AN OUTSIDE VIEW

The period of 150 years from the end of the Napoleonic wars can, in retrospect, be seen as a golden age of Catholicism. An unbroken succession of first rate popes, from Pius IX to Pius XII, built on, and consolidated, the work of each and all of his predecessors. Missionaries spread the faith round the world. Irish immigration brought a wave of Catholicism to America and Great Britain. In Britain, it was boosted by the aftermath of the Oxford Movement, with the conversion of Newman, Manning, Vaughan and many others from the English upper classes. Then came the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, with the re-establishment of Catholic dioceses. This was followed by a vigorous period of church building, many by notable architects such as A W Pugin and Joseph Aloysius Hansom. Religious orders such as the Benedictines, Sacred Heart Sisters, and Oratorians, set up new communities all over the world. There were six seminaries in England alone, ...

Today is the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury. He was a martyr in the cause of the independence of the church from state power. That it is a perennial issue we know from the episode of “render unto Caesar”. At Brighton, during the 1980s, we had a curate, Fr Mark Elvins, who was a descendant of the Four Knights who murdered the Archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170. Fr Mark had acquired a relic of St Thomas whilst on a visit to Rome and brought it back to Brighton. This inspired him to set up a charity in Brighton to provide hostel accommodation for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, under the patronage of St Thomas. The existence of these relics of St Thomas was against the will of King Henry VIII. All relics of St Thomas were to have been destroyed after the shrine was taken down in 1538, on the King’s orders. Henry demanded that all the bones be ground to dust and shot from a canon. The plan was confounded because long before, relics had been given to the P...

A group of us were discussing this question the other evening. These are the odds given at the betting website Paddy Power . It is probably as good a guide as any, unless some new Cardinals are named. Cardinal Tagle (Phillipines) 4-1 Cardinal Marc Ouellet (Canada) 6-1 Cardinal Peter Turkson (Ghana)  6-1 Cardinal Sean O’Malley (United States) 15-2 Archbishop Angelo Scola (Italy) 15-2 Cardinal Christoph Schonborn (Austria) 9-1 For traditionalists, the dream scenario is Cardinal Sarah (French Guinea) or Cardinal Malcolm Ranjit (Sri Lanka, both 22-1) or Cardinal Francis Arinze (Nigeria, 25-1). It is claimed that the decision is the Holy Spirit’s, so any result is possible. However, would a “Benedict XVII” fare any better than Benedict XVI in the Vatican? And his successor in turn? Athanasius Schneider as “Benedict XVIII”? Whether the decision really is the Holy Spirit’s is another question. It all hangs ultimately on a particular interpr...

When I was a child, and that was a very long time ago, we used to go to Petticoat Lane market several times a year, usually on a Sunday morning; its real name is Wentworth Street. It was a train ride to the long-vanished terminal at Broad Street. The trains were ancient even then, having come into service during the First World War. The seats where covered in shiny horsehair with deep buttoned-in upholstery and above them were framed sepia photographs of places on the London and North Western Railway, such as the Lake District. In Petticoat Lane, prices were lower, which covered the cost of the train fare. There were all sorts of things that you could not buy anywhere else: unusual vegetables such as petrushka (parsley root), an essential ingredient of chicken soup; bagels; Cohen’s Smoked Salmon; Barnett’s salt beef; Grozdinski’s bread. You could buy schmaltz herrings (Dutch style, pickled in brine), Edam, Gouda, and white cream cheese, white unsalted butter, and olives, which were a...

Food mountains, wine lakes etc were not fake news. VAT (you could not think of a worse tax) was not fake news. The sudden disappearance of cheap food from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Argentina and Eastern Europe in 1973 was not fake news. The grubbing up of hedgerows in the late 1970s to make the most of CAP was not fake news. Farmers being paid to leave fields full of weeds under the 2nd version of CAP was not fake news. The grants to country landowners under the 3rd and current incarnation of CAP are not fake news The Single Market tariff barrier is not fake news.  Now for non-fake concealed-news: as the Single Market rules kick in after Brexit, there will be as many losers in the E27 as in the UK.

The unusually early heavy snowfalls have created plenty of work in the past few weeks for people who must get up in the middle of the night to clear it by hand and with snowploughs. All this extra activity is reflected in the GDP figure and looks like economic growth.  You could think of it as a job creation programme from heaven.

“The problem is that the Orthodox Churches will continue with what has been given and the un-Churched will continue with what has always been but the cavalier attitude of the Pope to the explicit teaching of Jesus Christ will wound the Catholic Church for generations and set precedents for further rejection and sidelining of Christ.” So writes Fr Blake in his latest blog . But surely it is not a problem, rather a useful pointer?