THE INTERNATIONAL 10 OCTOBER 2020 £3.

80
CATHOLIC WEEKLY www.thetablet.co.uk Est. 1840

Come together
With Fratelli Tutti, the Pope
ties his legacy to St Francis
Christopher Lamb

Mary Kenny Sr Therese Wong Madoc Cairns Timothy Radcliffe

The judgement, grace and ‘I trust that God knows The sailors weathering Marilynne Robinson explores
energy of Mary McAleese what will fulfil my heart’ the Covid storm the human struggle

Tablet_10October.Final.indd 1 06/10/2020 17:33

02_Tablet10Oct20 Leader.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 18:50 Page 2
THE TABLET
THE INTERNATIONAL
CATHOLIC WEEKLY
FOUNDED IN 1840
W
FRATELLI hat is it that modern civilisation most
TUTTI lacks? What are the fundamental
deficiencies that ultimately could
WHY ‘I’ undermine it? Pope Francis has come up
with a profound answer that seems at first glance too
MUST insubstantial, even naive, to save the world from itself.
Not a major source of new energy or fresh food supply;
BECOME not even a cure for cancer. What the world needs is the
realisation that every member of the human race is
‘WE’ brother or sister to every other member, no matter how
distant or unfamiliar.
In his latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti – the phrase is
from the writings of his namesake St Francis of Assisi
– the Pope closely argues an increasingly convincing
case that social division, fragmentation and the
friction they cause are the primary threats that
humankind has to fear. That includes the possibility of
unprecedentedly destructive wars, but is not limited to
it. The entire environment is at risk. And the cause is
the absence of a sense that human beings all belong to
the same family, and hence to one another. “We need
to think of ourselves more and more as a single family
dwelling in a common home.”
This is not some unreal utopia, however, where
differences melt away in a warm wash of togetherness.
Identity is local, and local loyalty matters. To use an
English expression that Pope Francis is probably
unfamiliar with, charity does indeed begin at home.
But it ends at the ends of the Earth. Local identity is
necessary and good, but is also a trap if it labels the
others, those not of that tribe, as less than human. He
analyses at length the parable of the Good Samaritan,
and uses it to show that no one is an island but each of
us is a piece of the human continent. All are
neighbours to all; all are therefore covered by the
injunction “love thy neighbour as thyself ”.
“No one can face life in isolation … Let us dream,
then, as a single human family, as fellow travellers
sharing the same flesh, as children of the same Earth,
which is our common home, each of us bringing the
richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of
us with his or her own voice – brothers and sisters all.”
T
he Pope’s choice of title was much criticised
before publication of his text. The word fratelli
is a male noun and “fraternity” itself, the word
he uses to describe the encyclical’s pivotal idea,
is not gender inclusive. In the first paragraph, the Pope
uses the inclusive style “he or she”; in the second
paragraph, he refers to “brothers and sisters”; and he
uses both terms throughout. But no women are cited in
the encyclical, which makes frequent use of terms like
“brotherhood” to describe the human family. Some of
the negativity around the document could have been
defused with a wiser choice of title.
In the Vatican press conference to introduce it,
Professor Anna Rowlands of Durham University aptly
described the encyclical as a “devastating challenge to
our ecological, political, economic and social life”. It is
above all “a proclamation of an ineradicable, joyful
truth, presented here as a wellspring for a fatigued
world”. The encyclical urges the way of dialogue as the
means by which humanity could negotiate to heal its
disagreements and divisions, and Professor Rowlands
2 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
later urged dialogue within the Catholic Church over
issues such as inclusive language.
Pope Francis underlines some of the key themes of
the 2009 encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in
Veritate, concerning the limitations and dangers
inherent in free-market economics. And as other
popes before him have done, he emphasises the
importance of the United Nations and other world
bodies. What is new is his fundamental questioning of
the just war doctrine, part of traditional Catholic
teaching on warfare. “We can no longer think of war as
a solution, because its risks will probably always be
greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is
very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria
elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the
possibility of a just war. Never again war!”
Every war leaves our world worse than it was before,
the Pope says. And he urges a negotiated end to
nuclear deterrence as a means to keep the peace.
Francis is not unaware of the difficulties when nations
pursue their own interests rather than those of the
universal common good. Not every politician believes
in “fraternity”, and conflicts will happen. So the Pope is
open to the criticism that he is promoting an idealised
view rather than a realistic one. Just war theory was
never in favour of war, but was a way of limiting its
excesses. He is right, however, that just war theory has
often been dishonestly invoked to provide a pretext for
power grabs and the pursuit of partisan interests.
P
ope Francis is passionate in his defence of the
rights of migrants of all kinds, and this is
probably where the encyclical will encounter
most resistance among politicians. But it
follows inescapably from the principle underpinning the
document that we are all members of the same human
family. “Migrants are not seen as entitled like others to
participate in the life of society, and it is forgotten that
they possess the same intrinsic dignity as any person,” he
writes. “No one will ever openly deny that they are
human beings, yet in practice, by our decisions and the
way we treat them, we show that we consider them less
worthy, less important, less human.”
There are two kinds of moral truth – those that
remain on paper, and those which enter into the soul
and change human character. Pope Francis is
operating in the space between them. On the one
hand are high-sounding moral propositions, many of
which can be found in this encyclical, which nobody
would really deny but which few take on board and
change course accordingly. On the other, he is urging
the world to make the immense moral effort to change
its underlying philosophy, from self-interested
individualism to the model of the interior life of a
family, where in place of the words “I” and “me”, the
use of the words “we” and “us” is second nature.
In so far as a world in which we live in solidarity and
with a shared care for the good of our neighbour is
what most people yearn for, Pope Francis can expect
an attentive hearing. In so far as the world’s leaders
are really pursuing power and personal ambition
rather than the common good, then, sadly, he can
expect to be ignored. But water, dripping on even the
hardest stone, will eventually wear a hole in it.
 03_Tablet010Oct20 Contents.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 19:17 Page 3

