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Join the party today at www.combector.com.com. Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast.

I'm Damien Thompson.

And let me warn you right away if you're expecting a feel-good Christmas issue of Holy Smoke, replete with Christmas

cheer, then stop listening. And if you're thinking, oh God, Damien now isn't the time to

lament the destruction of the Catholic Church by the Borgolia Pontificate, then again, probably

best to switch off. I'm sure all of you know that this year

the Vatican has mounted a Cromwellian campaign against the celebration of the traditional Latin

Mass on the instructions of Pope Francis himself. The badly drafted and venomous document

in which this campaign was launched, Traditionis custodis,

was so dripping with malice that even bishops unsympathetic to the Tridentine Right

have chosen to do as little as possible to implement his. In response, this Advent season,

the Pope has decided to tighten the screws.

Archbishop Arthur Roach, who heads the congregation for divine worship,

and who, God Help Us, is now the most influential Englishman in the Vatican for centuries,

has issued a clarification of traditionis custodos,

in which he says that bishops may only

permit the celebration of the traditional mass in their parishes if no other building is

available and wait for it those masses mustn't be advertised in the parish newsletter

now I've been following the career of this self-important Yorkshireman since

before he was bishop. My daily telegraph blog, Holy Smoke, spent quite a lot of time drawing attention

...