Why the collapse of Christian Science should worry complacent mainstream churches
16 min listen
Damian Thompson
Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator
Friday
Tuesday
Why the Pope said no to married priests
21 min listen
Wednesday
The Pope rebuffs his liberal supporters by rejecting married priests
Pope Francis today issued his official response to October’s ‘Amazon Synod’, which discussed a plan to ordain married men in the region. He was expected to endorse it and thus open the door for the ordination of married men throughout the whole Catholic Church. (It’s already permitted in Eastern-rite Churches.) Instead, his apostolic exhortation ignores
Monday
The strange journey of Europe’s ‘Christian’ Jews
30 min listen
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.
Wednesday
Westminster Cathedral’s musical heritage is under threat
The Catholic diocese of Westminster announced last week that it is holding ‘a strategic review of the role of sacred music in the mission of Westminster Cathedral’. It didn’t add: ‘because our master of music has walked out in despair, after warning that recent changes to the choir will ruin its sound’. But that is
Friday
Has the Church of England surrendered to ‘soft socialism’?
22 min listen
Just before Christmas, Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former Chaplain to the Queen, converted to Catholicism. In this episode, he deplores the Church of England’s surrender to secularism under Archbishop Justin Welby, who won’t enjoy his former colleague’s assessment of his talents…
Holy Smoke podcast: has the Church of England surrendered to ‘soft socialism’?
Just before Christmas, Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former Chaplain to the Queen, converted to Catholicism. But that’s not the main subject of my interview with him in the first Holy Smoke episode of 2020. In it, he deplores the Church of England’s surrender to secularism under Archbishop Justin Welby, who won’t enjoy his former colleague’s
Thursday
Beethoven wasn’t just history’s greatest composer but also one of its greatest human beings
Ludwig van Beethoven isn’t just my favourite composer: he’s my household god. There’s a bust of him on my mantelpiece. It took ages to find something that did him justice. This one was made in Italy about 100 years ago; it’s painted to look like black marble, his features are modelled on his life mask
Friday
Holy Smoke Podcast: Mental health, useless clergy – and a young professor’s nightmare
We’re all sick of celebrities making a meal of their mental health problems – but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t facing a potential crisis. The unique strains of living in the technology-driven 21st century are taking their toll on people who, in an earlier era, would have been psychologically robust. Many of us are
Thursday
The cult of Trifonov is doing the pianist no favours
Grade: B– Deutsche Grammophon have decided that Daniil Trifonov’s new Rachmaninov piano concertos with the Philadephia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are a railway journey. The video trailer offers no explanation — but, boy, they certainly threw some cash at their conceit. The pianist is dressed like a Russian anarchist, wandering wild-eyed through a railway carriage.
Friday
A hero bishop, a human disaster… and the Pachamama
What exactly is the role of a bishop – Catholic or Anglican – in the modern West? They spend a certain amount of time in church, of course, but what they love best is a committee meeting. And ‘dialogue’ with various groups. Sometimes they combine the two and have ‘mutually enriching dialogue’ at committee meetings.
Thursday
In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up
There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre is nothing like a good piano concerto. Not in the version we heard at its UK première in the Royal Festival Hall, anyway. What a disappointment! Perhaps Adès can rescue it, but he’d have to
Friday
Podcast: Why the Vatican is more corrupt than ever
As the world’s Catholic bishops meet in Rome to waffle about the problems of indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin, events in their own tribe have taken a dramatic turn. Last week, Vatican police raided the Church’s own money-laundering watchdog. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous raid on the Vatican Secretariat of State, prosecutors seized documents, computers,
Thursday
Holy Smoke podcast: the strange religion of cryptocurrency
What can a global cryptocurrency scam tells us about the future of religion? That’s a strange question to ask, but the answer is: quite a lot. That’s because beliefs of all kinds, including quasi-religious faith in get-rich-quick schemes, are increasingly being shaped online – a phenomenon ignored by the mainstream churches as they slide into
Sunday
If Richard Dawkins loves facts so much, why can’t he get them right?
Professor Richard Dawkins has written a book called Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Its aim is to save children and young people from belief in the sky fairy. A couple of weeks ago he was plugging it on Channel 4 News. ‘Facts are so wonderful… and such a treat!’, he trilled, sounding not unlike the
Friday
How a sadistic Kremlin tormented Jewish musicians
The new episode of the Holy Smoke podcast looks at the cruel cat-and-mouse game that the Soviet Union played with Jewish classical musicians at a time when it was sneakily trying to extinguish both their religion and their ethnic identity. It’s prompted by the story of Maria Grinberg, the magnificent Russian Jewish pianist whose recorded
Thursday
Why did the Soviets not want us to know about the pianist Maria Grinberg?
Only four women pianists have recorded complete cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas: Maria Grinberg, Annie Fischer, H. J. Lim and Mari Kodama. I’ve written before about the chain-smoking ‘Ashtray Annie’ Fischer: she was a true poet of the piano and her Beethoven sonatas are remarkably penetrating — as, alas, is the sound of her
Monday
Why liberals turn a blind eye to the global persecution of Christians
The new episode of Holy Smoke is about the persecution of Christians. That’s a familiar concept, even if we don’t read much about it in the media. But here’s what it means in 2019: The rape, murder and dismemberment of pregnant Christian women in Nigeria by Islamist thugs. The use of face-recognition technology by the
Friday
The synod and the sex scandal: two time bombs threatening Pope Francis’s moral authority
This week’s Holy Smoke podcast discusses two looming disasters for Pope Francis. The first is the ‘Amazon Synod’ in October, at which the world’s bishops will discuss a bizarre plan to ordain Amazon ‘village elders’ as priests. The framework for the synod has already been published; my guest Dr Ed Condon uses the word ‘Orwellian’
Thursday
Cardinal Pell and the lies of Carl Beech
This week’s Holy Smoke podcast asks whether Cardinal George Pell, jailed in Australia for paedophile crimes, could have been the victim of a hoax. The possibility needs to be considered following the conviction in Britain of Carl Beech, formerly known as ‘Nick’, for inventing a non-existent Westminster sex ring in which VIPs supposedly raped and
