Holy Smoke

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Why is the Church of England so obsessed with racism? May 30, 2022

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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 London's decision not to ordain him.
Calvin is a young TV presenter with conservative Christian views that conflict with the liberal opinions of the hierarchy. He's been told they are too divisive – which is a bit rich coming from an organisation whose senior bishops routinely express opinions far to the left of those of the average churchgoer. Particular offence was caused by his insistence that the C of E isn't 'institutionally racist'. The fact that he's mixed race and London's bishops are white made no difference: he had expressed a heretical opinion. So much for 'diversity'. Do listen to what he has to say.

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The Catholic Church's muddle over Roe vs Wade May 05, 2022

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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 which strikes down the 1973 Roe ruling as 'egregiously wrong from the start'. As we all know it’s been leaked – but it’s expected to be issued pretty much unchanged in the next few weeks because, even if they wanted to, the justices can't change their votes without appearing to succumb to political pressure.
The unprecedented leaking of that draft opinion has been greeted by jubilation from religious conservatives and the degree of outrage that I don't think I've ever seen before by liberal opinion and the mainstream media, which amount to the same thing, really, in America. And in Britain too, at least on this topic: I haven’t seen certain BBC hacks so distressed since Trump got elected.
In this episode of Holy Smoke, I concentrate on one specific aspect of this extraordinary situation. Given that the striking down of Roe vs. Wade wouldn't actually make abortion illegal, but instead make it a matter for state law, you might think that Catholic bishops would have no reservations whatsoever about this decision. Isn’t this the famous subsidiarity in action?
Not so. For quite a few bishops, including liberal cardinals loyal to the Biden administration, this week's news has come as a very nasty surprise. To find out why, listen to the podcast.

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A plan to rescue Christian art Apr 28, 2022

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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 a primary school than a place of worship.
In the Catholic Church, especially, bishops who may privately have reasonably good taste happily commission cringeworthy 1970s-style art because they think it's demanded by 'the spirit of Vatican II'.
Is there any way Christian art can escape from the grip of mediocrity? My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke thinks there is. She's the charismatic Rome-based art historian Dr Elizabeth Lev, whose TED talk about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is both erudite and, in places, hilarious. Liz's plan to rescue Church art is ingenious and, I think, achievable. But to find out more you'll have to listen to the podcast.

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Monsignor Michael Nazir-Ali on his first Easter as a Catholic Apr 15, 2022

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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 the ancient see of Rochester, ordained women priests. But, as of this month, his title is Monsignor.
I am, of course, talking about the Pakistani-born Michael Nazir-Ali, whose decision to join the Ordinariate has come as an enormous, if surprising, boost to the fortunes of that small but dynamic organisation for ex-Anglicans set up by Pope Benedict XVI. This will be his first Easter not just as a monsignor – he has just been made a Prelate of Honour by Pope Francis – but as a Catholic. I hope you enjoy our wide-ranging discussion in which, inevitably, I ask Mgr Nazir-Ali whether he's changed his mind about women priests.

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It’s time the West saved Nigeria’s persecuted Christians Apr 08, 2022

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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 those were Nigerians. Their murderers were – you may not be too shocked to learn – almost to a man Islamists. But, this being Nigeria, a supposedly secular state where northern provinces impose Sharia on their populations, the situation is chaotic.
Four different groups are implicated. They are: the notorious Boko Haram; the so-called 'Islamic State in West African Province'; armed bandits; and an ethnic group of Fulani militants, often described in the media as herders – which they traditionally are, but these days they seem to more interested in slaughtering Christians than in their livestock.
To quote the Christian charity Open Doors, 'killing Christian men is a key strategy for these groups because it destroys livelihoods, with men tending to be the family's main breadwinner, and depopulates Christian communities.'
The violence employed by the Fulani herdsman in particular is so grotesque that I won't describe it in detail, but if I tell you that their targets include pregnant women and specifically their unborn children that will give you some idea of the apocalyptic horror involved.
My guest on Holy Smoke today is a remarkable man: Pastor Ayo Adedoyin, based at Jesus House in London. He's also chief executive officer of an international development and human rights charity, PSJ UK, which tries to mobilise Africans in the UK into a cohesive voice on this subject.
It's an urgent task. We're talking about a genocidal campaign that Ayo compares to the blood-soaked slaughter in the streets of Ukraine – but for years it hasn't attracted anything like the publicity it deserves. And the reason for that is that the international media and also international politicians don't seem particularly interested in the religious dimension of this conflict.
The British Foreign Office – despite various promises – hasn't really responded to repeated calls to make it a higher priority. The Trump administration made some attempt, but a US administration led by a supposed Catholic, Joe Biden, has fallen quiet. Do please listen to what Pastor Ayo has to say.

