Holy Smoke – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Today’s Holy Smoke is a curtain-raiser for ‘Recovering the Sacred’, a Spectator event at St Bartholow-the-Great in the City of London in which a panel of experts will explore the rediscovery of traditional worship and theology by young Anglicans and Catholics. The event will be held on Tuesday 8th July; for more details, and to book tickets, go to: spectator.co.uk/church

In today’s episode Damian Thompson talks to Anglican James Vitali and Catholic Georgia Clarke, two Generation Z professionals bursting with enthusiasm for their faith. It’s an exhilarating discussion; don’t miss it. 

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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Daniel Taub, former Israeli Ambassador to the UK, joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish art of constructive disagreement. In a fast-moving interview, Daniel explains how the art of arguing has shaped Jewish humour and scholarship, and Damian asks him about keeping kosher, life after death – and the influence of the Talmud on Curb Your Enthusiasm. 

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

 

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In Luke's Gospel, an ancient inhabitant of Jerusalem named Simeon meets Mary and Joseph when they bring Jesus to be presented at the Temple on the 40th day after his birth. He has been promised that he will not die until he has seen Christ, and as he takes the baby into his arms he utters the words, 'Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.' 
This prayer, known down the centuries by its opening Latin words Nunc dimittis, explains the title of Quentin Letts's novel Nunc!, a delightfully quirky retelling of the story of Simeon and his friends. It's framed by the experience of a 21st-century corduroy-wearing Englishman who, after receiving bad news about his cancer, wanders into his local cathedral and hears the Nunc dimittis sung at evensong. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Quentin touches on the real-life inspiration for his tale – and suggests to Damian Thompson that old Simeon, venerated as a saint, might be the first Christian in recorded history. 

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ambitious left-wing archbishop of Chicago, must have imagined that Joe Biden's inauguration last week would be a moment to savour. He and a small number of his liberal colleagues, known as 'the Biden bishops', have been working tremendously hard to make sure that, once their candidate was elected, any mention of his radical support for abortion would be sotto voce and preferably inaudible. They thought they'd succeeded.
But then things went spectacularly wrong. The president of the US bishops' conference, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, drafted a statement on behalf of his colleagues that not only mentioned Biden's pro-choice activism but also drew attention to the fact that the new administration planned to remove certain legal protections or 'conscience rights' from Americans who won't participate in abortions or other affronts to their traditional morality. 
The Biden bishops were horrified, and pulled a fast one: they contacted the Vatican's left-leaning Secretariat of State, which ordered that Gomez's statement be spiked until after the inauguration. News of the censorship was immediately leaked – unsurprisingly, since most American bishops agreed with Gomez's statement. A new online publication called The Pillar revealed what had happened – and named the two pro-Biden cardinals who had clashed with Gomez: Cupich of Chicago, who seems to have been the ringleader, and Joseph Tobin of Newark.
At which point Cupich did just about the most stupid thing imaginable: he resorted to Twitter. To find out what he said, and why he's now blotted his copybook in Rome, listen to this week's episode of Holy Smoke. 

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The English parish has been a source of spiritual consolation, and a certain amount of social comedy, for more than 1,000 years. So it's very old – and, it turns out, frighteningly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Countless parish churches, both Anglican and Catholic, will quietly shut their doors forever over the next few months. Bishops will blame Covid-19, but they bear a heavy responsibility for the fragile state of parish life before it was hit by the epidemic. 

In this episode of Holy Smoke, former Church of England vicar Dr Gavin Ashenden tells us what it was like running a parish, and reveals his strategies for dealing with difficult personalities in the congregation, some of whom really did resemble the stereotypes of British sitcoms. He's convinced that many parish churches have effectively been killed by their bishops' uninspiring management techniques, and more recently their embarrassing infatuation with woke culture. 

But you may be surprised and comforted by the optimism that breaks in at the end of our discussion. So don't miss it!

