Holy Smoke

By The Spectator

What's Holy Smoke about?

The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.

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Is Abu Dhabi's multi-faith ...

03.17.2023

The Abrahamic Family House is the name for three giant concrete cubes – a church, a mosque and a synagogue – that have just officially opened their doors in Abu Dhabi. The project is the fruit of a controversial agreement ...

Holy Smoke episodes:

03.17.2023 Is Abu Dhabi's multi-faith 'Abrahamic Family House' a beacon of hope or a creepy PR exercise? The Abrahamic Family House is the name for three giant concrete cubes – a church, a mosque and a synagogue – that have just officially opened their doors in Abu Dhabi. The project is the fruit of a controversial agreement ...
02.24.2023 The war over the Latin Mass escalates as the Vatican slides into chaos Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Pope's famously ambitious liturgy chief, has stepped up his campaign against the Traditional Latin Mass, which he's been trying to suppress ever since he was Bishop of Leeds 15 years ago. This week he persuaded Francis ...
01.10.2023 Why Catholics are torn between the Church of Benedict and the Church of Francis The fallout from the death of Benedict XVI has been unexpectedly dramatic. Pope Francis's behaviour at his predecessor's Requiem on Thursday struck many observers as graceless. The liberal Catholic journalist Robert Mickens, a long-time opponent of many of Benedict's policies, ...
12.22.2022 Why children need proper Christmas carols, not hideous agitprop It's time for the Holy Smoke Christmas episode! The studio is decorated like a Dolly Parton festive special c. 1977, and my guest is the fearless and feisty Anglican church organist Lois Letts. Our theme is the urgent need to ...
12.16.2022 How ‘cancelled’ conservative Catholic priests are fighting to clear their names In this episode of Holy Smoke, I interview Fr John Lovell, who is one of a growing number of American Catholic priests who claim to have been suspended from ministry simply because their conservative views offend their bishops. Fr Lovell's ...
11.28.2022 What are Church of England services really like? Last week, out of a mixture of curiosity and boredom, I ended up watching an online Church of England Eucharist from a parish church in Hereford. The text of the liturgy was almost identical to that of the Catholic Mass ...
10.20.2022 Sixty years on, Vatican II turns nasty Ten years ago the Catholic Church happily celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Most people thought it was a good thing – and those who had their doubts were careful to express them diplomatically. ...
09.27.2022 The Catholic Church is falling apart at the seams This headline may seem sensational, but the evidence is overwhelming. The Catholic Church is experiencing a bewildering range of crises, some of them long-term and familiar, such as demographic collapse and the continuing scandal of sex abuse. Others are being ...
09.02.2022 Why has the West caved in to the progressive witch-finders? Is western society in the grips of a progressive hysterical epidemic comparable to the Salem Witch Trials? My guest on Holy Smoke this week, Andrew Doyle, argues precisely that in his book The New Puritans. He suggests that gender ideology, ...
08.16.2022 Is Pope Francis protecting a convicted sex abuser? In this episode of Holy Smoke, I look at the ever-deepening mysteries surrounding Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who was given a job assessing Vatican finances after he was forced to resign from his diocese in Argentina following allegations of abusive behaviour ...
07.14.2022 Why the Pope's 'Synod on Synodality' has become a joke The Catholic Church is half way through a two-year consultation exercise that will culminate in a 'Synod on Synodality' in the Vatican next year. A synod on what? Don't worry if you're confused. No one in Rome seems to be ...
06.06.2022 The Queen's powerful Christian faith In this week's Holy Smoke I offer some thoughts on the impressive and distinctive Christian faith of the Queen – impressive because it's so refreshingly direct compared to that of many of her politics-obsessed bishops, and distinctive because Elizabeth II ...
05.30.2022 Why is the Church of England so obsessed with racism? My guest on Holy Smoke this week is, many people believe, a victim of the intolerant progressive ideology currently gripping the Church of England. He's Calvin Robinson, a name possibly familiar to you from the row over the Diocese of ...
05.05.2022 The Catholic Church's muddle over Roe vs Wade So Roe vs. Wade is as good as dead. Americans are about to lose their constitutional right to an abortion. Five out of the nine Supreme Court justices have drafted an opinion in their forthcoming ruling on a Mississippi abortion ...
04.28.2022 A plan to rescue Christian art Few things are more depressing than the art, architecture and furnishings of the average modern church. The glorious aesthetic of light and colour of the Middle Ages and Renaissance has been replaced with an infantile modernist decor more suited to ...
04.15.2022 Monsignor Michael Nazir-Ali on his first Easter as a Catholic My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke was an Anglican bishop for 37 years – one of the Church of England's foremost scholars and its leading witness for persecuted Christians. He was also an evangelical who, as bishop of ...
04.08.2022 It’s time the West saved Nigeria’s persecuted Christians Did you know that in the last year more Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world combined? In 2021, at least 6,000 Christians died for their faith, and 80 per cent of ...
03.21.2022 'I don't think we've gained anything' – Cardinal Pell on the Vatican and China Cardinal George Pell has given a wide-ranging interview to The Spectator's Holy Smoke podcast in which he criticises the Vatican's 2018 deal with Beijing and especially the secrecy surrounding it. The unpublished pact allows the Chinese Communist Party to choose ...
03.03.2022 In Ukraine and China, a power-obsessed Vatican is betraying heroic Catholics Four million Christians in western Ukraine belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which since the end of the 16th century has adhered to a Byzantine rite while recognising the authority of the Pope. For this reason these Ukrainian Catholics ...
02.24.2022 Does Putin think he's fighting a holy war to preserve Orthodox Russia? Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is fundamentally inspired by his determination to preserve the Orthodox identity of Holy Mother Russia, according to the Rev Giles Fraser, writing for UnHerd today. That's not as preposterous a suggestion as you might think, ...
02.14.2022 How bureaucrats are suffocating the Church of England In the latest Holy Smoke, I ask the Rev Marcus Walker, Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, about the Church of England's plans to create a new breed of bureaucrat-bishop who will pontificate about climate ...
01.31.2022 Remembering my lovely sister My dear sister Carmel died aged 57 on November 23, after a three-year cancer ordeal during which she displayed the most astonishing courage. I interviewed her twice on this podcast about her faith, her illness and her unquenchable optimism. I ...