PHOTO: CNS/VATICAN MEDIA

Pope Francis signs his new

26 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, at the
Basilica of St Francis in Assisi

COLUMN A R T S / PAG E 1 8
CONTENTS Music
10 OCTOBER 2020 // VOL 274 NO. 9372 The Marian
Consort
F E AT U R E S ALEXANDRA
COGHLAN
4 / A better way is possible
In his new encyclical, Pope Francis seeks to inspire the people of the world to believe Podcasts
that even at a time of crisis, transformation can happen / BY CHRISTOPHER LAMB Revisionist
Christopher
History; 1619;
Howse’s 6 / ‘I trust that God knows what will fulfil my heart’ Wind of Change;
Notebook In the final part of our series on women Religious, Sr Therese Wong explains why The British
‘The Church she left her journalism studies to share her faith / BY BLANCHE GIROUARD History Project
believes that D.J. TAYLOR
the living body 8 / Weathering the Covid storm
of Christ is Seafarers are on the margins, and the pandemic has exposed new problems for Theatre
received, not people largely unnoticed by those who benefit from their labour / BY MADOC CAIRNS An Evening With An
slices of meat’ / 5 Immigrant
10 / Remembered in stone MARK LAWSON
English and Welsh Catholics are proud of their martyrs, and their churches often
house their relics and commemorate them / BY ELENA CURTI Television
Muriel Spark by
12 / Here’s to October resolutions Ian Rankin
Our latest ‘dispatch from the happiness frontline’ ponders whether autumn may LUCY LETHBRIDGE
be a better time than new year to take stock / BY RACHEL KELLY
B O O K S / PA G E 2 1
Mary Kenny
Here’s the Story:
A Memoir
MARY MCALEESE

NEWS Timothy Radcliffe

Jack
25 / The Church in the World / News briefing MARILYNNE
ROBINSON
26 / Pope ties his legacy to that of St Francis
REGULARS 28 / View from Assisi Marcus Tanner
Piranesi
Word from 29 / News from Britain and Ireland / News briefing SUSANNA CLARKE
the Cloisters 13
Puzzles 13
30 / Concerns raised over Silverstream Priory
Morag MacInnes
Letters 15
Island Dreams
The Living Spirit 16 GAVIN FRANCIS
COVER: CNS PHOTO/ IPA/SIPA USA, REUTERS

