The biographies of classical composers could give the impression that irregular behavior has been almost a necessary attribute of great talent. A particularly rank example is the uniquely inventive Renaissance composer of sacred music and madrigals, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, who murdered his wife and her lover, mutilated their corpses, and exposed them naked [...]

Press reports last summer suggested that the French have rediscovered the devil. Across the Channel there appeared to be at large a variety of “do-it-yourself exorcisms” taking place, alongside a growing band of free market—and unofficial—exorcists who, according to The Times, were advertising their services to the French public at a price, for example, to [...]

“Liverpool star Mohamed Salah’s unapologetic Muslim faith sends extraordinary message.” That’s the headline on an NBC story about the Egyptian sports star who plays for the Liverpool soccer club. Salah prays before each game and prostrates himself in prayer after every goal he scores. He is also popular with fans, contributes to charities and is [...]

To most of Britain’s Catholic population, Jacob Rees-Mogg is, to say the least, a curious figure. Unlike many Catholic Parliamentarians, not only does Rees-Mogg say he is a Catholic but he votes in Parliament the way a Catholic should on certain—non-negotiable—issues. Furthermore, he is quite happy to tell the world this, and, refreshingly, without apology [...]

In the case of the now-deceased toddler, Alfie Evans, the British government, through its Royal College of Pediatrics and its courts, had legal authority. Alfie had legal “interests,” which the government defined in his case, but he did not have any “rights.” Alfie’s parents only had a right to be heard; they had no substantive rights [...]

In a recent episode of the podcast Freakonomics, Dr. Atul Gawande contrasted the adoption rate in the 1800s of two new technologies: anesthesia and antisepsis. An anesthetic gas, which could be used in surgery, was discovered and first used in Boston, and “...within two months of publishing the result that a gas could render people [...]

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land… April 23 is St. George’s Day, the national feast day of England. On April 23, 2018 three events occurred. Ealing Council in west London became the first English Local Authority to implement a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) for the area around a [...]

If you’ve seen Dunkirk, or Darkest Hour, you got a glimpse of Britain’s fighting spirit in the face of great peril. If you know a little bit more about that period, you know why Churchill could say of the British people, “this was their finest hour.” You could hardly say that now. With a few [...]

The case of Charlie Gard, the British baby afflicted with the rare mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome who a London hospital would not discharge to his parents so they could take him to the U.S. for experimental treatment, brought together a number of increasingly portentous trends and realities that have come to define our age. The [...]

What will be the result of the attack on worshippers outside the Finsbury Park mosque in London? Answer: It will almost certainly bring the total Islamization of England one step closer. On Sunday night, a man who said he wanted to “kill all Muslims” drove his van into a group of Muslims, killing one man [...]

On May 22, an Islamic suicide bomber detonated himself outside a pop concert in Manchester, England, killing and wounding dozens, many of them young children. The terrorist was a 22-year-old named Salman Abedi. A few days after the attack, I was reading an article about the mosque he attended—the Didsbury Mosque. “That’s funny,” I thought [...]

Whenever a new terrorist attack is reported, I’m reminded of that LifeLock commercial about a bank robbery. After a group of masked robbers smash into the bank, the uniformed officer on duty explains to frightened customers that he’s not a security guard, only a security monitor. He notifies people if there’s a robbery, but he [...]

The British have voted to leave the European Union. In all likelihood, other European countries will follow suit, a real nightmare for Brussels bureaucrats. The British vote is another indication that the West’s attempt at reducing man to materialist categories has failed and that the only way to save the EU is a return to [...]

Edward Gibbon would be amused. Charles the Hammer would be disgusted. Augustine of Canterbury would be aghast. London, one of the great capitals of Christendom, now has a Muslim mayor. In 732, Charles Martel blocked the spread of Islam into Gaul and the heart of Europe at the Battle of Tours. In those days, Western [...]

The British people have spoken, and their voice has confounded all expectations. Almost immediately after the polls closed in the General Election at 10pm on Thursday night, a nationwide exit poll indicated that the Conservative party, led by David Cameron, the prime minister since 2010, was going to win far more seats than predicted. What [...]

According to a report in the Daily Mail, there are more Muslim than Christian children in Birmingham, England’s second largest city. The same is true in a number of other large and mid-size cities—in Luton, Leicester, Bradford, and Slough. At least three boroughs in London have more Muslim than Christian children, including Tower Hamlets, which [...]

G.K. Chesterton had a knack for anticipating future trends but when, in his 1914 novel The Flying Inn, he anticipated the Islamization of England, it seemed so far out of the realm of possibility that it was difficult to take it as anything but a flight of fancy. True enough, the book has a whimsical, [...]

I begin with two questions. Here is a statement by a person whose name is familiar to Catholics as that of a dedicated pro-abortionist, Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advice Service: “Viewing these cases as potential criminal offences will do nothing for the health of women and their babies. There is a [...]

As Archbishop Nichols prepared to take off for Rome to receive his red hat he came out politically last week with a vengeance (having over the years been admirably discreet about his political attitudes), with an attack on his fellow Catholic Iain Duncan Smith’s policy on welfare reform—a policy whose alleged effects he described as [...]