01.12.2022 Why tradition is sacred: an interview with Archbishop Nikitas, leader of Britain’s Greek Orthodox Church In this episode of Holy Smoke, Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira and Great Britain, leader of Britain’s Greek Orthodox, defends sacred Christian tradition with a robustness I’ve never heard from a native British bishop. The Florida-born Nikitas has exhilarating and controversial ...
12.23.2021 Why the Catholic Church is facing chaos this Christmas Pope Francis renewed his campaign against the Latin Mass this month, permitting his liturgy chief Archbishop Arthur Roche to issue all manner of threats to clergy celebrating the ancient liturgy. This 'clarification' has been greeted with horror by bishops around ...
10.29.2021 Did a 'mafia' of liberal cardinals pressure Benedict to resign? In this episode of Holy Smoke, I interview Julia Meloni, author of The St Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church. It's the first detailed study of the self-described 'mafia' of liberal cardinals who worked tirelessly to ...
10.11.2021 How Christians can fight the menace of university 'cancel culture' The University of Nottingham has been forced to abandon its sinister attempt to ban Fr David Palmer from becoming its Catholic chaplain because his defence of unborn life might upset snowflakes. In this episode of Holy Smoke, I talk to ...
09.30.2021 Can C of E parishes stop bureaucrats wasting their money? If you belong to or care about the Church of England, you may be shocked by some of the things you learn in this episode of Holy Smoke. I'm not referring to the familiar evidence that the Established Church, in ...
09.17.2021 Has Pope Francis just thrown Joe Biden under the bus on abortion? Say what you like about Pope Francis, but he's incapable of giving a boring in-flight interview. On Wednesday, coming back from Hungary and Slovakia, he was asked about the problem of pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving Holy Communion. He immediately launched ...
08.27.2021 Joe Biden and the betrayal of religious freedom Religious freedom is already being mercilessly attacked in Taliban-run Afghanistan: Muslim women in particular face a living hell unless they're happy to submit to their new rulers' psychotic brand of Sharia. The United States is required by its own laws ...
08.13.2021 Is the Catholic Church falling apart? In the last episode of Holy Smoke, I discussed Pope Francis's brutal and petty new document which seeks to ban as many Latin Masses as possible. This week we look at the other recent developments, which are arguably just as ...
07.18.2021 The plot against the Old Rite Traditionalist Catholics are still reeling from the Pope's imposition of ferocious new rules limiting the celebration of the old Latin Mass. On Friday, he tore up Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI's document rehabilitating the pre-Vatican II ceremonies — and he did ...
06.29.2021 The tyranny of bad hymns Christian music lovers of all denominations – Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, whatever – know only too well that they enter their local churches at their peril. In this week's episode I talk to the irrepressible Lois Letts, a wedding and funeral ...
06.09.2021 The Christian mental health crisis Is the mental health of Christians beginning to collapse under the strain not just of Covid and its effect on worship but also the bottomless contempt of progressive ideology for religious belief? This week's Holy Smoke is a conversation with ...
05.28.2021 How Biden's cardinals are trying to shut down free discussion America's Catholic bishops are furiously divided among themselves this week, after a liberal faction led by the Biden loyalists Cardinals Cupich of Chicago and Wilton Gregory of Washington tried to stop them discussing the question of whether the radically pro-choice ...
05.13.2021 The last legacy of the Soviet Union Today’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the increasingly brutal bullying and silencing of people – especially Christians – who hold the ‘wrong’ opinions on controversial topics. A culture of censorship is becoming ever more deeply embedded in public institutions not ...
05.03.2021 The magical power of charisma – and why the Churches are ignoring it The subject of this week’s Holy Smoke is charisma, which you might think is one of the most hackneyed and devalued words in the language. But its popularity is no accident. ‘Charisma’ is shorthand for one of the most revolutionary ...
04.12.2021 The Greek Orthodox ancestry of Prince Philip What were Prince Philip's religious beliefs? The Duke of Edinburgh had Orthodox Christian ancestry, but how was he drawn to its traditions, was he influenced by the Queen's faith, and why was he critical of Catholicism? Damian Thompson speaks to ...
04.07.2021 What the police's Good Friday disruption tells us about post-Christian Britain The invasion of the sanctuary of a Polish church in Balham on Good Friday by the Metropolitan police was not only a shocking event but also a sinister piece of history. It can't be interpreted as a premeditated attack on ...
04.01.2021 The Passion chorale: the story of an extraordinary tune As we all know, it’s safe for three people to sing hymns in church, but any more than three is absolutely deadly. Those are the rules as set down by the Church of England, and as a result no one ...
03.25.2021 The mystery of Pope Francis's infallibly good taste in classical music In this week's Holy Smoke podcast I suggest that Pope Francis has a more profound appreciation of classical music than any of his predecessors. I've been saying this for years and everyone assumes that it’s a wind-up or that I'm ...
03.10.2021 Is Jordan Peterson about to move from Jung to Jesus? Is Dr Jordan Peterson about to convert to Christianity? If so, it’s a big deal. The earnest but sardonic Canadian psychologist is already the most effective advocate for the moral precepts of Christianity in the English-speaking media. But, until now, ...
03.02.2021 Why should persecuted Christians trust Pope Francis? Beijing's new rules for clergy of all religions in China have been published in English – and, disastrously for the Vatican, they make no mention of any role for Pope Francis in approving the appointment of Chinese Catholic bishops. So ...
02.19.2021 Can the United States be transported back to Christendom? This week's Holy Smoke examines the fragmentation of American Catholicism following the election of pro-choice Catholic Joe Biden. It focuses on the strangest current of thought among the many conservative Catholics calling for an urgent change of approach in order ...
02.05.2021 Lockdown and the pandemic of loneliness In 1930, the American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote these chilling words: 'The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human ...
01.28.2021 How the Vatican tried to suppress criticism of the new president 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 ...
01.20.2021 The death of the English parish 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 ...
01.13.2021 The problem of paranoia on the Catholic Right 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 ...
12.23.2020 Goodbye to Catholic Ireland 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 ...
12.17.2020 Beethoven’s spirituality: a conversation with Sir James MacMillan 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 ...
11.25.2020 Should devout Christians be scared of a Joe Biden presidency? 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 ...

