x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Holy Smoke

The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

religion & spirituality religion

All Episodes

14:55

The Pope, gay blessings and the Rupnik scandal

Holy Smoke ·

2023/10/05

Pope Francis's much-hyped 'synod on synodality' began in Rome this week and to say that it has got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. On Monday, five leading conservative cardinals bounced Francis into making a highly ambiguous statement apparently opening the door to gay blessings. Meanwhile, and this subject is being played down by certain media outlets, allegations of sexual abuse surrounds one of the Pope's friends. The world-renowned mosaic artist Fr Marko Rupnik has been expelled from

en

20:33

Genghis Khan and the Pope's summer of madness

Holy Smoke ·

2023/09/07

Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported: While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine in Iran by destroying ancient irrigation systems and catapulted diseased corpses into towns they besieged, a technique which reportedly

en

33:06

The future of churchgoing in the West: why...

Holy Smoke ·

2023/08/18

King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980 church attendance has more than halved – and that's broadly the situation in most of Western Europe. In the traditionally God-fearing United States, in contrast, roughly 20 per cent of people are practising Christians. But there, too, the statistics now point to a steady

en

33:19

Is 2023 Pope Francis's 'Year Zero'?

Holy Smoke ·

2023/07/25

Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his 'Year Zero' – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year's Eve. Events are moving fast. This October, the world's bishops will gather for a synod in which left-wing lay activists have been given an advisory vote by the Pope and permission to discuss ultra-sensitive topics such as women's ordination and blessings for

en

15:19

Escaping the atheist hell of North Korea

Holy Smoke ·

2023/07/07

For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I'm talking about North Korea, of course – a regime even more abhorrent than Stalinist Russia, but which attracts suspiciously little attention from Western governments and churches unless they feel threatened by its nuclear arsenal. My guest in this episode of Holy

en

23:14

Inside the world's most vicious liturgy wars

Holy Smoke ·

2023/06/23

In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people led to scenes in which protestors attacked clergy in the middle of the service, sending the sacred vessels crashing to the ground. As a result, the cathedral was closed – and remains so, six months later. This liturgy war is a hideous embarrassment for the

en

14:26

Succession: five nightmares for the next pope

Holy Smoke ·

2023/05/30

A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they're going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I'm heartbroken that Succession has come to an end – but if you're missing the back-stabbing melodrama then you could always start following the real-life struggle to shape the Catholic Church after Francis. Plenty of cardinals would like to swap their red

en

34:41

The Vatican and the Mafia – why Italy can't seem to...

Holy Smoke ·

2023/05/26

The Sicilian Mafia is one of the most murderously amoral organisations on the planet – yet babyishly sentimental when it comes to Italian peasant Catholicism. And, like other branches of Italian organised crime, questions exist over whether they have allies in the Vatican, some of whose senior officials are as keen on money-laundering as the Mafia, only not so good at covering their traces. The relationship between the hitmen and the hierarchy casts an exotic shadow over a new series of thrillers

en

30:18

How Protestant is the Coronation?

Holy Smoke ·

2023/05/05

The Coronation in Westminster Abbey is the only occasion at which our monarch declares himself or herself to be a Protestant, thus ensuring that no Catholic can sit on the throne of the United Kingdom. Yet, paradoxically, the Coronation is the only English Royal ceremony which is replete with Catholic symbolism – the King will even wear robes whose origins lie in the vestments of the Catholic clergy. My guest in this episode of Holy Smoke – the historian Dr Francis Young of Oxford University –

en

38:12

Why didn't Beethoven go to Mass?

Holy Smoke ·

2023/04/14

Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, 'I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought me comfort.' One of his closest friends, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was made a cardinal (before being ordained priest and bishop, something inconceivable today). To mark Rudolf's enthronement as Archbishop of Olomouc in 1819, Beethoven wrote a great Mass, and took such trouble over the setting of

en

16:10

The battle over female Catholic priests has just begun

Holy Smoke ·

2023/03/31

This week we heard the unfamiliar sound of one of the Catholic Church's most influential cardinals turning the handle of a door that has remained firmly shut for 2,000 years. It's marked 'Catholic women priests', a development – such is the pace of chaotic change under this pontificate – that is now a real long-term possibility. Pope Francis says he's against this innovation, but he relentlessly promotes bishops who favour it. Until now, they've been discreet about their views. Now, to use a

en

19:08

Is Abu Dhabi's multi-faith 'Abrahamic Family House' a...