10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 3

04-05_Tablet10Oct20 Lamb Howse.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 18:49 Page 6
FEATURES / Fratelli Tutti
In his new encyclical, Pope Francis draws on the example of his namesake, the Saint of Assisi, to
inspire the people of the world to believe that even at this time of political and moral crisis,
transformation can be achieved / By CHRISTOPHER LAMB
A better way is possible
A
RISING TIDE of populist national-
ism. Polarised debates that leave
people in a permanent state of con-
frontation. A global pandemic
which has exposed the weakness of free mar-
kets. Ideologies and hatred being spread on
social media.
As Pope Francis writes in his new encyclical
letter, the world is “showing signs of a certain
regression”.
Fratelli Tutti is the 83-year-old Roman
pontiff ’s attempt to show that a better way is
possible. Covid-19 has shown that we are a
“global community, all in the same boat”. The
Pope calls for a new kind of politics, one which
is kinder and more tender, open to dialogue
and expressing love of neighbour.
To adapt the popular prayer attributed to
St Francis: “Where there is populism, Pope
Francis focuses on people; where there is
nationalism, he calls for reform of the United
Nations; where there is individualism, he
pushes for solidarity; where there is digital
trolling, he asks for kindness; where there
is inequality, he urges fairer distribution;
when politicians hate, he recommends dia-
logue; when there is ideology, he calls for
genuine faith.”
The encyclical takes an uncompromising
stand against the “myopic, extremist, resentful
and aggressive nationalism” that Francis sees
growing across Europe, the United States and
parts of Latin America. One official in Rome
put it to me this way: “It’s a kick in the head
to the rising tide of barbarism.”
THE ENCYCLICAL is the third major docu-
ment of Francis’ pontificate. The first,
Evangelii Gaudium, an apostolic constitution,
offers a manifesto for church renewal. The
second, Laudato Si’, an encyclical, recasts the
Church’s teaching on protecting the natural
world. And his third, Fratelli Tutti, is a natural
next step, as it looks to repair and enrich rela-
tionships across the human family. If the
message of Laudato Si’ is “Everything is con-
nected”, the message of Fratelli Tutti is
“Everyone is connected”.
The 43,000-word document contains 287
paragraphs, and brings together all the ele-
ments in the Pope’s teaching on social justice,
politics and the common good. The encyclical
is not a direct response to the coronavirus
but, as the Pope explains, the pandemic “unex-
pectedly erupted” while he was writing it and
is “exposing our false securities”.
There are three points that stand out when
reading the encyclical.
4 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
PHOTO: CNS/VATICAN MEDIA
Pope Francis signs the encyclical in Assisi
First, it shows that at the heart of the Francis
pontificate is a Gospel-based leadership rooted
in the spirit of St Francis of Assisi, the Pope’s
namesake. The text was signed in Assisi and
released on 4 October, the feast day of the
saint renowned for his message of peace, dia-
logue and care for creation. In Fratelli Tutti
(the title is taken from the writings of St
Francis), the Pope approaches the complexities
of global politics with the story of the Good
Samaritan and the story of St Francis’ 1219
peace mission, where he crossed the battle
lines of the Crusades to meet the Sultan of
Egypt in a bid to end the conflict.
Both stories emphasise crossing the exis-
tential borders which separate people. St
Francis, the Pope writes, had an “openness
of heart, which knew no bounds and tran-
scended differences of origin, nationality,
colour or religion”. Francis’ reflections on the
contemporary political situation and his warn-
ings about nationalism and populism are an
attempt to apply the Gospel in the spirit of
the poor man (il poverello) from Assisi.
THE PARABLE OF the Good Samaritan,
Francis points out, is not “abstract moralising,
nor is its message merely social and ethical”
but shows how humanity can be changed by
coming into contact with suffering. Francis’
vision is non-ideological, and its power is in
its simplicity. In Fratelli Tutti he critiques
both ends of the political spectrum – the free
market will not resolve the world’s problems
nor will liberal approaches which don’t offer
a “shared narrative” and ignore “human weak-
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
ness”. Instead he focuses on practical actions
which, step by step, build the Kingdom of
God. Far from rejecting the work of politicians,
he praises politics as an attempt to put charity
into action. “While one person can help
another by providing something to eat, the
politician creates a job,” the Pope writes.
Here we come to the second point, which
is how Francis’ encyclical sits within the
Catholic Social Teaching tradition and seeks
to apply it to a contemporary context.
One development of the tradition can be
found in the Pope’s reflection on the centuries-
old Just War teaching, which sets the
conditions that would make armed conflict
morally justifiable. Although he stops just
short of abolishing the theory altogether, he
writes only of the “potential right” to go to
war and warns that the development of
nuclear and chemical weapons means they
have an “uncontrollable destructive power
over great numbers of innocent civilians”.
One of the conditions of a Just War is that,
even when going to war is morally justified,
only proportionate force is used. “In recent
decades, every single war has been ostensibly
‘justified’,” Francis explains. “It is very difficult
nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elab-
orated in earlier centuries to speak of the
possibility of a ‘just war’. Never again war!”
Francis is pushing the Church a step closer
to a complete rejection of war, a year after his
visit to Japan when he declared that the pos-
session – and not just the use – of nuclear
weapons was immoral.
FRATELLI TUTTI is the first papal encyclical
to offer a detailed critique of digital culture.
The Pope warns that “social aggression has
found unparalleled room for expansion
through computers and mobile devices” and
that ideologies have been given “free reign”.
Social media, he says, has seen “some political
figures” say things in the “crudest of terms”
which in the past would have risked the loss
of universal respect. In chapter six, Francis
warns of the “parallel monologues” taking
place on social media, the discrediting and
insulting of opponents and divisive political
campaigns. “The heroes of the future will be
those who can break with this unhealthy
mindset and determine respectfully to pro-
mote truthfulness,” he writes. The Pope’s
remedy is an “authentic social dialogue” which
respects other points of view and uses digital
media in a way that seeks a genuine encounter.
The third striking point in the encyclical is
that it shows the Pope’s willingness to be crit-
04-05_Tablet10Oct20 Lamb Howse.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 18:49 Page 7
ical of the Church. He pitches the document
to “all people of goodwill”. He draws inspira-
tion from non-Catholic sources such as Martin
Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi and
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Why did it take
so long for the Church to condemn slavery
