Tim Stanley, Author at Catholic Herald

Tim Stanley

A unique yet universal journey into the Church

January 17, 2019

From Fire, by Water By Sohrab Ahmari Ignatius, 240pp, £18/$22 My first thought when reading Sohrab Ahmari’s From Fire by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith was, “Did he write his memoir too soon?” Sohrab only converted three years ago and he’s even younger than me (which, trust me, makes him very young), and some

Glimpsing the divine in St Petersburg

December 13, 2018

I have seen the future and it is Russia’s past, although not necessarily the bit I expected, certainly not the communist era, which has almost been airbrushed out. On my jolly holiday to St Petersburg and Moscow, I spotted one public statue of Lenin, one of Marx. Lenin, of course, still has his own private

Damien Hirst’s theology of the body

November 29, 2018

You must see the Edward Burne-Jones exhibition at Tate Britain in London, especially if you love myths and legends, heroes and monsters. Jones was a 19th-century, Protestant, Pre-Raphaelite artist with a background in theology: not quite “one of us” but with a foot in a medieval past that gave his painting a Catholic sensibility, much

Roger Scruton makes his critics look tiny. But I fear for the future of public life

November 15, 2018

I take the war on Roger Scruton personally. The conservative philosopher was recently appointed to some unimportant British government committee on making houses prettier, and the “offence archaeologists” went to work. Digging through his back catalogue, they found that he once said Islamophobia was a dubious concept; he called homosexuality “not normal”; he spoke of

A visit that confirmed all my prejudices about England’s Protestant revolution

November 03, 2018

Norfolk is full of suppressed Catholicism

Reformation, decadence and fast cars

November 01, 2018

I recently took Gilda away for a few days in Norfolk. Gilda’s not my wife, she’s my green Mini Cooper, and she just loves the open country. Like a dog unleashed, she speeds off into the distance and I really have no say on where we end up. When you own a Mini, you’re never

Let’s not pretend Catholic life is easy

October 18, 2018

We’re never truly alone with God but it’s perfectly normal to feel like you are, because I often do, too

Let’s not pretend Catholic life is easy

October 18, 2018

Sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud. I never intended to become a public Catholic: I converted to Catholicism expecting it to fix me on the quiet. But when I saw the Church being attacked, I felt a call to defend it, and year by year I became an amateur evangelist. I do

Don’t be fooled by China

October 04, 2018

The communist regime has a much clearer game plan than we have in the West

Don’t be fooled by China

October 04, 2018

Sometimes we look at the People’s Republic of China and think, “Come on, they can’t be communist any more – half of them are overweight!” So why shouldn’t the Catholic Church make peace with their rulers? What’s wrong with inviting them to help pick a few bishops? Well, I’m sorry to report that ideas do

A recipe for relationship failure

September 20, 2018

Once you’ve seen Channel 4’s Naked Attraction, you can’t unsee it. A contestant is presented with six boxes containing six naked people. The boxes lift from the ground up, in stages. First come the goolies; second the torso; third the face. Our hero then chooses one of these bodies to go on a date with.

John McCain’s funeral marked the last rites of a dying class

September 06, 2018

Funerals aren't just about the dead. The living hijack them

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