Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator
When James Carroll was a boy, lying on the floor watching television, he would glance up at his mother and ‘see her lips moving, only to glimpse the beads in her lap. I recall thinking that they slipped through her thumb and forefinger the way cartridges moved into machine guns’. There was nothing unusual about
The two trendiest words in classical music are ‘El Sistema’. That’s the name for the high-intensity programme of instrumental coaching that turned kids from the slums of Venezuela into the thrilling Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (SBYO), conducted by hot young maestro Gustavo Dudamel before he was poached by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Or so the
Cardinal George Pell, the Australian prelate charged by Pope Francis with cleaning up the Vatican’s murky finances, has decided to speak bluntly about the appalling corrupt mess he found when he started work this year. Writing in the first issue of the Catholic Herald weekly magazine, out tomorrow, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy – an entirely
Earlier this month the Wigmore Hall was sold out for a Schubert recital by a concert pianist whose only solo recordings consist of two volumes of the Mozart piano sonatas. That would be understandable if he were 23 years old and the next big thing. But he’s 65. Though he may indeed be the next
A couple of days ago John Bingham, the excellent religious affairs editor of the Telegraph, broke a story that is only now filtering out. I hope he’ll forgive me if I wonder whether he realised just what a big story it was. Bingham wrote: Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the former leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England
How would the real Mary Magdalene have reacted to her posthumous reputation? Not very kindly, one suspects. Our only historical source, the New Testament, does not even hint that she was a prostitute, and she’s unlikely to have been placated by Christians telling her: ‘It’s OK, we think you were a reformed whore.’ No one
In the magazine a couple of weeks ago I asked if we were in the early stages of a Catholic civil war fuelled by confusion over Pope Francis’s apparent willingness to soften the Church’s pastoral approach to divorcees and gay people. Hostilities began during the disastrous Synod of the Family, at which liberal officials gave a press conference
Update: He’s called Martin Wright and you can see a clip of him speaking here at a Class War event in 1985. In it he reveals that he used to support the National Front, which isn’t a massive surprise, though he moved away from racism pretty quickly. Click through and you’ll discover just how much anarchists hate
Christians and Muslims in Egypt are joining forces to address the challenge of atheism, according to this news report. (It reminds me of the old headline from Northern Ireland: ‘Catholics and Protestants unite to fight ecumenism’.) Christian churches in Egypt say they are joining forces with Egypt’s Al-Azhar, a prominent centre of Sunni Muslim learning,
‘At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,’ said a prominent Catholic conservative last week. No big deal, you might think. Opponents of Pope Francis have been casting doubt on his leadership abilities for months — and especially since October’s Vatican Synod on
Fiona Woolf, as you can probably tell from her Maggie-Smith-in-yet-another-costume-drama photograph above, is a member of The Establishment. She’s Lord Mayor of London. And a QC. Plus, she has been at the same social events as former home secretary Lord Brittan and his wife; is even sort of friends with Lady B, in common with
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales are to hold an inquiry into the case of the Rt Rev Kieran Conry, he of the two (or is it three?) girlfriends, who resigned as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton when he had a crisis of conscience caused by the tabloids knocking on his door. Displaying their celebrated transparency,
‘Thanks be to God’, as we Catholic children used to say with heartfelt enthusiasm as Mass was over for another week. The most divisive meeting of Catholic bishops since Vatican II has ended – and no real damage has been done. Except, I’m sorry to say, to the reputation of Pope Francis. No real progress
Would musical history have turned out differently if Alexander Glazunov hadn’t been smashed out of his wits when he conducted the first performance of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 in D minor? The best of Glazunov’s own neatly carpentered symphonies hover on the verge of greatness. Perhaps if he hadn’t been such a toper — swigging
Say what you like about H.E. Walter Card. Kasper, he speaks his mind. Normally this suits liberal Catholics. Today they’re wishing he had maintained a prudential silence. In an interview with Edward Pentin of ZENIT published just as the fathers of the Carry On Synod on the Family thought things were calming down, the retired German cardinal held forth
This tweet about the Vatican Synod on the Family has appeared in my timeline and it speaks volumes about the chaos the debates are generating: Cardinal Wilfred Napier, Archbishop of Durban, is a participant at the Synod and sometimes spoken of as the first black Pope. His quote refers not just to the media talk of
The Synod on the Family in Rome today caused an ‘earthquake’ – the word is being used on Catholic blogs everywhere – when it appeared to tweak the Church’s line on homosexuality and second marriages. ‘Line’, please note, not its teaching on the sinfulness of all sexual acts outside marriage, which it does not have the authority to change
Tory MP Brooks Newmark quits politics after sexting photograph comes to light; talks of depression, needing help, checks into clinic. To which the response of many people will be: Yeah, right. He’s playing the depression card. I hope Spectator readers will think again, however horrified they are by his crazy actions and the pain he has inflicted on
Heywood and Middleton is a far worse result for Labour than for the Tories: we can agree on that, surely. Clacton is grim for Dave, of course, but I’m interested in what happens in the rotten Labour heartlands. Here’s something else for Ed Miliband to worry about: the SNP. Loathsome party, humiliated last month, but so
The former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has agreed to talk to members of Ukip about ‘Magna Carta and the Perfectly Virtuous Pages of our History’. I blogged earlier about the bishop’s bravery in calling on Rome to defend Christians from Islamism, and in the process endorsed the Catholic Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans. But this demonstrates courage of
