SPIRITED THINKING SINCE 1888
William Cash

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Diary: What should the Vatican do now with Castel Gandolfo?
August 29, 2019
With the summer heat in Rome almost unbearable, I’ve been following the saga of Pope Francis’s rejection of his various summer residences – from Castel Gandolfo to the humble Alpine chalet of Les Combes d’Introd – now that Francis has made it clear he doesn’t really do “vacation time”. But what should the Vatican do
My grandfather’s D-Day sacrifice
June 13, 2019
On the morning of June 6, while Theresa May, President Macron, and elderly veterans attended the unveiling of the new British Normandy Memorial in the little village of Ver-sur-Mer, I was 20 or so miles away in the depths of the French countryside on my own – long overdue – D-Day pilgrimage. This was to
Diary: Brexit, Boris and an embarrassing house tour
May 30, 2019
On the Bank Holiday Monday, as I gave a house tour, I knew what it felt like to stand in front of a congregation (of paying tea and tour “punters” in my case) and give a duff sermon. I’m sure priests know that sense of inner failure when they just aren’t “on form”, for whatever
Diary: The day Hillary Clinton went to a Traditional Latin Mass
March 14, 2019
Recently I stepped inside Fisher House, home of the Cambridge University Catholic Chaplaincy, for a pre-Lenten day of recollection. The last time I knelt there was in my final undergraduate year back in 1990. What struck me as encouraging – and different from the late 1980s – was the sheer amount of spiritual and academic
Diary: Introducing Americans to the three-hour lunch
December 20, 2018
When the Catholic Herald team arrived to launch our 130-year-old magazine in America, I thought we were primarily on an intellectual mission to “convert” educated Catholics to the riches of orthodox Catholicism at a time when the US Church is in crisis. But what I didn’t expect was that we also ended up converting our
The Catholic Herald is launching in America
October 25, 2018
We will celebrate the riches of Catholicism and promote accountability in the Church
Diary: by William Cash
October 25, 2018
In a month’s time, I will be boarding a plane to Washington for the launch of the new American weekly edition of the Catholic Herald. This is one of the most important events in our 130-year history. With the American Church in a state of crisis, our feeling is that a fresh voice on Catholic
William Cash: The disturbing reality of the death penalty
August 09, 2018
Last week, when Pope Francis made his much-discussed change to the Catechism entry on the death penalty, I happened to be reading a journalist’s memoir about Death Row. The author is an Associated Press reporter, Michael Graczyk, who retires this month aged 68, after witnessing more than 400 state executions. This has made me think
A garden rescues a man from depression
July 19, 2018
Skymeadow Charlie Hart, Constable, 288pp, £16.99 The playwright Terence Rattigan had a rule when he was asked about reviews: “When you’re writing about something you like but about which you have important reservations, the proper thing is to put your approval at the top of the notice and then bring up the reservations afterwards”. So
Tom Wolfe – the Evelyn Waugh of Wall Street
May 16, 2018
Wolfe drew on a tradition of conservative satire and politically incorrect social criticism
Diary by William Cash
April 26, 2018
Last week I went to the funeral of my dear friend Philip Kerr, who wrote more than 30 novels. Many of these – as we learnt from his agent, Caradoc King, in his splendid eulogy – were sold for “north of a million dollars”. Philip was just 62 when he died but left a legacy
‘Politics makes a difference’
January 25, 2018
When Damian Collins received his first Holy Communion in the 1980s at St Mary’s Catholic secondary school in rural Herefordshire, he was made an altar boy almost straight away. Seeing that he was a natural in his new role, one of the older parish ladies exclaimed: “Damian will be a bishop before he knows it.”
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