – but when he made it, during our debate on Catholicism last month, I was blown away by its power and force. It reads just as well as it sounds. If Jesus of Nazareth did not live, he says, the Catholic Church would not have invented him. As he puts it:

“Jesus of Nazareth is a colossal embarrassment to the Catholic Church.