The most painful thing about watching Tim Farron crash and burn during the election campaign - when asked by the naturally anti-Christian media about his views on the sinfulness of same-sex marriage and abortion - was watching a politician do what we have come to expect politicians to do. It is always painful to watch politicians live up to our low expectations of them and leave us believing they lack integrity and credibility. Of course, it was most disheartening to see a public Christian deny Christ before Angels and men, but there is also an acute political angle to the Farron collapse which concerns the trustworthiness of those in public life and the confidence that we can place in them.

As to the question of whether a 'committed Christian' could lead a national political party, I expect that Mr Farron is correct up to a point, but there is a degree of uncertainty that clouds such a statement. The reason for this is that we are still waiting for a 'committed Christian…

I thought that Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith of our Diocese and of the Catholic Herald did very well indeed, under great pressure, in answering with conviction and charity a rather hostile interviewer for a radio station in Northern Ireland. I was impressed because while the interview was ostensibly about the DUP, their opposition to planks of the great social engineering projects of the liberal movement and about the DUP's new role in propping up Teresa May's Government, it became quickly an interrogation of a Catholic priest committed to defending the Church's teachings in the public square.



This is the kind of public grilling that the vast majority of bishops and clergy would very much like to avoid. For confronting with patience and understanding a culture set against Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, Fr Lucie-Smith ought to be commended. The question is, would he be commended by most prelates nowadays or would most bishops be disappointed in his responses, since the p…

I am sure I am not the only Catholic, not the only British citizen, who looks at the moral wasteland of the British political scene wondering just how it is that with so much experience under our collective belt, of left, of right, we British are incapable of producing a political party with balanced, compassionate and reasonable policies that uphold natural law and natural justice. I think I am right in saying that at the time of writing, in truth, Christianity has been expunged from the major political parties and it has to be said that it is showing with disastrous results.

You don't have to be a Catholic (but it helps) to have felt bewildered and depressed, 'dismayed', by the electoral choices on display during this election but going by the evidence of my social media feed, like me, many Catholics walked into this election feeling that there was nobody to vote for yet again. Yes, Catholics now operate in a society so paganised that when the "Christian" lead…