and violence, he asks, pointing out that “we
have no excuses” not to stand against con-
temporary injustices. Yet there are still those,
Francis writes, “who appear to feel encouraged
or at least permitted by their faith to support
varieties of narrow and violent nationalism,
xenophobia and contempt, and even the mis-
treatment of those who are different.”
THE POPE’S encyclical will amplify the col-
lision course he is already embarked on with
some in the Church. They include some con-
servative US Catholics, particularly those who
have aligned themselves with President
Donald Trump. Fratelli Tutti reiterates the
Church’s opposition to the death penalty at
a time when William Barr, the US attorney
general and a prominent Catholic, has rein-
troduced executions by the federal
government after a gap of 16 years.
The Pope’s strong critiques of contemporary
capitalism have already upset a number of
wealthy Americans, including big donors to
Catholic institutions. In the encyclical he
declares that the right to private property is
a “secondary natural right” to the principle
of the universal destination of goods. This is
a reaffirmation of the traditional teaching of
the Church, but comes after several years dur-
ing which some have tried to blend an
endorsement of unfettered economic liber-
alism with Catholic teaching.
FRANCIS IS willing to upset some elements
in the Church if it means bringing Catholic
Social Teaching to a wider audience. On
Monday the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed
el-Tayeb, tweeted that “my brother, Pope
Francis’ message” in Fratelli Tutti “addresses
people of goodwill and living conscience, and
restores scruples to humanity”. It is also, the
Grand Imam adds, a continuation of the
human fraternity document the Pope and the
Grand Imam signed in Abu Dhabi last year,
which set out to deepen interreligious dialogue
and co-operation.
Francis’ message runs counter to a con-
temporary political culture in which the
loudest, most aggressive voices are often those
that get the most attention. It stands against
those who deliberately exploit divisions and
fuel hatred in order to seize power. Francis
ends with the reflection that Blessed Charles
de Foucauld, who, with little success during
his lifetime, worked as a missionary among
the poor and the abandoned in the Moroccan
desert. “Only by identifying with the least
did he come at last to be the brother of all,”
Francis writes.
In his bold, courageous, sometimes lonely
mission to inspire the people of the world to
believe that there is a better way, that political
transformation is possible, the Pope has placed
his trust in patient dialogue, the upside-down
logic of the Gospel, and the spirit of St Francis.
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
CHRISTOPHER HOWSE’S NOTEBOOK
The Church believes that the
living body of Christ is
received, not slices of meat
I HAVE difficulties with
some of the devotions
surrounding the
beatification today (if
you’re reading this on 10
October) of a boy born in London. Carlo
Acutis was Italian really, and his parents
returned to Milan after his birth in 1991.
He is billed as a computer whiz, and
his body, on display for veneration at
Assisi, sports a pair of Nike trainers.
These might possibly remind the
historically inclined of the early Christian
inscription, “Iesous Christos Nika”.
That’s all fine. I suppose Blessed Carlo’s
sanctity lay in his offering the 15 years of
his life, shortened by leukemia, for the
Church and the poor, all related to the
Eucharist. This is where we get to the
difficult bit.
Carlo put together a computer project
cataloguing Eucharistic miracles round
the world. There is online material, badly
translated into English.
One miracle is given a connection to
Pope Francis. It took place in Buenos
Aires in 1992 just before Jorge Mario
Bergoglio became an auxiliary bishop
there. In the church of Santa Maria, in
Almagro (a district Bergolio knew well),
two fragments of consecrated host were
found by someone tidying the altar and
placed in water in a container in the
tabernacle. This is said to be standard
practice. They were apparently expected
to dissolve – not what I’d expect.
After a week the water looked bloody,
as did the fragments. A local doctor
eventually sent samples off for analysis
and was told that muscle from a human
heart was present.
I found this rather disgusting. In the
Eucharist, the Church believes that the
living body of Christ is received, not slices
of meat. But similar miracles have been
reported for centuries, and I was surprised
to find that Thomas Aquinas found room
to consider them in the Summa. Either,
he says, a witness who sees, say, a child or
drops of blood, has had his visual organs
affected. Or, in the case of something
persisting and seen by many, a miraculous
replacement of the accidents of bread by
new accidents may have been made.
It is not, then, that bloody flesh is the
true appearance of what is received in the
Eucharist, but rather this new set of
appearances figuratively stands for some
aspect of the Eucharist – that the same
Christ who was born in Bethlehem is
received, or that his flesh is present
(though living, not dismembered).
As for Archbishop Bergoglio, he
remarked of the miracle at Almagro: “The
Lord passed and left his mark.” The
strange relic from 1992 is kept in the
tabernacle of the church, and those who
believe in the miracle (which is up to
private opinion) also worship Jesus Christ
present in the Blessed Sacrament there.
I SPEND my days trying to reduce
mistakes in things people write for
publication. It is part of the job of editing.
I made a richly stupid mistake myself
here last month while praising Robert
Beaken’s biography of the mid-twentieth-
century Archbishop of Canterbury,
Cosmo Lang. Lang had been seen by
some as a repressed homosexual, I noted,
but Beaken puts him down as “some sort
of homosexual, who liked beautiful
women”. I should have typed “some sort
of heterosexual”, as the author wrote.
My apologies.
But now the confidential diaries of
Alan Don, Lang’s secretary in the key
decades, are published by the same editor
under the title, Faithful Witness. We
shall be able to see for ourselves the
private lives of both men.
WHEN Peregrine Worsthorne asked
Evelyn Waugh to dinner at his club,
Boodle’s, he heard, while waiting in an
inner room, an altercation in the hall.
Investigating, he found Waugh irate at
being denied entrance. “I asked for you by
name,” Waugh insisted. “Koch de Gooreynd.”
That is really a story about Waugh. But
Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, who has died
aged 96, came from a complicated family,
all with different names. His father had
that Belgian name, his brother is Sir
Simon Towneley, his stepfather was
Montagu Norman. To his mother Priscilla
Reyntiens he owed his Catholic upbringing.
I worked for Perry in 1990 when he was
editor of The Sunday Telegraph. When he
occasionally wanted to be friendly to me,
a very junior journalist, he would mention
our shared religion, a little shyly. He is
remembered for using the F-word on
television in 1973 and swapping shirts
with Dominic Lawson’s
mother in a Brighton
restaurant. But I think
being a Catholic lent him
a wistful depth.
Christopher Howse is an assistant editor of
The Daily Telegraph.
10 OCTOBER2020 | THE TABLET | 5
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FEATURES / Women Religious today

