Mary Kenny, Author at Catholic Herald

Mary Kenny

Mary Kenny: The Catholic with his eye on the Elysée Palace

December 02, 2016

My cousins in Paris – where I’ve been spending a few days – have been very pleased by the emergence of François Fillon as the presidential candidate for the centre-right (Gaullist) party. Martine has been a supporter of Monsieur Fillon for some time: she admires him as an observant Catholic who is especially concerned about

Mary Kenny: Spare us the feminist fairy tales

November 24, 2016

The most uplifting interpretation of Beauty and the Beast that I ever saw was the movie made by Jean Cocteau in 1946, La Belle et la Bête. It made an unforgettable impression on me when I saw it, aged 19. Cocteau’s version was a highly moral fable, for it was about character and trust. The

Mary Kenny: President Trump’s family values

November 17, 2016

One of the noticeable aspects of Donald Trump’s administrative entourage is that multiple marriages (following divorces) are not unusual. Mr Trump himself has been married three times. One of his most able supporters, the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, has also been married three times. And his new chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, is

Mary Kenny: What we forget about ‘forced adoptions’

November 10, 2016

Apologising for past wrongs or misjudgments is always a little tricky – particularly if the apologiser wasn’t actually responsible for the event in the first place. Cardinal Vincent Nichols’s sensitive apology for the Church’s part in adoption policy of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s is kind, humble, Christian and graceful. But of course it was

Mary Kenny: From rhythm to algorithm

November 03, 2016

More than 50 years ago, the Vatican, led by Pope Paul VI – a thoughtful and conscientious man – deliberated over the newly invented contraceptive Pill for women. Could it be regarded as a legitimate method of regulating fertility? Many Catholic scholars thought it could. The Pill had been pioneered by a Catholic doctor, John

Mary Kenny: The feminist who wanted to be a man

October 27, 2016

That fascinating feminist – she might call herself “post-feminist” – and academic, Camille Paglia, was in London last weekend, and she spoke vividly about her “transgender identity” fantasies in her early years. In conversation with Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, Prof Paglia described how, as a young girl, she had always identified with

Mary Kenny: Mercy in the killing fields

October 20, 2016

Some years ago, an old German soldier, Henry Metelmann, told me the story of how he had killed his fatally wounded comrade on the Russian front. Soldiers often become deeply attached to their mates in war, and Willi was Henry’s best mate. But in the freezing conditions of retreat across the Russian steppes, Willi was

Mary Kenny: Hurrah for the village busybody

October 13, 2016

Are villages more poisonous places than towns? Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, thought the country more wicked than the city, and so does Anthony Horowitz, the screenwriter who has taken over the popular series Midsomer Murders (featuring a fictional Oxfordshire village with a higher homicide rate than the Bronx). “English villages are

Mary Kenny: When the Church crushed ‘lad culture’

October 06, 2016

All freshers and new undergraduates attending Oxford and Cambridge universities are to be given compulsory “sexual consent” lessons. The objective – launched by the National Union of Students – is to prevent rape and halt sexual harassment. It is also an attempt to stamp out the “lad culture”. The students are to be taught that

Mary Kenny: What Corbyn can teach the Church

September 29, 2016

Everyone now has heard of Momentum, the successful grassroots organisation which many believe (and some fear) is taking over the Labour Party. Momentum was founded in 2015 by a Labour activist, Jon Lansman, who was formerly an aide to Tony Benn. It is currently the vehicle driving – some say fanatically – the left-wing leadership

Mary Kenny: A perverse tribute to the miracle of life

September 22, 2016

There is justifiably much concern about the latest innovation in the “life sciences”, the biological sciences dealing with human life. The latest innovation announced last week is motherless babies. It’s being envisaged that quite soon two men may be able to beget a child together without involving a female partner in the conception. The conceiving

Mary Kenny: The ‘tsar’ who wants to save Christmas

September 15, 2016

British traditions such as Christmas are “at risk”, according to Dame Louise Casey, the Government’s “integration tsar”. That’s the person who’s supposed to make us all get along better together (though whether the autocratic title of “tsar” is the right word here must be questionable). Dame Louise, who has done splendid care work in housing

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