Damian Thompson

English Dominican friars on the lawn at Mapledurham

Mapledurham House, an imposing Elizabethan mansion in south Oxfordshire, is one of Catholic England’s best-kept secrets. Which is appropriate, in a way – for it went to enormous trouble to keep its Catholic allegiance secret during times of persecution, when it was a safe house for fugitive priests.

That said, I think it’s high time that Mapledurham was better known: by rights it ought to attract thousands more visitors than it does. We live in an age when fans of The Da Vinci Code and other thrillers rush to historic locations to stare at “clues” to bogus mysteries. In contrast, the owners of Mapledurham House kept a genuine secret during the Tudor persecution and for decades afterwards: their fidelity to the Roman faith. But the clue… Read More

London Citizens is a Left-wing grassroots “community organisation” which keeps coming to my attention because of the extraordinary sycophancy with which it’s treated by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales. Now it has a major public relations problem on its hands involving its deputy chair, Junaid Ahmed (above).

I quote from a report in the Jewish Chronicle:
A community organising group, feted by politicians across the political spectrum for its grassroots activism, has defended its links to an Islamist hardliner who expressed his support for Hamas terrorist leaders.

London Citizens, currently on a recruitment drive in the Jewish community, models itself on the kind of “community organising” with which Barack Obama made his name in Chicago.

David Cameron has embraced it as part of his “Big Society” agenda and Ed Miliband has said he wants Labour to use it as a model. The success of the organisation in the capital has led… Read More

The progressive fightback has begun. Horrified by the Pope’s recent affirmation of Summorum Pontificum, a group of Tabletista liturgical experts have devised “joyful alternatives” to solemn Latin worship and the “stilted” new English translation of the Missal. My sources suggest that the dance-based liturgy has been choreographed by Tablet Rome correspondent Bobbie Mickens and received the blessing of the much-maligned Archbishop Piero Marini; it may be test-driven in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, and perhaps also in Westminster, depending on whether an ambitious west London monsignor is appointed an auxiliary bishop. What will this new joyful-but-dignified worship look like? Here is a preview (hat-tip to Patrick Madrid):

Rowan (left) and Robbie Williams

The Archbishop of Canterbury today voiced doubts about Take That’s reunion tour, suggesting that “society has become too fixated on trying to recapture the aesthetic experiences of yesteryear, thus distracting us from the very real challenges of living in the here and now”.

Dr Rowan Williams, who yesterday intervened in the debate over celebrity superinjunctions, told this blog that “entertainment rooted in the adolescent psyche of a generation is by its nature transitory, and cannot be artifically revived without the risk of disorientating that generation once it reaches early middle age”.

He added: “The revival of early 1990s boy bands is, of course, a classic instance of this. Speaking personally, I find that Take That’s new tour raises many of the dilemmas that, mutatis mutandis, haunt other celebrity comebacks. One cannot but… Read More

… that the new local Cannabis Clinic (recently legalised for medical patients, but no one’s being too fussy) is opposite a donut shop.

Something tells me it won’t just be cops dropping by.

A quick response to Barack Obama on the Andrew Marr show. Forget for a moment what the interview tells us about the president’s foreign policy: I was delighted by the gracious tribute to Her Majesty the Queen, whom Obama held up as a symbol of decency and wisdom not just for Britain, not just for the Commonwealth, but for the world. “We’re very proud of her,” he said. That’s right: we.

It’s hard not to warm to Obama after hearing those words. So what if it’s a calculated gesture intended to limit the damage caused by his anti-British track record and current friction with Cameron? Calculating words is what politicians do, and this one in particular. On this occasion, President Obama is right. He’s pointing towards a phenomenon that we’ve all noticed since the triumphant royal wedding and… Read More

What with the Rapture happening tomorrow, one can’t help speculating. Born-again Christian prophecy scholars have always insisted that he will be a politician – one with appeal to “all nations”, which to me implies (a) someone from the political centre ground and (b) someone who assiduously cultivates support among non-Christians (eg, fundamentalist Muslims). I am, however, reluctant to point the finger at anyone, particularly right in the middle of the End Times, and I would urge my readers not to indulge in the sort of idle speculation that might be prompted by accidentally clicking on any links I’ve left lying around in the course of my feverish internet searches.

A 1970s painting of the Rapture. Note plane crashing into skyscraper. A prophecy of 9/11?

The world as we know it will end tomorrow, says the 90-year-old American preacher Harold Camping. If you’re a saved Christian, wave goodbye to your wife and kids, should they have the misfortune to be unsaved. You and 200 million Christians will be plucked into the sky to meet Jesus while they will remain below to experience the terrors of Antichrist and Armageddon. How does Harold know? Pay attention:
The fact is, we know that the year [of Noah's Flood] was 4990 B.C. Seven thousand years after 4990 B.C. is A.D. 2011. Remember that when we compute the passage of time between an Old Testament event and a New Testament event, we must add the two calendar dates together… Read More

How’s that for chutzpah? The video above shows Walter Cardinal Brandmüller celebrating Solemn Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome yesterday morning. Yes, that’s right – a Tridentine High Mass on a Sunday morning at the very heart of the Catholic Church, taking place DESPITE a ruling from the Tablet’s Rome correspondent Robert (Bobbie) Mickens that Summorum Pontificum is of “dubious validity”.

Bobbie has noted in the past that Pope Benedict XVI is not a trained liturgist. It may be this fatal lack of training that led Papa Ratzinger to issue Summorum Pontificum, subject of a major conference in Rome last week, and then to compound his error with Friday’s Universae Ecclesiae, which puts pressure on bishops to stop blocking access to the traditional liturgy.

Bobbie was, famously, moved to helpless tears when the cardinals – contrary to his advice – elected Joseph Ratzinger pope. This weekend,… Read More

Serious allegations: Strauss-Khan (Photo: Getty)

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been arrested at JFK, minutes before he was to fly to Paris, and accused of serious sexual assault. The New York Times reports that “detectives had been investigating a brutal attack of a woman employee at the hotel Sofitel New York, at 45 West 44th Street, in the heart of the city’s theatre district”. “Sodomy probe” is the charming phrase in the New York Post’s headline. The Daily Beast goes into explicit detail, but the allegations are different. The Twittersphere is fascinated. “I’m guessing Dominique Strauss-Kahn likely not running for French President anymore,” is a typical response. Good guess.

One wonders, one really wonders, how President Sarkozy will react to this news. I mean, this happens just hours after… Read More