In the sixth and final contribution to our series exploring the rich paths taken by women Religious,
Sr Therese Wong, a Franciscan Sister of the Renewal, explains why she left her journalism studies to
share her faith, choosing a life of prayer, community, evangelisation and work with the poor

‘I trust that
God knows
what will
fulfil my
heart in
its deepest
place’

I
THINK everybody today feels the worldly
pressure of wanting to succeed and fit
in, and I certainly started feeling that at
high school. So I defined myself by my
performance and what other people thought
of me. And it was hard and exhausting. Like
running on sand.
Then I went on a retreat called Capture My
Heart. I was a freshman at Steubenville – a
Franciscan university in the United States –
and it was a women’s retreat, focused on iden-
tity. The whole point was – stop this striving
and trying to prove yourself. You are daughters It was like feeling a great warmth in my heart my major from journalism to catechetics and
of God and you are loved. They brought us and it gave me such a sense of peace and sta- began trying to live a sacramental life and
in front of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament bility – unlike the sand that I was always trying spend more time with Jesus.
and, for the first time, I experienced Jesus’ to run on – and that was such a release. One day, just after I received Jesus in the
love for me not just as a saviour or a friend, It made me want to share my faith and help Eucharist, I felt Him saying, “Be my Bride.”
but as a beloved. And that changed everything. other women find that freedom. So I changed I was really scared. I didn’t know much about
religious life at that point and I didn’t trust
the Lord enough to give him my whole life in

