by Margaret Mitchell in The Spectator, 7 August 2025 In an auditorium just outside St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sat solemnly in the front row as a young crowd sang, danced and hopped around to a pop hymn. The cardinal, who is 70, was widely expected to become the…
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Life in Bottom Gear
The slow delights of an OAP coach tour Roger Lewis in The Spectator 12 July 2025 Early on Monday mornings, in service stations across the country, armies of the elderly are mustering. These are the OAPs about to embark on motor coach tours to the Norfolk Broads, Cornish fishing villages, the Yorkshire Moors and Welsh…
Might Latin Have A Part to Play?
Catholic traditionalists are sometimes accused of selecting the bits of the Second Vatican Council they like and forgetting the rest But this amnesia also exists elsewhere, not least regarding clause 36:1 of the decree Sacrosanctum Concilium: “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rite.” The celebration of Mass in a…
The NCR papal front-runners: Meet 12 men who could be pope
The chimney on the Sistine Chapel is up, and voting to elect the next pope will begin on Wednesday afternoon, May 7. There will be 133 cardinals who participate in the conclave and they will elect among themselves Pope Francis' successor. Eighty-nine is the magic number to pass the two-thirds majority mark required to be…
The secrets of ‘God’s influencer’
Assisi In a medieval church built of white stone, pilgrims and tourists shuffle past the body of a 15-year-old boy in a tomb with a glass side. The boy is handsome, with dark curly hair, and wears a blue tracksuit top, jeans and Nike trainers. Everyone peers through the glass and some realise, with a…
Bruce MacDonald 1948-2024
Bruce Walter MacDonald, cherished husband, devoted brother, loyal friend and beloved by his extended family, was born on 29 September 1948, the youngest son of Charles and Ruth MacDonald of Hyde Park, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He passed away unexpectedly but peacefully on 8 December 2024. An alumnus of Withrow High School, Bruce attended Princeton University…
Assisted Suicide: An Error of Judgement
From the Editor, The Tablet, 14 February 2025 As was entirely predictable, the proposed law to allow state-assisted suicide in England and Wales is in trouble. The House of Commons committee examining the draft bill has comprehensively proved the adage that “the devil lies in the detail”. It is likely, therefore, that the bill that…
How far did he go? David Lodge (1935-2025)
Although David Lodge, who died on 1 January aged 89, will forever be regarded as a ‘campus novelist’, he was much more than that David Lodge rather admired Lionel Trilling’s notion of “pieties”, habits of mind and of behaviour that were retained even after the core or supporting belief was lost. “I suppose that in…
In Defence of Faith
Leading Article in The Spectator Christmas Issue For what should we give thanks this Christmas? The faith that sustains millions through life’s challenges and inspires countless acts of compassion every day? The hope that our world may be redeemed by love? The charity that makes us think of the voiceless and the vulnerable who need…
Notre Dame Goes Back to Nature
From the Vineyard by N.O' Phile, The Tablet's Wine Writer Amid the pomp, pride and palpable emotion of last week’s reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, an unremarked but far from insignificant vignette about the event has come The Tablet’s way. At the first Mass, celebrated fittingly on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception by the Archbishop…
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 