On this episode, Paul Vallely, a columnist for the Church Times, talks about the papacy of Pope Francis and what his legacy might be.
Pope Francis adopted “a pastoral approach”, he says, “not a dogmatic approach.
“He thought that people, were the centre of the gospel, and he thought that mercy was more important than dogma. He didn’t really change a lot of Catholic teaching, in the sense that he saw dogma as the kind of ideal to which we all aspire. He knew we weren’t perfect or ideal: we were all on a journey and starting very often in a difficult place. He wanted to be there at the start of the journey to accompany people. He wasn’t a liberal: he was a pastor.”
Paul Vallely has also written in the Church Times this week about Pope Francis, after news of his death on Easter Monday, aged 88. Read the article here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/25-april/comment/columnists/paul-vallely-pope-francis-was-pastor-to-the-world
Paul Vallely’s book, Untying the Knots: The struggle for the soul of Catholicism, is published by Bloomsbury.
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22:09
Sam Wells on Dietrich Bonehoeffer's Ethics
Eighty years ago, on 9 April 1945, the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenburg. Ethics was the final book that he wrote before his arrest by the Nazis. Pages of it were on his desk the day he was taken away and it remained unfinished. Based on careful reconstruction of the manuscripts, freshly and expertly translated and annotated, this crown jewel of Bonhoeffer’s body of work is the culmination of his theological and personal odyssey.
A repackaged edition of Ethics, published by SCM Press, includes a foreword by the Revd Dr Sam Wells. On the podcast this week, to mark the anniversary, Dr Wells reads the foreword.
"Perhaps the greatest fascination of the book lies in the insight it gives to the soul of the author in the midst of the German crisis and the war”, he says.
Dr Wells is the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London.
https://scmpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780334065876/ethics-repackaged-edition
Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader
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17:10
Chine McDonald on life, death, and faith at the edges of motherhood
On this episode, Chine McDonald speaks about the themes of her new book, Unmaking Mary: Shattering the myth of perfect motherhood (Hodder & Stoughton).
The book is available to buy at the Church Times Bookshop here: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781399814638/unmaking-mary?vc=CT828
The talk was given earlier this month at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. It was chaired by Dr Eve Poole.
In this week’s Church Times, Chine explores depictions of Mary the mother, meek and mild. Read her article here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/28-march/features/features/how-portrayals-of-mary-in-art-influence-perceptions-of-motherhood
Chine McDonald is director of Theos. Her previous books include God is Not a White Man: And other revelations (Podcast, 28 May 2021, Books, 11 June 2021).
https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk
Picture credit: Harvey Mills
Save the date: Festival of Preaching one day event, 13 September 2025, Southwark Cathedral. Further details tbc at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events
Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader
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28:27
Lent Poetry Podcast revisited: 'Paternoster' by Jen Hadfield
On the podcast this week, Mark Oakley reflects on “Paternoster” by Jen Hadfield. This episode was first broadcast in 2023 as part of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent series.
“Paternoster” is published in Jen Hadfield’s collection Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize. We are grateful to Bloodaxe Books for giving permission to play a recording of Jen Hadfield reading the poem. https://www.bloodaxebooks.com
The material in this podcast is taken from Mark Oakley’s book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press), winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing.
Artwork by Emily Noyce
Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader
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15:09
Edward Stourton: Can truth survive in a digital age?
In this episode, Edward Stourton, the veteran journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme, examines how truth can survive in a digital age, and explains why truth-telling still matters.
He was delivering the Sir Tony Baldry Lecture in Winchester Cathedral on 28 February, as part of the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature (Features, 7 March). https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk
“Technology can create challenges as well as opportunities,” he says. “Today’s digital landscape offers us an abundance — a superabundance — of sources for information, something unimaginable in the 1940s, and, indeed, in the three-television-channel world I joined in the 1970s. If we’re offered several versions of the truth, it is only natural to prefer the version which best fits our views and prejudices, and that’s a real challenge facing us in what’s sometimes called the mainstream media. So, how do we meet that challenge?”
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