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'I don't think we've gained anything' – Cardinal Pell on the Vatican and China Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

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 bishops, whose appointments are then rubber-stamped by Pope Francis. 'I know high-up people in the Vatican are very dissatisfied with the way things are going,' says Pell, the former Vatican Prefect for the Economy.
'The agreement is there to try to get a bit of space for the Catholics. Obviously that's praiseworthy. [But] I don't think we've gained anything. The persecutions seem to be continuing. In some places they've got worse.' Nobody 'outside a small circle' knows the details of the agreement, 'which seems to me to be quite irregular.'
The cardinal was imprisoned in his native Australia on trumped-up sex charges before being acquitted by the country's High Court. It is widely believed that his enemies in the Vatican played a part in framing him. In the interview, Pell doesn't discuss his own ordeal – but he does express concern at the lack of transparency in the ongoing Vatican trial of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the Pope's former chief of staff, and his associates, who are accused of committing large-sale fraud.
While affirming his loyalty to Pope Francis, Pell also makes clear his unhappiness with the sudden move last year to restrict celebrations of the traditional Latin Mass. 'I think it was a most unfortunate decision and I think a bit inexplicable, too,' he says. But he advises traditionalists to keep calm, because there are signs that the very hard line taken by the Vatican's liturgy chief, the Yorkshire-born Archbishop Arthur Roche, is now being reconsidered.
Last month, Pope Francis told the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) that it could continue celebrating Mass and other sacraments using the old Missal, granting them a greater degree of freedom than Roche favoured. Cardinal Pell says 'the working presumption' should be that the clarified rights of the FSSP also extend to other traditionalist priestly fraternities, such as the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP).

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In Ukraine and China, a power-obsessed Vatican is betraying heroic Catholics Mar 03, 2022

Show notes

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 are despised by the Russian Orthodox and its political masters: Stalin tried to force them to become Orthodox again and threw their leader, Cardinal Slipyi, into jail, where he remained from 1945 until 1963.
And how was his heroism rewarded? Pope Paul VI denied him the title of Patriarch and, after Vatican II, the Catholic Church set about Westernising their traditions – for example, discouraging them from having married priests. Rome saw Greek-rite Catholics as an obstacle to reunion with Eastern Orthodoxy, and in 2016 Pope Francis met Putin's stooge Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Havana, of all places, to issue a declaration that undermined the spiritual identity of this brave community.
Does that sound familiar? It must ring a bell with underground Catholics in China. They were betrayed even more cynically by the Vatican's secret 2018 pact with Beijing, which herded them into the quasi-Christian services of the CCP's "Catholic" Church.
The comparison between Rome's treatment of Ukrainian and Chinese Catholics is now inescapable, and in this week's Holy Smoke I discuss them with Fr Benedict Kiely of Nasarean.org, a leading advocate for persecuted Christians. Will the Pope boost the morale of Ukrainian Catholics by making their current leader, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, a cardinal like his predecessors? (Francis loves to withhold red hats from archbishops of major sees who don't sign up to his incoherent progressive agenda.) More importantly, will he grant Shevchuk the title of Patriarch? Given that Francis refused to join Western leaders in denouncing Russia's invasion of a sovereign state, just as he has kept silent about Chinese atrocities, I wouldn't hold your breath.

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Does Putin think he's fighting a holy war to preserve Orthodox Russia? Feb 24, 2022

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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, given that the first mass baptisms in the ancient homeland of 'Rus' took place in Kiev – and that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church recently repudiated the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow. But does that mean that Putin's murderous behaviour should be seen in the context of a war of religion? Does the former KGB agent have a religious bone in his body? Is he secretly laughing at those Christian right-wingers who have cast him in the role of defender of Christendom? (Giles Fraser, I should add, is certainly not one of them.) Joining me for this episode of Holy Smoke is Archbishop Nikitas, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Great Britain, who – as you might expect – is deeply sceptical of attempts to ascribe spiritual motives to the Russian dictator.

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How bureaucrats are suffocating the Church of England Feb 14, 2022

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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 change, Brexit, Covid or whatever without having to bother looking after a diocese. He also discusses a related proposal to put ordinary bishops on fixed-term contracts that will be renewed only if they toe the party line. If adopted, these ideas would lead to the biggest shake-up in the Church's government since the Reformation – with dreadful consequences for independent-minded bishops and ordinary worshippers. All very worrying for Anglicans – and Catholics, too, since the Vatican's risible 'synodal way' is inspired by the same liberal control-freakery. Don't miss this outspoken episode!

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Remembering my lovely sister Jan 31, 2022

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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 knew at the time that one day I'd have to record an episode paying tribute to her after she died, and here it is.

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