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Franciscan friar. He came in, knelt down to know myself, and knows what will fulfil my We rely on donations because we have no
face Jesus and put his hood up very slowly. heart in its deepest place. So that if he’s calling income. So, once a week, I list the food that
Suddenly, I felt very moved. It was as though me to religious life, it’s because it’s in my we need and call people. It’s beautiful because
I experienced the charism of St Francis spousal relationship with him that I’ll be most they’re happy to help us and we get to forge
through this brother. I was drawn to the inti- fulfilled and in the love I have for my sisters a friendship with them. And it’s powerful
macy he appeared to have with Jesus both as and our family life here. It’s also in partici- because it gives God the space to provide for
a Religious and a Franciscan. pation in Franciscan ministry. Because our us. And he always does.
I decided to visit the Franciscan Sisters of ministry is an overflow of the love we receive We only ask for necessities – not for biscuits!
the Renewal in the Bronx. And this time, I from God and from our Franciscan family – And sometimes there might be a food item
felt something even deeper in my heart. What it’s all one thing. that we lack. But that’s good for me – because
struck me most was their prayer life and sense A large part of our ministry is door ministry. then I feel our poverty – and that’s a little sac-
of community: I prayed really well there – I We always live in areas in need – so that we’re rifice I can make for God.
felt really close to Jesus – and I liked how right there to minister to whoever comes. The We see sacrifices as a kind of reparation: a
much of a family it was, with the friars and convent that I’m currently in – St Clare way of trying to console God for all the ways
the sisters really knowing each other and Convent in Leeds – is on a council estate in He’s grieved. Some of my sisters don’t use a
whole community events so full of joy. For a deprived area and people regularly come to mattress, but when I tried that myself, it had
the first time, I could see myself living this our door for help. a negative physical effect on me, so I do other
life, with these specific people, and it was both We always give them food if that’s what small things, like not adding salt, or kneeling
wonderful and terrifying. they’re seeking. But we also try to get to know throughout Rosary in chapel.
But, on my next visit, Jesus melted the fear them and establish a relationship. Because I have no idea how long I’ll stay in England.
away. And then, like falling in love, it just when they see that we really care, they let us We’re told our next year’s assignment at the
made sense to me and I applied to join the walk with them in their life and we begin to end of each year. But that’s part of the adven-
community. I was very happy to be there, see a transformation. ture of living with Jesus: he likes to move!
when I entered, but my first few months were So I’ll go wherever he goes – that’s how I
really hard. IN ADDITION we go, each month, and visit view it.
I missed communicating with friends and the primary school next door: visiting Key
family whenever I wanted to. I felt discour- Stage 1 in their classroom – which is adorable Since recording this interview, Sr Therese
aged when I made mistakes. And, when I – and taking Key Stage 2 into the church for has moved from St Clare Convent, Leeds, to
was struggling with something, I had no Adoration, singing and prayer. And we hold the Blessed Solanus Casey Convent in East
option but to deal with it. I couldn’t get in Adoration in Corpus Christi Catholic College Harlem, New York.
my car and drive somewhere, or play music, chapel, run a holy hour each month at Leeds
or buy an ice cream. In the convent there was Trinity University and travel around the coun- As told to Blanche Girouard.
nowhere to hide. try, giving retreats.
I had to learn to accept authority and Our goal is to bring people to the Lord in
embrace obedience. To say, “OK Jesus, out of the Eucharist. Because that’s the source and
love for you and my sister, I will clean this summit of our faith. That’s where they’ll find
bathroom”, when I didn’t feel like it. And love. That’s where they’ll find life. And we The Catholic Biblical
when, at the beginning, I didn’t do much know that miracles happen when we put peo-
singing, I had to trust that God would open ple in front of him. Association of Great Britain
up that door again if he wanted me to use my Our own spirituality is very Eucharistic-
voice in ministry. (And, indeed, he did!) centred – we have a Holy Hour of Adoration
every day. But I also really like praying in the
MY FAMILY came to my simple profession, Ignatian style. Or sitting with a line of
which was very joyful: we received crowns of Scripture and letting it sink into my heart.
roses as Brides of Christ. For our solemn vows, And then there’s just being with Jesus and The Joy of the Gospel
the Sisters receive crowns of thorns – to show listening. And speaking to the Lord in my
our unity with Him – but for now I have the journal – like a friend. Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP
roses in my room – around my It’s very beautiful, the life
crucifix – to remind me of the we live together here. We suf- In a time of covid Fr Timothy explores
vows I made to Jesus.
‘Sometimes there fer together, if a sister is how in the New Testament Luke, Paul
Part of our formation is might be a food item struggling. And laugh a lot – and John present different flavours of joy.
learning about chastity and that we lack. But there’s a lot of joy. There are
how to interact with men in a four of us and of course we Saturday 24th October 2020
prudent and healthy way. that’s good for me – sometimes have our chal- 11 a.m. to 3 p.m
There are certain boundaries because then I feel lenges. But we say we’re
and guidelines – like never making each other more like Live streamed from the Catholic Church
going somewhere alone with
our poverty’ diamonds. Making each other of Christ the Eternal High Priest
a man. And there is also the holier when we rub! at Gidea Park.
practice of accountability – drawing each We live a life of simplicity and poverty. So
other aside if we see an interaction that con- although we do have a landline, we don’t have
To access go to www.ssppilford.org.uk
cerns us. mobile phones or internet. And we don’t get and click on live stream remote services.
Sensing a supernatural call doesn’t erase a newspaper or watch TV. If something major Available subsequently on
your natural make-up. But feeling an attrac- happens, we find out at Mass from the inter- www.whatgoodnews.org
tion can be an opportunity to greater maturity cessions, or friends and family might call us
and deepening our love for Jesus. Just like a and let us know. It isn’t that we don’t care; Dr Sean Ryan, chair of the CBA, will
married woman who feels an attraction to it’s just that we have to be discerning. Limit
another man, we can say, “It’s OK Jesus, I the amount that we take in. It’s good to know
introduce the event.
choose you again”, and that deepens our self- what’s happening so that we can pray for it.
gift and matures it more. But people also call and write a lot with prayer Contact the CBA by email to
It’s also an opportunity to trust. I have to requests. So there’s a lot that we’re asked to catholicbiblicalassociation.gb@gmail.com
trust that God knows me even more than I remember in our prayers.

