Holy Smoke

Holy Smoke episodes:

• 04.24.2024

  The problem with cringe-making funerals

  When did supposedly religious funerals turn into ‘celebrations of life’ that are more about entertaining the congregation than mourning the dead person – who, these days, hasn’t died but ‘passed’?  In this episode of Holy Smoke I’m joined by one of...

  
• 03.15.2024

  How the Church of England patronises African Christians

  In this episode of Holy Smoke, I'm joined by The Spectator's features editor William Moore, who asks in this week's issue of the magazine whether the Church of England is 'apologising for Christianity'. A report by the Oversight Group, set...

  
• 02.26.2024

  How much did Pope Francis know about Fr Marko Rupnik?

  At a press conference in Rome last week, an ex-nun claiming to have suffered ritual sex abuse at the hands of Fr Marko Rupnik turned the heat on Pope Francis. How much did he know about the stomach-turning charges levelled...

  
• 02.09.2024

  How liberal bishops are squeezing the life out of the Church of England

  Can the Church of England escape from the deadly grip of bishops and bureaucrats who spend their entire time genuflecting to the metropolitan Left? Why does Archbishop Justin Welby wade obsessively into secular political battles when his churches are emptying?...

  
• 01.26.2024

  Does Trump have evangelical Christians to thank for his second coming?

  Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year's US presidential elections. That's a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians...

  
• 01.15.2024

  Gay blessings and theological porn: why leading cardinals are distancing themselves from Pope Francis

  Just before Christmas, the Vatican's new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church's teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for...

  
• 12.22.2023

  Raymond Arroyo on the joys of a Sinatra-style Christmas

  In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we're taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years.  They've failed,...

  
• 12.15.2023

  The strange appeal of Integralism

  You might imagine that a political project to place modern nation states under the supreme authority of the Catholic Church would stand zero chance of success anywhere in the world, including in traditionally Catholic countries. And you'd be right. Even...

  
• 11.13.2023

  How light filled the first Roman Churches: a conversation with Dr Elizabeth Lev

  When I was in Rome last month, I watched the 'synod on synodality' fizzle out while the Marko Rupnik sex scandal took another sinister turn (and various Catholic journalists shamefully tried to suppress the story). But don't worry: this episode...

  
• 10.05.2023

  The Pope, gay blessings and the Rupnik scandal

  Pope Francis's much-hyped 'synod on synodality' began in Rome this week and to say that it has got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. On Monday, five leading conservative cardinals bounced Francis into making a highly ambiguous...

  
• 09.07.2023

  Genghis Khan and the Pope's summer of madness

  Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported:  While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone...

  
• 08.18.2023

  The future of churchgoing in the West: why Protestants should worry and Catholics should panic

  King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980...

  
• 07.25.2023

  Is 2023 Pope Francis's 'Year Zero'?

  Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his 'Year Zero' – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year's Eve.  Events...

  
• 07.07.2023

  Escaping the atheist hell of North Korea

  For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I'm...

  
• 06.23.2023

  Inside the world's most vicious liturgy wars

  In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people...

  
• 05.30.2023

  Succession: five nightmares for the next pope

  A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they're going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I'm...

  
• 05.26.2023

  The Vatican and the Mafia – why Italy can't seem to shake off organised crime

  The Sicilian Mafia is one of the most murderously amoral organisations on the planet – yet babyishly sentimental when it comes to Italian peasant Catholicism. And, like other branches of Italian organised crime, questions exist over whether they have allies...

  
• 05.05.2023

  How Protestant is the Coronation?

  The Coronation in Westminster Abbey is the only occasion at which our monarch declares himself or herself to be a Protestant, thus ensuring that no Catholic can sit on the throne of the United Kingdom. Yet, paradoxically, the Coronation is...

  
• 04.14.2023

  Why didn't Beethoven go to Mass?

  Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, 'I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought...

  
• 03.31.2023

  The battle over female Catholic priests has just begun

  This week we heard the unfamiliar sound of one of the Catholic Church's most influential cardinals turning the handle of a door that has remained firmly shut for 2,000 years. It's marked 'Catholic women priests', a development – such is...

  
• 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.  Sixty...

  
• 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, and...

  
• 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 able...

  
• 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 case...

  
• 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 Catholic...

  
• 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 things...

  
• 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 common...

  
• 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 to...

  
• 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...