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Holy Smoke — Christianity
Holy Smoke

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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Latest Episodes:

Why tradition is sacred: an interview with Archbishop Nikitas, leader of Britain’s Greek Orthodox Church Jan 12, 2022

Show notes

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 to say on all sorts of topics: the Western Churches’ cosy relationship with secularism, the devastating civil war between Moscow and Constantinople, and the essence of Orthodox mysticism.
Needless to say, I couldn’t resist asking the Archbishop what he makes of Pope Francis’s grim persecution of Latin Mass Catholics. Nikitas is generally a fan of Francis – but I doubt that the Vatican will be reassured by his wise and candid comments on this topic.

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Why the Catholic Church is facing chaos this Christmas Dec 23, 2021

Show notes

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 the world, including many who aren't keen on the old rite.
This episode of Holy Smoke puts this outrage in the context of what one distinguished priest calls the 'Wild West' of the Bergoglio pontificate. Never have I known such widespread despair among all but the most hardline liberal clergy. That this should be happening at Christmas underlines the grim unfairness of it all – and the desperate need for regime change in the Church. And if that means the Vatican as we know it ceases to exist, perhaps that isn't such a bad thing.

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Did a 'mafia' of liberal cardinals pressure Benedict to resign? Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

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 prevent and then undermine the pontificate of Benedict XVI.
The book contains many disconcerting revelations, and also well-sourced speculation that the group's founder, the Jesuit scholar Cardinal Martini of Milan, may have visited Benedict shortly before his own death in order to pressure him to resign. By 2013, when that happened, Martini was dead, but he had given his blessing to a St Gallen candidate: his fellow Jesuit Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, whose initiatives as pope – and particularly the vicious attempt to suppress the Traditional Latin Mass – coincide very closely with Martini's own agenda.
Do listen to my conversation with Julia, formerly one of Pope Francis's biggest fans. I promise you won't forget it in a hurry.

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How Christians can fight the menace of university 'cancel culture' Oct 11, 2021

Show notes

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 one of Fr Palmer's key allies, Ryan Christopher, UK director of Alliance Defending Freedom, about that appalling episode and its backdrop: a sneaky culture of below-the-radar censorship driven in large part by student unions. Needless to say, the latter are furious that this government is passing legislation to protect free speech on campuses. Ryan has the details.

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Can C of E parishes stop bureaucrats wasting their money? Sep 30, 2021

Show notes

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 with all mainstream Christian denominations in Britain, is watching its congregations shrink at a humiliating rate. In 2019, an average of only 690,000 people attended Church of England services on Sundays – 50,000 fewer than in 2016. And that was before Covid. This is what people mean when they talk about churchgoing falling off a cliff, and it’s a desperate problem for a church facing the impossible challenge of maintaining 16,000 buildings, many of them Grade I listed.
What shocked me was what my guest, the Rev Marcus Walker, Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, revealed about the horrors of the C of E’s insatiably greedy and tediously right-on bureaucracy. An ever-growing army of administrators and busybodies – he describes their numbers as ‘astronomical’ – is raiding the collection plates of local parishes so that they can force-feed churchgoers with their drivel.
Marcus is one of the best-connected priests in the Church of England – and one of the bravest. In our interview he talks candidly about the ‘despoiling’ of parishes by the managerial culture promoted by the bishops, which has thrown away more than £240 million on doomed projects to attract new worshippers. These schemes are mostly cack-handed attempts to foist the charismatic evangelical model of ‘church plants’ on ordinary parishes. (For an idea of just how badly this can go wrong, read the under-reported story of the resignation of the Bishop of Winchester, Tim Dakin, a hardline evangelical whose obsession with mega-churches and alleged harassment of vicars led Winchester to be dubbed ‘the diocese of North Korea’).
It was a barking mad scheme to create 10,000 ‘lay-led churches’ that prompted Marcus Walker, writing in The Spectator in July, to launch a ‘Save the parish’ campaign that, among other things, encourages parish priests and their congregations to lock away their money so that the power-crazed mediocrities who control the church can’t get their hands on it.
Trust me: you don’t want to miss what the Rector of the oldest parish church in the City of London has to say. And, once you’ve listened to him, I don’t think you’ll be surprised that St Bartholomew’s is absolutely thriving under his stewardship.
(Note to Catholic listeners: I couldn’t resist asking Marcus, former deputy director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, what he makes of Pope Francis’s campaign to suppress the traditional Latin Mass…)

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Has Pope Francis just thrown Joe Biden under the bus on abortion? Sep 17, 2021

Show notes

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 into a ferocious denunciation of abortion, describing it as homicide, saying there was no middle way and stating that support for abortion was grounds for 'excommunication'.
Francis then slightly qualified this by explaining that these 'excommunicated' Catholics needed to be lovingly shown the error of their ways, but it was hard to escape the obvious conclusion. The Pope regards the President as barred from Communion – which drives a horse and cart through the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy of Biden's own bishop, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington.
In this week's Holy Smoke, Dr Ed Condon, canon lawyer and editor of the brilliant Catholic website The Pillar, offers us an admirably lucid 'explainer' on this complicated topic. His conclusion is basically the same as mine. Though Ed wouldn't put it this way, the Pope has just thrown the fanatically pro-choice President of the United States under the bus.

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Joe Biden and the betrayal of religious freedom Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

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 do everything it can to champion religious liberty around the world. But Afghan's moderate Muslims, China's Uighurs, Myanmar's Rohynga and Christians in dozens of countries would be foolish to trust President Joe Biden, whose administration can't wait to dismantle the First Amendment Rights of conservative Christians back home.
My guest is Andrea Picciotti-Bayer of the Washington-based Conscience Project, which speaks up for people of faith who commit the thought crime of not subscribing to liberal gender ideology. Like many people, she's worried by Biden's partisan choice of personnel for US international religious freedom posts. None of them are Christians. It's an enlightening but alarming discussion. Don't miss it.

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Is the Catholic Church falling apart? Aug 13, 2021

Show notes

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 disturbing: two criminal prosecutions in which close allies of the Pope are accused of a range of hair-raising offences – and the question of how much Francis knew about their activities still hasn't been answered, either by the Vatican or its tame press corps.. Also, I touch on a new explanation for Rome's dreadful pact with China. Did the Pope's Secretary of State sign away the freedom of Chinese Catholics because Beijing was threatening to release data relating to the use of the gay hook-up app Grindr inside the walls of the Vatican? We may never find out. But one day there will be a new pope. Is it too much to hope that the college of cardinals will learn from the disasters of the past eight years?

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The plot against the Old Rite Jul 18, 2021

Show notes

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 so while his predecessor was still alive.
Francis's replacement, Traditionis Custodes, and the letter that accompanies it, relegate Latin Mass Catholics to that of second-class citizens. Their priests must now seek permission from their bishops before using the Old Rite. It's a shocking development, and the subject of today's Holy Smoke podcast, which asks how traditionalists should respond to what amounts to a poison-pen letter from the pontiff.

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The tyranny of bad hymns Jun 29, 2021

Show notes

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 organist for C of E churches in rural Herefordshire, about bad hymns. The funerals are appropriate, since when I first met Lois she wrote obituaries for the Times. Pity the wet vicar who tries to force her to play a bad hymn! We don't mince our words: our discussion is a euphemism-free zone and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And there's a musical coda, a treat in store for those many Holy Smoke listeners who are devoted to the memory of Dame Clara Butt.

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