De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

  Just before Christmas, the Vatican’s new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church’s teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for years been Pope Francis’s protégé – but for how much longer? The new gay blessings, supposedly blessing the couple but not their union, have been decisively rejected by all the Catholic bishops of Africa, forcing Francis to backtrack and say they could ignore Fernandez’s decree. Then, last week, it was revealed that in 1998 Tucho published a book on, of all things, the theology of orgasms. It is jaw-droppingly graphic, has been widely described as ‘creepy’, and has encouraged leading cardinals hoping to succeed Francis to distance themselves from this pontificate. Listen to this episode of  Holy Smoke  if you want to know about the new crisis tearing apart the Catholic Church – but be warned: the erotic musings of th...

In the Holy Smoke podcast last week, seasoned UK journalist Damian Thompson analysed the Vatican's attempt to silence the USCCB criticism of newly elected President Joe Biden, which I first wrote about here . This is well worth a listen: I think the first thing to say is that it is obvious that this situation has only arisen because the USCCB did not point out these problems with Biden prior to the election. To me this lack of action sums up the lack of potency in the Church at the moment which means we are paying lip service only to the Gospel: it says to Catholics all over the world that doctrine doesn't matter - that you don't need to follow Catholic teaching - that no rules apply - that the Church could be "wrong" on these fundamental issues of life - that secular society has a point about killing unborn children being a good thing. This is antithetical to Catholic teaching, and, because it is so obviously antithetical, it requires regular, firm & loud ...

In the latest Holy Smoke Podcast, canon lawyer Dr Ed Condon suggests that Pope Francis style of governance is more akin to that of a Latin American dictator than the Supreme Bridge Builder (Pontifex Maximus). However, despite the scandals rolling out of the Vatican on an almost unprecedented basis, he reflects on the fact that the liberal media aren’t paying any attention. As Damian Thompson points out : Coverage in secular newspapers is patchy, biased and unreliable – The Times is perhaps the worst offender – while certain Catholic journalists who write about the Vatican appear to be taking dictation from a liberal faction in the Church that is trying to hijack this pontificate.   I say ‘hijack’, because the progressive churchmen who present themselves as Francis’s allies are pretending to be better connected than they are. The Pope frequently wrong-foots them by saying the opposite of what they expect. [case in point here is the terrible Charlie Gard affair] Dr Condo...