Catholicism
Pope Benedict helped me know and love Christ
It was Benedict XVI’s election as Pope, his speeches and his writings that prompted my conversion, and it was his…
Marching order
Why has Oxford killed off a much-loved Catholic college?
What is Pope Francis up to?
If you think your diary looks busy over the next few days, spare a thought for Pope Francis. The 85-year-old,…
Nasty, brutish and short
As Tory writers reflected on the safe passage of the Stuart dynasty through the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, an anonymous…
The French scapegoat
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
How to build a monastery
I used to envy Catholic novelists – Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, François Mauriac – as having that extra point of…
Mourning glory
On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…
Fresh air and fanaticism
The village of Oberstdorf lies in the Bavarian Alps, geographically remote but, as this gripping book demonstrates, deeply etched by…
A dangerous balancing act
Thomas Cromwell’s biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me that my father’s family, the Dormers, had been servants of the great…
The great divide
Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winning recent film Belfast chronicles the travails of a Protestant family amid sectarian conflict in 1969. Louise Kennedy’s…
The first intercessor
The Catholic church has always venerated Mary (‘Mother of God’) above other saints. But in recent years there has been…
Poland’s abortion culture war is a battle for the country’s soul
This week it emerged that a hospital in the city of Białystok in Poland refused to grant an abortion to…
How’s your father?
I was turned on to Midnight Mass by Ricky Gervais who raved about it in one of his social media…
‘A change of mind and heart’
Michael Nazir-Ali on his decision to join the Catholic church
Pope Francis is losing his culture war
Since I wroteabout the Pope’s declaration of war on the Old Rite, something unexpected and beautiful has happened. Many bishops…
Won’t the Catholic church stand up for mothers?
I’m used to waiting for the Catholic church to make sense. I’m a convert to Catholicism, and Catholic ideas sometimes…
Et in Orcadia ego
Maggie Fergusson on the reclusive poet George Mackay Brown
‘Where are the Rambos?’
James Delingpole talks to comic-book writer Mark Millar about the joy of Catholicism, our sorry lack of male action figures and his childhood superpower
The redemption of Flannery O’Connor
I have a thought for the students of Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland: this Easter, why not resurrect Flannery O’Connor?…
Without borders
Community music-making is the unifying jewel in the British crown, says James MacMillan
Diary
When I finally head back to church this weekend, after a year of Covid-avoidance, it is going to feel a…
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