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Every day there’s some sort conspiracy theory being aired by right-wing Catholics on social media involving the globalist agenda of the Pope’s UN/Chinese/Masonic/Soros foundation puppet-masters. No surprise, perhaps, given the fervour with which the Pope promotes a globalist agenda while his diplomats kowtow to Beijing. Some left-wing Catholics are into the conspiracy business, too: in their imaginations it’s the feisty conservative broadcaster EWTN taking the role of the Soros Foundation.

Catholic pundits with furious views have become a major headache for the Vatican – one it richly deserves, you might think, given what Cardinal George Pell describes as the ’Technicolour corruption’ lurking in the Curia, most of which goes unreported by a tame Vatican press corps.

But is there any excuse for promoting conspiracy theories? Of course not, especially if a fantasy could have serious consequences for society. So we need to take a close look at the conservative Catholic campaign against coronavirus vaccines, which is informed not only by extreme moral scruples (certain vaccines make use of a ‘cell line’ derived from an abortion 50 years ago, something the Catholic Church isn’t too worried about) but also absurd claims about the vaccines changing our DNA. 

Ed Condon, editor of The Pillar, a new Catholic investigative outfit, joins me for this episode, which begins with some rather startling ’news’ about the arrest of Pope Francis amid a shootout at the Vatican.

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Rarely has a religious culture collapsed more rapidly than that of Catholic Ireland, which just 30 years ago seemed indestructible. Incredibly, it looks as if the Irish Church will have ordained more bishops than priests in 2020. It goes without saying that the Irish abuse crisis has hugely accelerated the process of secularisation in what was once the most Catholic of countries. Young people in Ireland now refer to the clergy with a withering disdain verging on hatred. 
My guest today, the celebrated Irish journalist, broadcaster and playwright Mary Kenny, offers a more nuanced analysis of the powerful and paradoxical world in which she grew up: one in which Catholic clergy and lay people could be simultaneously fervently pious, warm-hearted and yet paralysed by petty snobbery. She talks about how the Irish Free State handed far too much power to bishops and priests. In effect, they replaced the disappearing Anglo-Irish nobility as the new aristocracy of rural Ireland, exercising an authority over people's lives that could be generous or malevolent and sometimes a mixture of both. I think it's a gripping interview, full of the little details that make Irish short stories so compulsively readable. 

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It's the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson is joined by his fellow composer Sir James MacMillan to discuss a side of Beethoven that the postmodern artistic establishment prefers to ignore: his unwavering faith in God and the surprisingly strict morality that arose from it. 

Beethoven may not have gone to Mass very often, but before he died he asked to see a priest and during years of intense suffering composed one of the greatest of all settings of the liturgy, the Missa Solemnis. He was more proud of this masterpiece than of any of his symphonies; before he wrote it he meticulously researched the Latin text, and he also plunged into a study of the polyphonic masters of the 16th century. 

Sir James MacMillan is currently presenting a Radio 4 series on the religious faith of four composers: Tallis, Wagner, Elgar and Bernstein. If the BBC has the good sense to make another season, then he's planning to do a programme on Beethoven. But you don't have to wait to hear his fascinating reflections on the great man: just listen to this exhilarating episode of Holy Smoke. 

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The next president of the United States is, we are told, a devout Catholic who scrupulously attends Sunday Mass. This is in sharp contrast to the current president, who has never been more than an occasional churchgoer with, to put it politely, ill-defined religious views. So why are many Christians worried that a Joe Biden presidency poses an unprecedented threat to  America’s constitutional guarantee of religious freedom? 
In this episode of Holy Smoke I talk to Andrea Picciotti Bayer, director of the Washington-based Conscience Project, about the continuing ideological assault by US officialdom on religious believers whose passionately held convictions challenge the closest thing the 21st-century United States has to an official creed – identity politics. For the past four years these believers, mostly Christian, have enjoyed an unusual degree of support from the Trump administration, which has prioritised religious liberty both at home and abroad. But is America’s second Catholic president about to pull the rug from under them? And, if so, why? 

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In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson says the Vatican's report on allegations of sexual assault by Theodore McCarrick is a whitewash. 

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