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Niall Gooch

More channel migrants is not the Christian response
December 08, 2022
A few weeks ago, at the checkout of a department store close to the seafront in Dover, I overheard a mildly alarming exchange between the person in front of me in the queue and the shop assistant. My fellow customer was explaining that she now kept a cricket bat by her front door in response
The two Christmases
December 02, 2022
Christmas is both a remembrance of the Incarnation and a winter festival of light
The Church must deal with abuse head-on if it wants to recover its moral authority
November 14, 2022
It sometimes feels as though the endless flow of clerical abuse scandals will never stop, writes Niall Gooch. The most recently uncovered perpetrator of sexual abuse in the Church is French cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who has confessed to abusing a 14 year old girl in the 1980s. The Ricard revelations come close on the heels of a
Review: ‘My year with God’ by Svend Brinkmann
October 25, 2022
My Year with God is well-intentioned, but ultimately highlights the complacency at the heart of modern secular thinking, writes Niall Gooch In the early years of this century, one of the most striking cultural trends was emergence of a hard-edged and belligerent unbelief that came to be called the New Atheism. Professor Richard Dawkins was
Words and deeds
October 12, 2022
The debate on whether Pope Pius XII should have done more against the Nazis continues
When humanists fall out with each other
September 23, 2022
The great Christian humanists of the Renaissance, men like Erasmus of Rotterdam and St Thomas More, were committed to the Church even while producing superb scholarship
Why Catholicism outlives its critics
September 09, 2022
The clarity and coherence of the Catholic moral code and road to redemption will always bring people to the faith
Why the Holy Father and Victor Orbán will forever be at odds
August 16, 2022
The Holy Father’s vision of Christian politics doesn't account for the realities of governing a nation state
The cautionary tale of Breaking Bad
June 28, 2022
Pride and resentment can lead to desperately bad decisions
Learning to forgive
May 27, 2022
Without religious faith, secular society struggles to come to terms with its failures
Symbolic stance
April 29, 2022
Churches must take care, when hanging flags, to differentiate between the political and the eternal
Rock of Ages
March 30, 2022
The Carthusian motto reminds us of the Church’s constancy in times of peril
Mass in the “new normal”
March 04, 2021
The Prime Minister says we are on our way back to normality. In England, the schools are back next Monday, and all being well outdoor sports will resume at the end of the month. In the week following the Easter Octave (which concludes on 11 April) gyms, shops and outdoor tourist attractions will reopen –
Counterfactuals
February 26, 2021
If Henry VIII had died in 1536, after the death of Anne Boleyn and before marrying his third wife Jane Seymour, England would have remained a Catholic country. Or would it? Perhaps there would have been a civil war in the 1540s instead of the 1640s, with England convulsed by the violet religious conflicts that
How I (mostly) stopped worrying and learned to love Pope Francis
February 18, 2021
I’ll be honest. It took me a while to warm to Pope Francis. I was a great fan of Benedict; I loved his scholarly precision and well-constructed arguments, his weighing of words and his attention to detail, and his liturgical conservatism. As well as all that, he was the Pope when I was received into
Miraculous ignorance
February 11, 2021
This week, I saw someone Tweet about the rapid development and rollout of vaccines against coronavirus that “We’re living through one of the greatest achievements in human history, never mind just scientific history”. To a certain kind of modern atheist mind, a ready-made narrative will leap into action when they reflect on such successes. Science
What is worth falling out about?
February 04, 2021
What is worth falling out about? On a pretty regular basis the Catholic press reports that a parish has descended into acrimony and conflict because of changes made by a new priest. We had an example of this at Blackfen in London in 2014. Fr Tim Finigan was succeeded by a priest who did not
On respectability in society
January 28, 2021
“I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people.” So said the novelist Hilary Mantel in an interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2012. Ms Mantel was raised Catholic but has never practised in adulthood, citing as her reasons unpleasant experiences with nuns and priests during an unhappy childhood. Her
On the Church as the home of unity
January 24, 2021
Last week I read Letitia Ochoa Adams’ challenging Chapter House piece on white supremacy. It is important, I think, for people like me – white, British and unaffected by the political and social difficulties that beset black Americans – to reflect on what we might not understand about the experience of fellow Christians from different
Should Our Lady ever be portrayed without clothes?
January 14, 2021
This was an intriguing artistic, moral and theological question thrown up by last autumn’s robust disagreements about the Synod on the Amazon. Areas of dispute included the role of women, married priests and the relationship between indigenous religions and Catholicism. Readers may remember that the Holy Father’s blessing of certain statues carved in the style
Eliot Ness brings the Gospel
January 05, 2021
What do you do if you’re an ardent fan of a particular sport and you want someone else to enjoy it as well? Where do you start – by explaining the rules? Do you give them a history of the sport and a rundown of its great players? Or perhaps you take them to a
12 Days of Christmas
December 31, 2020
Here we are on December 31. Smart money says people are already turning out of Christmas and toward the New Year: to school or the office; to the sales; to resolutions; perhaps to Dry January or Veganuary or other horrors. Classic FM are dialling back on the carols and themes from Christmas films and returning
Eyes on the prize in the age of plenty
December 23, 2020
“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.” So says Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle towards the end of CS Lewis’s The Silver Chair, in his brave speech resisting the enchantment of the evil witch
Christmas 2020: A hopeful festivity …
December 21, 2020
Niall Gooch is hopeful this Christmas – at least, he hopes he is. Hope is one of the great Christian virtues. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he is faithful that hath promised”, as Hebrews chapter 10 puts it. We surely need some hope after this year. At the
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