Damian Thompson

The Pope at Oscott (Photo: Mazur)

I really don't want to have to go back to writing about how the Catholic Church in England and Wales is ignoring the Pope's provision for the traditional Latin Mass, but… well, here we go again.

Seminarians at St Mary's College, Oscott, in Birmingham recently asked the rector if they could have the Extraordinary Form celebrated there – note, they did not ask to be trained how to say it.

The answer? Essentially, get stuffed, but couched in genial and friendly language. Oscott, which trains priests from the Midlands and North of England, has decided that Summorum Pontificum – which requires that a group of the faithful have the old Mass celebrated for them if they make an appropriate request – does not apply within its walls. But seminarians are generously… Read More

From Saturday's Daily Telegraph

Did you know there are now more people in this country who were born in Poland than in Pakistan? That’s a finding from the latest census, and it’s a surprise, because although we’re all familiar with the stereotype of the Polish builder, this isn’t a community that interests us very much. Yet it should, because it represents a fascinating and very 21st-century style of migration.

Poles have been on my mind this week because I’ve just seen Nicola Werenowska’s play Tu i Teraz (“Here and Now”) at the Hampstead Theatre. Catch it if you can: this is a delicate and bold piece of work that includes stretches of Polish dialogue that aren’t translated and we aren’t meant to understand, though it’s easy to guess what’s being said. The cast is bilingual, apart from young Mark… Read More

Paedophiles: experts quoted in the Guardian aren't sure it's harmful

Britain's most persecuted minority have found a new advocate. An article this morning in the Guardian by feature writer Jon Henley addresses misconceptions about paedophiles, quoting one "expert" who believes that: "It is the quality of the relationship that matters".

No, this is not not some sick send-up on my part. "If there's no bullying, no coercion, no abuse of power," says Tom O'Carroll, "if the child enters into the relationship voluntarily … the evidence shows there need be no harm."

O'Carroll is a former chairman of the Paedophile Information Exchange with a conviction for distributing indecent photographs. The Guardian acknowledges this, but gives him a respectful hearing and points out that "some academics do not dispute" his views. For example:
A Dutch study… Read More

Warwick Street, ex-home of the gay Masses and new home of the Ordinariate

A big story has just broken on the Catholic Herald website:
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has announced that Masses in Soho organised for people with same-sex attraction are to end.

He also revealed that the church where the Masses took place will be given to the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The fortnightly “Soho Masses” at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Warwick Street were established by the diocese almost six years ago. They were intended to be “particularly welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Catholics, their parents, friends and families”.

Archbishop Nichols said today that, while the Masses will stop, pastoral care of the community will continue at the Jesuit Farm Street church in Mayfair on Sunday… Read More

I, Doctor Eoin Clarke, unreservedly apologise for suggesting that _____ neglected patient care at _____ Hospital. I now recognise that _____ had no financial interest in _____ Hospital, nor in _____ Hospital, the two of which I inadvertently confused, the former having closed in ____.

Furthermore, I apologise for repeating the rumour that ______ engaged in _____ with _____ in the _____ and accept that no such person as _____ actually exists. It was loud in the pub and I must have misheard.

Otherwise I stand by every word.

Note to readers of The Green Benches: you have to print this out before attempting the cut-out-'n'-keep operation.

Some thoughts on Archbishop Vincent Nichols and gay marriage. I can't buy into Graeme Archer's outrage. The Catholic Church's teachings about homosexuality may (and I think will) evolve – but they will never encompass gay marriage. Archbishop Nichols has reiterated Church teaching; the reference to Orwell is silly, but that reflects no more than the characteristic laziness of his speechwriters.

Still… here are some thoughts that passed through my head when I heard the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales make his most forthright public statement on any subject since he took office.

• Rome (and I'm speaking of its curia rather than the person of Benedict XVI) is absolutely paranoid about homosexuality: it's partly an Italian thing, partly a reflection of the enormous number of closet cases in the Vatican and partly a… Read More

Danny Boyle's right-on fantasy

From Saturday's Daily Telegraph

The next Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was quite poorly before Christmas. Fortunately he made a swift recovery, as he announced on Twitter: “Cold, chest infection, asthma, 111 call, good advice, appointment, pills, improving. NHS, annual Christmas present to the UK. #thanks4NHS.”

At which point I groaned. I’m glad Bishop Welby is feeling better – but, for crying out loud, haven’t we had enough of this competitive brown-nosing of the National Health Service?

Just as light entertainers prance across our screens shrieking about “charidee”, so politicians and churchmen intone their devotion to the NHS, like politburo members singing the praises of the Motherland.

Our health service doesn’t deserve this sycophancy. Or, rather, it deserves better than self-serving rhetoric whose subliminal message is: “Look at me! I lurve the NHS more than you… Read More

Cormac Rigby: a death sentence increased his sense of wonder

From Saturday's Daily Telegraph

I’ve been given the most extraordinary Christmas present. A couple of weeks ago, the bell rang in my flat. A young man handed me a thick envelope, said it was something his late uncle wanted me to have, and vanished into the night.

Who was his uncle? Let me wind the tape back to 1972 and a little Damian listening nerdishly in his bedroom to Radio 3. Most of the output was way above my head: in those days squeaky-gate atonalism was in vogue at the BBC. But the presenters’ reassuring voices kept me tuned in. I particularly liked Cormac Rigby, whose cultivated but not too posh tones were as carefully tuned as a Stradivarius.

I had no idea what Mr… Read More

Justin Webb, one of the presenters of BBC Radio's Today programme, has tweeted something true, unpalatable and – in the circumstances – rather brave in response to the Connecticut school shootings. "A real effort to reduce gun ownership in America would result in a rural/metro and north/south divide and something like a new civil war," he wrote.

That's not a comment for or against legislation: Webb is drawing our attention to an aspect of American society that Europeans find very difficult to grasp, and also to the subterranean complexity of the gun control debate. The correlation between gun ownership and the incidence of freak massacres is not a simple one. One of the things liberals can't accept is that supporters of the NRA are just as horrified by the killings in Newtown as members of… Read More

Barack Obama's statement in response to the school massacre in Newton, Connecticut, was moving and presidential. I said as much on Twitter:

Maybe a bit pious of me, but I'd just watched the video and that was how I felt. Anyway, the tweet provoked this response from the well-known British "libertarian" blogger Old Holborn:

The president didn't "blub" – and what is the word "brown" doing in there? My instant reaction was to tell Old Holborn to f*** off, which I did, and then had to apologise for my profanity. Meanwhile, this sort of poison appeared in my timeline:… Read More