Damian Thompson

The Pope prepares his Thought for the Day (Photo: BBC)

The first Thought for the Day message by a Pope was what C S Lewis would have called “mere Christianity” – a Christmas Eve reminder of who Jesus was and why he was born, presented without any of the whimsical showing-off that normally makes listening to this part of the Today programme such a maddening experience.

Speaking in the Bavarian sing-song accent we remember from September, Benedict XVI spoke gratefully of his historic and joyful visit to Britain. But basically this was the full Christian message, skilfully compressed into its tiny time-frame. The Pope told us:
God is always faithful to his promises, but he often surprises us in the way he fulfils them. The child that was born in Bethlehem did indeed… Read More

Festive fulminations from the National Secular Society

It’s always hard to maintain a straight face when the National Secular Society starts fulminating against the Catholic Church, and this week they’re keeping audiences in stitches with a two-part Christmas special…

In Part One yesterday, NSS executive director Keith Porteous Wood and NSS chairman Terry Sanderson got a little hot under the collar after they learned that Pope Benedict XVI had been invited to deliver the Christmas Eve Thought for the Day on Radio 4! Much hilarity ensued as Keith and Terry literally fell over each other trying to be the first to sock it to Old Redsocks. “No platform for the Pope,” wrote Keith, and was just about to press “send” when Terry – accidentally! – split a mug of Fairtrade coffee over the keyboard. After… Read More

If you think I’m a bit hard on the Magic Circle, or Delingpole is mean to Moonbat, then you may not enjoy this short video in which conservative Catholic broadcaster Michael Voris suggests that the radical American nuns currently being investigated by the Vatican deserve more than a slap on the wrist.

Voris, who runs RealCatholicTV, is not pleased that Rome is planning to “acknowledge the hurt” felt by Lefty nuns as they’re asked to demonstrate that they are, you know, Catholic. And understatement really isn’t his thing. As he puts it:
Is there a Catholic in the world who still goes to Mass who doesn’t realise the nuclear damage that has been done to the Church by modernist nuns? Millions of Catholics have had to stand by while these “good sisters” dismantled hundreds of years of work … advancing a socialist, Marxist political agenda, embracing lesbianism, instituting yoga classe… Read More

Archbishop Mennini (CNS)

News just in that the Vatican’s representative in Moscow, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, is facing a new ordeal: he has been summoned to attend meetings with elderly, humourless, power-crazed apparatchiks whose socialist politics have not changed since the Cold War.

Yup, he’s the new Papal Nuncio to Great Britain, responsible for liaising with Eccleston Square.

Francis Campbell (Photo: BBC)

Did the WikiLeaks cables attributing an anti-Ordinariate briefing to Francis Campbell, our Ambassador to the Holy See, seriously misrepresent him? A well-informed source tells me that they did. Getting at the truth of this matter will not be easy, but if Mr Campbell has been misreported by a “shoddy” US cable, as my informant claims, then my criticism of him has indeed been too harsh.

This is what I have been told:

1. The cable “doesn’t quote Campbell accurately”. It doesn’t correspond to the report he actually produced: he never linked violence to the Ordinariate, but spoke instead of extreme anti-Papal Visit rhetoric and hinted very cautiously that some thought it might turn violent. In the same document he spoke of the atmosphere of surprise amongst Romans and Anglicans at the publication of Anglicanorum Coetibu… Read More

Michael Gormally with Archbishop Nichols at Westminster Cathedral

The dispute over the Catholic ethos of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in West London has been simmering for the best part of 25 years now. To cut a long story short, it pits devout Catholic parents against Left-leaning Westminster diocesan bureaucrats who are sniffing round like detectives for any evidence of the ultimate crime, “selection”. But it’s not academic selection that the diocese is rooting out: it’s the school’s policy of giving preference to pupils whose families are demonstrably Catholic. Alas, the diocesan wreckers now have the upper hand.

When it comes to education, Archbishop Vincent Nichols is a man of the Left: hence his failure to tackle the “Catholic” Education Service and its ideologically blinkered director, Onna Stannard. Sad to relate, the Archbishop supported… Read More

Aerial view of the Walsingham shrine (Photo: walsinghamvillage.org)

Three Anglican nuns resident at the Church of England shrine at Walsingham have left after expressing an interest in joining the Ordinariate. Here’s their statement:
On 2nd December 2010, Sr. Wendy Renate, Sr. Jane Louise and Sr. Carolyne Joseph left the Priory of Our Lady in Walsingham for a period of discernment with the intention of joining the Ordinariate when established. We ask prayers for ourselves and for the Sisters remaining at the Priory of Our Lady.
What bothers me are reports that the Anglican authorities have been less than generous towards these sisters – even that, in the words of an Ordinariate source, “having voiced a desire to embrace the Ordinariate the nuns were asked to leave and take nothing with them”. Can this shocking… Read More

US cable reports Campbell's alarm at the Pope's offer

From the US embassy cables revealed by WikiLeaks, dispiriting evidence in the Guardian that Francis Campbell, Britain’s Irish Catholic ambassador to the Vatican, sided with the ecumenical wafflers in his own Church – I’m thinking chiefly of his friend Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor – against a Pope who was trying to create unity between Anglo-Catholics and Rome through the Ordinariate.

Campbell wouldn’t agree with that analysis, but his melodramatic warnings of “violence against Catholics” and his prophecies of a disastrous papal visit are appallingly wide of the mark. My observations on the contents of the leaked cable are in square brackets and in bold:
In a subsequent conversation with DCM after Williams’ departure, Campbell (strictly protect) said Anglican-Vatican relations were facing their worst crisis in 150… Read More

I wouldn’t have said so, judging by the photograph above, but the Cambridge undergraduate son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour does like to look his best, even when defiling the memory of the war dead. Insults to the fallen are so much more daring if the protester’s clothes hang just so when he’s dangling in mid-air. And, as all well-heeled anarchists know, that requires the assistance of an expert tailor!

Let me quote from a little piece run by The Times earlier this year:
Bespoke tailoring is attracting a younger, style-savvy crowd. We ask three dudes, and their tailors, why the suit fits…

Spencer Hart dresses Charlie Gilmour, 20, student and son of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour:

Charlie: I’ve always loved good-quality clothing. My style is vintage stuff and skinny jeans — leggings-style H&M girls’ jeans that no man should… Read More

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall come under attack

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall are not, perhaps, universally beloved. But you don’t have to adore them, Queen Mother-style, to feel anger at a the sight of a couple in late middle age being screamed at by thugs. What a PR disaster for the “student” demonstrators – and I use the inverted commas deliberately, because several hard Left activists whose student days are long behind them have been boasting on Twitter all day about their presence at the protests. And don’t try to explain, please, that most of the students taking part would never have behaved so atrociously: we know that. The point is that the organisers – many of them unofficial – encouraged an atmosphere of hysteria, using… Read More