Holy Smoke – Détails, épisodes et analyse

After Pope Francis died, it took the Roman Catholic Church just 17 days to choose a successor in Pope Leo XIV. It has been well over 6 months since Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned and we are only just making sense of those chosen to sit on the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), that will recommend his successor. Even then, it’s unlikely we will know more until the autumn. Why has it taken so long?
Journalist, commentator – and quite frankly expert – Andrew Graystone joins Damian Thompson and William Moore, the Spectator’s features editor, to take listeners through the process. From committees to choose committees and confusion about the rules, as William comments, even acclaimed Conclave writer Robert Harris would struggle to make a fast-paced and riveting story out of the Anglican succession. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of intrigue though: from bishops effectively ruling themselves out, to opaque appointments, and even a former head of M15 appointed to lead the CNC. 
Andrew, Damian and William discuss the process, the problems plaguing it and unpack those in contention to be the next Primate of All England. The chosen successor will ultimately lead the third largest Christian communion, with around 100 million members worldwide, and play a prominent role in British society with a seat in the House of Lords and as a spiritual advisor to King and country – no pressure.  

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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A greatly enfeebled Pope Francis is now living in enforced isolation in a suite at his Santa Marta residence that has been converted into hospital accommodation. He won't be resuming public duties for two months, we are told – and even his senior advisors have limited access to him. As a result, it's really not clear who is in charge of the Catholic Church. And, as Damian Thompson reports in this episode of Holy Smoke, it's by no means clear when this paralysis will end; it's significant that there has been so little talk of the Pope making a full recovery. Meanwhile, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State who isn't bothering to hide his ambition to succeed Francis, is continuing to forge alliances...

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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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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Has there been a single Covid death as a result of someone attending a socially distanced church service? The answer is no, as you'd expect it to be. But, despite this, the Government will ban public acts of worship from Thursday. 
This decision is so perverse that even the Catholic bishops of England and Wales – who fell over each other during the last lockdown in their eagerness to shut churches – have written to the government asking for the scientific evidence indicating that properly supervised Masses pose a threat to the people attending them. So far they haven't received the courtesy of a reply, probably because there is no evidence. 
In this episode of Holy Smoke, Fr David Palmer, a Catholic priest from Nottingham, tells me that his church will be open this Sunday, cleverly exploiting a loophole in the government guidelines. If the police try to stop him saying Mass, or administering any other sacrament, then he's willing to be arrested. Other clergy, including some in the Church of England, have taken the same decision.
Listen to the interview and ask yourself: why is the government targeting religious believers in such a cruel and scientifically illiterate fashion? And is it prepared for the backlash? 

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Ask yourself: who are the most vulnerable and marginalised people in British society? My answer would be young adults suffering from learning disabilities, who attract sympathy when they are children but, once they enter their 20s, simply drop off the map of public consciousness The consequences of this are dreadful: 95 per cent of them are unemployed. 
But four years ago that situation began to change, when Rosa Monckton founded Team Domenica, named after her daughter, now aged 25, who has Down's syndrome. Domenica was the last godchild of Diana Princess of Wales, who was a close friend of Rosa's. The two women mixed in the same exclusive social circles: Rosa was the Chief Executive of Tiffany, no less, and I remember first meeting her there at an impossibly smart party in their Bond Street store at some point in the 1990s. (To say that I was a fish out of water is putting it mildly.) 
Years later I watched her shepherding learning-disabled young people across the streets of Brighton in foul weather before organising games of ping-pong in a cheerless church hall. But this was just a small part of her big project: to found a charity that places these young adults in paid employment. 
That was a massive challenge at the time, and even more now – because the cafés founded by Team Domenica and the internships they managed to secure for their trainees disappeared during the Covid lockdown. So now Rosa and her team have a new mountain to climb, because even after limited re-opening the charity's income is down by 50 per cent. 
Please listen to my Holy Smoke interview with Rosa, who is married to The Spectator's brilliant former editor Dominic Lawson. You won't forget it in a hurry – though she wisely declines to comment on my opinion that there's a huge and shameful gulf between Team Domenica and charities like it and virtue-signalling pressure groups that specialise in spending taxpayers' money and generally being fashionable. 
And, please, donate to Team Domenica here.  

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