Catholicism
The Pope really doesn’t like Republicans
Last week we learned that Pope Francis has torn up the Catholic Church’s teaching that same-sex civil partnerships are gravely…
Godforsaken: religion is vanishing from American politics
The United States has always been the world’s leading religious marketplace. Even before independence, the American colonies were more fervently…
Amy Coney Barrett is the ultimate Walmart soccer mom
The biggest takeaway from the 2016 presidential election was that Main Street America was so sick of elites in Washington…
Downside’s downfall: the dissolution of a monastery
The dissolution of a monastery
How the Catholic church betrayed the dying
Of all the sad and surreal things to happen in the past few months, the Catholic church’s decision to abandon…
The woke war on religion
Though you wouldn’t know it from most American media outlets, the phenomenon of vandalizing and burning religious sites which is…
Black mass: the Georgetown Lecture Fund’s odd diversity campaign
The New York Times’s opinion editor resigned in disgrace earlier this month following a newsroom revolt over the publication of…
Why are musicologists so indifferent to their subjects’ love lives?
People often say that the battle for male gay rights has been won, at least in the West, and that…
Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity
I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting…
Why I changed my mind about Catholicism
I grew up in a traditional English family, surrounded by cousins, chivvied by aunts, presided over by my grandmother, who…
The Pope is wrong to change the Lord’s Prayer
Is the pope a Catholic? You have to wonder. In the old days, a pope’s remit was modest: infallible, but…
Spain has effectively obliterated Franco’s memory
Spanish restaurants in Germany are relatively rare, but not nearly as rare as biographies of General Franco. So when the…
Gerry Adams: from jail to the Dail
When I recently asked a sardonic Northern Irish friend what historical figures Gerry Adams resembled, the tasteless reply came back:…
A Muslim’s insights into Christianity
I’m not a critic, I’m an enthusiast. And when you are an enthusiast you need to try your best to…
By Patten or design?
My old friend Richard Ingrams was said always to write The Spectator’s television reviews sitting in the next-door room to…
The many, many resting places of St Thomas à Becket
A man in full A relic said to contain a fragment of St Thomas à Becket’s elbow arrived from Hungary for…
Equipped for life with a copy of Thucydides
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Let’s vote ‘in’ to renew the EU, says Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor
There is more to the idea of Europe than narrow economic considerations. The Remain side needs to say so
Following Jesus’s followers
In his new book Apostle Tom Bissell has an advantage over writers who go looking for Jesus: he can start…
The embarrassing story of Scotland’s most important 20th century structure
Finding St Peter’s is not straightforward. I approach the wrong way, driving up a pot-holed farm track between a golf…
John Irving spoilt my Christmas
This novel, John Irving’s 14th, took the sheen off my Christmas, and here are the reasons. The comments on…
Even Corbyn would find Thomas More’s Utopia too leftwing
Thomas More’s 1516 classic is a textbook for our troubled times, says William Cook
Was Éamon de Valera Ireland’s Franco?
A highlight of this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival was the Rough Magic Theatre Company’s production of The Train, a musical…
The people who really need the Pope's help
On Tuesday, Pope Francis set foot in the United States for the first time in his life. His plane touched…
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Cartoons
Pretentiousness isn’t such a crime
Jonathan Beckman 20 February 2016 9:00 am
Aversion to pretentiousness was probably an English trait before Dr Johnson famously refuted Bishop Berkeley’s arguments for the immateriality of…