Both have practised civil disobedience in the national interest: but that is in the highest traditions of their national culture
Authors
William Oddie
Dr William Oddie is a leading English Catholic writer and broadcaster. He edited The Catholic Herald from 1998 to 2004 and is the author of The Roman Option and Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy.
Whistleblowing in England is now honoured. So it should be in the US: Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are not traitors, but patriotic Americans
Friday, 2 August 2013
The Olympic games now bask in our rosy memory bank of British triumphs (and averted disasters); but there was a negative inheritance too
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Greenwich Park may have been permanently damaged, whatever the appearances that it has been restored to what it was
Even at the time, I supported Mary Whitehouse: now, even on the Left, she has been vindicated. She was right, because she was motivated by her faith
Friday, 19 July 2013
She wasn’t afraid of being laughed at by the fashionable intelligentsia. Her passion for decency and her hatred of ‘filth’ were inspired by her love of God
Pope Francis has consecrated Vatican City State to St Michael the Archangel, and asked him to drive out the evil one: the battle against corruption begins
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
The Holy Father sees the reform of the Roman curia as involving a great deal more than any mere inefficiency in its administration
How many Catholic adoption societies have actually closed down; and how many are now quietly handing children over to gay adoptive parents?
Thursday, 4 July 2013
Which formerly Catholic adoption societies have changed their names, accepted the law, and been quietly accepted by their bishops?
There’s a lot of talk about the Pope’s ‘hundred days’. That makes me nervous: Napoleon’s, after all, did not end well for him
Friday, 28 June 2013
The Pope has established himself as a pastor; now, he must assume his role as teacher and defender of the faith in a secular culture
How come that empty papal chair has become so widely interpreted as symbolic, even sinister? Is this part of a curial anti-Francis conspiracy?
Wednesday, 26 June 2013
What exactly is the meaning of that ‘Enigma of the Empty Chair’? Everyone seems agreed that there must be one
The Holy Father says he is too ‘disorganised’ to reform the Roman Curia. But the corruption has to be driven out. What he needs is a Godly hit man
Thursday, 20 June 2013
That can, surely, only be his new Secretary of State, who should know the Vatican well but not be of it. There is one obvious candidate
Pope Francis, as I hoped, will complete Pope Benedict’s unfinished encyclical: it will be a striking illustration of the hermeneutic of continuity
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
It would have been a kind of tragedy if this “strong document” had been privately published
A Tale of Two Speeches: the Queen’s imaginary World War III address; and the ‘Evil Empire’ speech, which showed why it was a futile exercise
It was the détente policy dismantled by President Reagan which had placed us in danger: rearmament and confrontation which made us safe