Older episodes

Holy Smoke

What's Holy Smoke about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Holy Smoke episodes:

Is Abu Dhabi's multi-faith 'Abrahamic Family House' a beacon of hope or a creepy PR exercise?

The war over the Latin Mass escalates as the Vatican slides into chaos

Why Catholics are torn between the Church of Benedict and the Church of Francis

Why children need proper Christmas carols, not hideous agitprop

How ‘cancelled’ conservative Catholic priests are fighting to clear their names

What are Church of England services really like?

Sixty years on, Vatican II turns nasty

The Catholic Church is falling apart at the seams

Why has the West caved in to the progressive witch-finders?

Is Pope Francis protecting a convicted sex abuser?

Why the Pope's 'Synod on Synodality' has become a joke

The Queen's powerful Christian faith

Why is the Church of England so obsessed with racism?

The Catholic Church's muddle over Roe vs Wade

A plan to rescue Christian art

Monsignor Michael Nazir-Ali on his first Easter as a Catholic

It’s time the West saved Nigeria’s persecuted Christians

'I don't think we've gained anything' – Cardinal Pell on the Vatican and China

In Ukraine and China, a power-obsessed Vatican is betraying heroic Catholics

Does Putin think he's fighting a holy war to preserve Orthodox Russia?

How bureaucrats are suffocating the Church of England

Remembering my lovely sister

Why tradition is sacred: an interview with Archbishop Nikitas, leader of Britain’s Greek Orthodox Church

Why the Catholic Church is facing chaos this Christmas

Did a 'mafia' of liberal cardinals pressure Benedict to resign?

How Christians can fight the menace of university 'cancel culture'

Can C of E parishes stop bureaucrats wasting their money?

Has Pope Francis just thrown Joe Biden under the bus on abortion?

Joe Biden and the betrayal of religious freedom

Is the Catholic Church falling apart?

The plot against the Old Rite

The tyranny of bad hymns

The Christian mental health crisis

How Biden's cardinals are trying to shut down free discussion

The last legacy of the Soviet Union

The magical power of charisma – and why the Churches are ignoring it

The Greek Orthodox ancestry of Prince Philip

What the police's Good Friday disruption tells us about post-Christian Britain

The Passion chorale: the story of an extraordinary tune

The mystery of Pope Francis's infallibly good taste in classical music

Is Jordan Peterson about to move from Jung to Jesus?

Why should persecuted Christians trust Pope Francis?

Can the United States be transported back to Christendom?

Lockdown and the pandemic of loneliness

How the Vatican tried to suppress criticism of the new president

The death of the English parish

The problem of paranoia on the Catholic Right

Goodbye to Catholic Ireland

Beethoven’s spirituality: a conversation with Sir James MacMillan

Should devout Christians be scared of a Joe Biden presidency?