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 7
08-09_Tablet10Oct20 Cairns.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 17:56 Page 6
FEATURES / Stella Maris
Seafarers – physically, legally and sometimes spiritually – are in every sense on the
margins. And the coronavirus pandemic has exposed new problems for people largely
unnoticed by those who benefit from their labour / By MADOC CAIRNS
Weathering the Covid storm
Qui nescit orare, discat navigare.
He who will not pray, let him go to sea.
T
HAT’S A quip from the seventeenth-
century Anglican divine, John Trapp,
and it’s another way of saying: “There
are no atheists in foxholes.” It’s not
always true of course, but the Church has
had a long – and often intimate – relationship
with seafaring. Four of the apostles, including
Peter, were fishermen. Early Christians
depicted the Church herself as a ship; tossed
by the waves of the world (according to
Clement of Alexandria) but never sinking.
That nautical symbolism has enjoyed – as
anyone who’s had a look at the design of large
churches will know – an abiding appeal among
Christians. During the Middle Ages, one of
the duties of monks in coastal communities
was to light beacons at night for the benefit
of those lost at sea. And there have been several
8 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
seafaring saints: Elmo, Christopher, and
Brendan among them.
But sailors as a distinct group were only
rarely the object of missionary or charitable
work for most of the Church’s history. A hun-
dred years ago that changed with the
foundation of the Apostleship of the Sea.
Established as a port ministry in Glasgow,
the Apostleship was the initiative of a group
of Catholics concerned that the Church was
absent in the lives of seafarers. With thou-
sands of seafarers travelling the world and
often being stranded in foreign harbours for
weeks or months between voyages, those
founding members were responding to
widespread spiritual – and physical – hunger.
The Apostleship – now known as Stella
Maris – has continued to provide moral and
material support to seafarers ever since. A
lot has changed since 1920. With the rise of
“containerisation”, and ultra-long-haul cargo
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
shipping, the sailors’ hostels that Stella Maris
used to specialise in are long gone. Instead,
chaplains and volunteers work out of seafar-
ers’ centres to help give sailors warmth, rest,
and access to the internet in the hours they
spend between contracts.
Stella Maris’ work isn’t as evocative as
monks lighting beacons in the night. But it’s
no less indispensable for those to whom they
minister. Given the long contracts that many
seafarers are on – some up to 12 months –
access to Wi-Fi can be a lifeline for them and
their families. One service that Stella Maris
provides is “MiFi” units; portable Wi-Fi kits
that, transported on to a vessel, can provide
internet access to multiple seafarers. This
can allow those on long voyages to contact
their families, sometimes for the first time
in months. There’s one moment that Joe
O’Donnell, a Stella Maris chaplain, will never
forget: when he was able to help one sailor
see his infant child for the first time.
O’DONNELL – a native of Glasgow – told me
that, for the people he ministers to, “every
day is like Monday”. Ships transport 90 per
cent of goods internationally: but it’s an indus-
try hidden from the sight of most of us. In
that world – employing around 1.6 million
people – Stella Maris chaplains and volunteers
bear witness to suffering that rarely makes
the headlines. Long hours, bad conditions,
poor wages, sickness, death, the wholesale
abandonment of crews by their employers –
Joe and other chaplains I spoke to had seen
it all.
Chaplains told me that sailors are often
reluctant to speak out about mistreatment
out of fear. And those who do might not know
what their rights are, or who they can contact
to help enforce them. In those situations,
Stella Maris – lay and ordained chaplains
and volunteers – can make a life-changing
difference. The spiritual work that Stella
Maris does is no less important. Joe told me
that the experiences that sustain him in his
work are when, after four or five weeks at
sea, a sailor will get in touch simply to ask
that a chaplain visit, and “kneel down and
pray with them”.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, seafarers
– once again largely unnoticed by the people
who benefit from their labour – have expe-
rienced new problems. Many crews have been
stranded between countries, unable to land
in their destinations, and forbidden from
returning home. Seven Filipino crew mem-
bers on a container ship, APL Norway, found
themselves away from home for 14 months
08-09_Tablet10Oct20 Cairns.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 17:56 Page 7