Holy Smoke ·

2023/03/17

The Abrahamic Family House is the name for three giant concrete cubes – a church, a mosque and a synagogue – that have just officially opened their doors in Abu Dhabi. The project is the fruit of a controversial agreement signed there in 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, that disturbed many Christians with its statement that the existence of separate religions is God's will. But it's a spectacular coup for the government of the United Arab Emirates and will no

en

31:00

The war over the Latin Mass escalates as the Vatican...

Holy Smoke ·

2023/02/24

Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Pope's famously ambitious liturgy chief, has stepped up his campaign against the Traditional Latin Mass, which he's been trying to suppress ever since he was Bishop of Leeds 15 years ago. This week he persuaded Francis to back his ruling that the ancient Mass can only be celebrated in parish churches with his permission – thus taking the decision out of the hands of the world's bishops, many of whom are furious at being undermined in this way. Traditionalists are in

en

16:03

Why Catholics are torn between the Church of Benedict...

Holy Smoke ·

2023/01/10

The fallout from the death of Benedict XVI has been unexpectedly dramatic. Pope Francis's behaviour at his predecessor's Requiem on Thursday struck many observers as graceless. The liberal Catholic journalist Robert Mickens, a long-time opponent of many of Benedict's policies, wrote that Francis 'looked unpleasant throughout the liturgy and, surprisingly (shockingly, some would say), he did not attend the interment of Benedict's body in the crypt after the Mass. The Vatican did not observe a single

en

27:16

Why children need proper Christmas carols, not...

Holy Smoke ·

2022/12/22

It's time for the Holy Smoke Christmas episode! The studio is decorated like a Dolly Parton festive special c. 1977, and my guest is the fearless and feisty Anglican church organist Lois Letts. Our theme is the urgent need to save children from the agitprop 'worship songs' that crop up in nativity and carol services even in Church of England primary schools, all of which make even Miss Parton's cheesiest numbers sound like Handel's Messiah. But be warned: Lois illustrates her point by singing one of

en

47:11

How ‘cancelled’ conservative Catholic priests are...

Holy Smoke ·

2022/12/16

In this episode of Holy Smoke, I interview Fr John Lovell, who is one of a growing number of American Catholic priests who claim to have been suspended from ministry simply because their conservative views offend their bishops. Fr Lovell's Coalition for Cancelled Priests is gathering support among US traditionalists – which is hardly surprising given the Kafkaesque experiences of some priests at the hands of the authorities. But there’s a problem: some of the coalition's supporters believe in

en

33:08

What are Church of England services really like?

Holy Smoke ·

2022/11/28

Last week, out of a mixture of curiosity and boredom, I ended up watching an online Church of England Eucharist from a parish church in Hereford. The text of the liturgy was almost identical to that of the Catholic Mass I had attended the night before. We'd even sung the same hymn, and the celebrant’s vestments were indistinguishable from those of a Roman Catholic priest. But the person wearing them was a woman, and it reminded me that since that particular battle ended nearly 30 years ago I had

en

14:24

Sixty years on, Vatican II turns nasty

Holy Smoke ·

2022/10/20

Ten years ago the Catholic Church happily celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Most people thought it was a good thing – and those who had their doubts were careful to express them diplomatically. Sixty years on, by contrast, Vatican II is the source of rancorous division in a collapsing Church. Liberals, describing themselves as 'The People of God', are invoking it to propose surreal changes to the doctrine that would have scandalised the Council fathers

en

19:33

The Catholic Church is falling apart at the seams

Holy Smoke ·

2022/09/27

This headline may seem sensational, but the evidence is overwhelming. The Catholic Church is experiencing a bewildering range of crises, some of them long-term and familiar, such as demographic collapse and the continuing scandal of sex abuse. Others are being manufactured by a Pope who is allowing a faction of Catholic boomers to push an incoherent 'New Age' agenda. Whether Francis truly supports their ideas is anyone's guess – but he's increasingly willing to spout their inanities. On Saturday the

en

33:45

Why has the West caved in to the progressive...

Holy Smoke ·

2022/09/02

Is western society in the grips of a progressive hysterical epidemic comparable to the Salem Witch Trials? My guest on Holy Smoke this week, Andrew Doyle, argues precisely that in his book The New Puritans. He suggests that gender ideology, and particularly the dogmas of trans activists, together with the fantasies of Critical Race Theory, are dragging society into an alternative reality that resembles a fanatical religion. But it's one that doesn't have to employ its own ideological police –

en

205 results

Similar Podcasts

Jeff Haygood, Pastor

PodPoint

PASTOR ALVARO VALENCIA

Pastor Alvaro Valencia

Grace Life Church CT.

PodPoint

Pleasant View Church

Ted Nance

Christian Heritage Church"s Podcast

PodPoint