Podcast
The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.
The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.
Holy Smoke
Thousands of Brits will be attending Christmas and carol services throughout December. Yet festive attendance masks the reality that church congregations just aren’t holding up. The most optimistic of estimates suggest that regular church attendance has almost halved in the UK since 2009. This is just one of the factors that has led the historian
Play 25 mins
Holy Smoke
As we approach the end of a uniquely painful year for the Royal Family, the King’s trusted biographer, Robert Hardman, joins Damian Thompson to discuss the Monarch’s faith. As Robert recently revealed in his updated biography of Charles III, the cancer-stricken King has been drawing solace from a Christian faith that has become increasingly explicit
Play 31 mins
Holy Smoke
MPs are set to vote on the legalisation of assisted dying this week, the first such vote in almost a decade. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was tabled by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater and follows a campaign by broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen and others. The biggest change since the last vote in
Play 50 mins
Holy Smoke
After mounting pressure, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has resigned. His resignation comes days after a damning report into the child abuser John Smyth who was associated with the Church of England. Welby was apparently made aware of the allegations in 2013, yet Smyth died in 2018 before facing any justice. Since the report
Play 18 mins
Holy Smoke
Since the election of an overwhelmingly secular Labour government, people who describe themselves as humanists have a spring in their step: for example, there’s a prospect that humanist weddings will be legally recognised in England and Wales (they already are in Scotland). But what exactly is a humanist? Definitions vary and there’s a heated debate
Play 33 mins
Holy Smoke
In this week’s Spectator, William Finlater reveals that some of the Church of Scotland’s most precious architectural heritage is being flogged off quickly, cheaply and discreetly. Most western denominations are being forced to close churches, but the fire sale of hundreds of Scottish churches is unprecedented in British history. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian talks
Play 27 mins
Holy Smoke
This month Pope Francis announced that he’s creating 21 cardinals, and once again his list includes unexpected names that will baffle commentators who assume that he’s determined to stack the next conclave with liberals. For example, Australia now finally has a cardinal – but he’s a 44-year-old bishop from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic diaspora rather
Play 26 mins
Holy Smoke
The US presidential election looks as if it’s coming down to the wire in a handful of battleground states. Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has established a clear lead, and that raises the question of whether, even in today’s increasingly secular America, evangelical Christians could give former president Trump a crucial advantage in the
Play 30 mins
Holy Smoke
In the winter of 1951 shots from a Colt revolver rang out in St Paul’s Cathedral in an experiment designed to solve the mystery of how architecture shapes sound. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson talks to Dr Fiona Smyth, author of a new book on the subject, and choral musician Philip Fryer,
Play 18 mins
Holy Smoke
In this week’s copy of The Spectator, Dan Hitchens argues that a lesser reported aspect of Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private schools is who it could hit hardest: faith schools. Hundreds of independent religious schools charge modest, means-tested fees. Could a hike in costs make these schools unviable? And, with uncertainty about how ideological
Play 25 mins
Holy Smoke
Writer Guy Stagg threw in his job to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome – choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up only by his rucksack. On this
Play 23 mins
Holy Smoke
In this week’s Holy Smoke episode Damian Thompson welcomes back Eduard Habsburg, Hungary’s Ambassador to the Holy See and also, to give him his family title, Archduke Eduard of Austria. Last year he published The Habsburg Way: 7 Rules for Turbulent Times, which offered advice on how to live a good life based on the panoramic history of
Play 25 mins
Holy Smoke
The other day I received a press release about an intriguing album of keyboard music by 16th- and early 17th-century composers, three Englishman and a Dutchman, played on the modern piano by Mishka Rushdie Momen, one of this country’s most gifted and intellectually curious young concert pianists. It’s called Reformation, and before I’d heard a note
Play 21 mins
Holy Smoke
Here’s an episode of Holy Smoke to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner later this year. This embarrassingly eccentric genius was, perhaps, the most devoutly Catholic of all the major composers – but you don’t have to be religious to appreciate the unique consolation offered by his gigantic symphonies. On the other hand,
Play 31 mins
Holy Smoke
When did supposedly religious funerals turn into ‘celebrations of life’ that are more about entertaining the congregation than mourning the dead person – who, these days, hasn’t died but ‘passed’? In this episode of Holy Smoke I’m joined by one of my favourite American priests, Fr Joe Krupp, a self-described ‘redneck’ from Michigan who reaches
Play 21 mins
Holy Smoke
In this episode of Holy Smoke, I’m joined by The Spectator’s features editor William Moore, who asks in this week’s issue of the magazine whether the Church of England is ‘apologising for Christianity’. A report by the Oversight Group, set up by the Church Commissioners to make reparations for African slavery, not only wants to see unimaginable
Play 17 mins
Holy Smoke
At a press conference in Rome last week, an ex-nun claiming to have suffered ritual sex abuse at the hands of Fr Marko Rupnik turned the heat on Pope Francis. How much did he know about the stomach-turning charges levelled at the Slovenian mosaic artist, who was a Jesuit until he was thrown out of
Play 16 mins
Holy Smoke
Can the Church of England escape from the deadly grip of bishops and bureaucrats who spend their entire time genuflecting to the metropolitan Left? Why does Archbishop Justin Welby wade obsessively into secular political battles when his churches are emptying? And do worshippers realise that eye-watering sums of money are being siphoned off from their
Play 28 mins
Holy Smoke
Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year’s US presidential elections. That’s a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians in Iowa and New Hampshire and some commentators are speculating that we’re seeing a resurgence
Play 23 mins
Holy Smoke
Just before Christmas, the Vatican’s new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church’s teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for years been Pope Francis’s protégé – but for how much longer? The new gay blessings,
Play 22 mins
Holy Smoke
In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we’re taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years. They’ve failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical
Play 22 mins
Holy Smoke
You might imagine that a political project to place modern nation states under the supreme authority of the Catholic Church would stand zero chance of success anywhere in the world, including in traditionally Catholic countries. And you’d be right. Even so, a movement known as Integralism – whose 20th-century incarnations were closely related to fascism
Play 28 mins
Holy Smoke
When I was in Rome last month, I watched the ‘synod on synodality’ fizzle out while the Marko Rupnik sex scandal took another sinister turn (and various Catholic journalists shamefully tried to suppress the story). But don’t worry: this episode of Holy Smoke is devoted to more uplifting matters. I visited the ancient little church
Play 15 mins
Holy Smoke
Pope Francis’s much-hyped ‘synod on synodality’ began in Rome this week and to say that it has got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. On Monday, five leading conservative cardinals bounced Francis into making a highly ambiguous statement apparently opening the door to gay blessings. Meanwhile, and this subject is being played
Play 13 mins
Holy Smoke
Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported: While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine
Play 21 mins
Holy Smoke
King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980 church attendance has more than halved – and that’s broadly the situation in most of Western Europe.
Play 33 mins
Holy Smoke
Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his ‘Year Zero’ – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year’s Eve. Events are moving fast. This October, the world’s bishops will gather for a synod in
Play 33 mins
Holy Smoke
For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I’m talking about North Korea, of course – a regime even more abhorrent than Stalinist Russia,
Play 15 mins
Holy Smoke
In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people led to scenes in which protestors attacked clergy in the middle of the service, sending
Play 23 mins
Holy Smoke
A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they’re going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I’m heartbroken that Succession has come to an end – but if you’re missing the back-stabbing melodrama then you could always start following the real-life struggle to shape
Play 14 mins