Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator
There is no better time to read a Sherlock Holmes story than a winter evening. As the rain lashes against the windows and the fog descends, we can imagine ourselves sitting companionably with the great detective and the good doctor around the Baker Street hearth, waiting for the step of a visitor upon the stair.
The British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, proposed a “law of science” in 1968: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s proposition had a quality of rightness, of stating the obvious with sparkling clarity, that propelled it into dictionaries of quotations. The timing was perfect: Concorde would
No one in the American church has benefited more from Pope Francis’s vengefulness than Cardinal Robert McElroy
The President has forced the hand of the American Catholic hierarchy
Dismissed as a dime-store Shostakovich, then praised as a major modern composer
How do you rein in the overactive bits of Manfred Honeck’s imagination without driving him away?
Voters understandably doubt Biden’s Catholic convictions
The Pontiff has kowtowed to Beijing
It turns out Francis is Catholic after all
A black Christian is, apparently, the wrong kind of ‘diverse’
Wuerl resigned in 2018 after a ‘lapse of memory’ about his predecessor’s sexual activities
Meet the Integralists
As he gets older, Barenboim has become more and more keen on recording Beethoven sonatas in front of audiences
It would take hours to list the evasions, half-truths and omissions in the report
Ever since Francis started lobbing missiles at doctrinal conservatives, the latter have been asking ‘is the Pope Catholic?’
The country is undergoing a Great Unraveling
We’ve never seen the text of the Vatican-Beijing pact
Is being a Black Baptist more important than Black Lives Matter?
Vatican officials are anxious to get their hands on an advance copy of The Next Pope, a survey of 19 leading contenders to succeed Pope Francis scheduled for publication next month. The author, Edward Pentin, discusses these papabile cardinals in today’s episode of Holy Smoke. The full list is still under wraps, but inevitably we … Read more
The protesters are expressing the ‘godless creed’ of identity politics