in total. According to Anne McLaren, a for-

mer solicitor, and now Stella Maris’ senior
area chaplain for north of England, even
when some crews reached port, they weren’t
able to disembark for weeks.
After the usual religious services and phys-
ical centres were shut down in the early stages
of the pandemic, the old conventions of min-
istry no longer applied. But Stella Maris
adapted quickly to the new normal. One chap-
lain delivered SIM cards to crews through
the ingenious (and socially distanced) means
of a rope and bucket. Others have delivered
face masks, food, vitamins and rosaries to
crews trapped on board their ships – as well Anne McLaren, left, a
as meeting some more unusual requests: former solicitor now
Doritos and Polish sausages. Stella Maris’ senior area
Like the rest of the Church, religious ser- chaplain for north of
vices, such as Mass and evening prayer, were England and, above,
shifted online. The transition wasn’t easy – Joe O’Donnell, a
many onshore centres had to close, and phys- Stella Maris chaplain
ical visits had to stop.
Anne McLaren told me that the work of
Stella Maris – bringing practical and emo- communities”. The hybrid mission – spiritual for the Virgin Mary. The hymn it’s drawn
tional support to those in need of it; offering and material – of Stella Maris’ ministry to from, “Alma Redemptoris Mater”, asks Mary
a sacramental presence on board; and build- those in need is a witness to the world; but to “aid a fallen people / trying to rise again”.
ing real relationships with seafarers, whether it might also be a witness to the wider Church. As the world struggles to rebuild in the wake
believers or not – seemed to her to exemplify Seafarers – physically and also often legally of the pandemic, that prayer has a new sig-
Pope Francis’ call for Christians to be “mis- “on the margins” – face risks and problems nificance – for seafarers, for Stella Maris, and
sionary disciples”. The close community Anne every day. But the chaplains are palpably for the whole Church.
finds in Stella Maris, with lay and ordained optimistic and enthused about their ministry.
Catholics working closely together, is remi- “Stella Maris”, the Apostolate’s new name, Madoc Cairns was The Tablet Newman Intern
niscent, she says, “of the earliest Christian means “Star of the Sea”: it’s an ancient title for 2019-20.

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10-11_Tablet10Oct20 Elena.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 17:17 Page 6
FEATURES / Catholic built heritage
English and Welsh Catholics are proud of their martyrs, and
their churches often house their relics and commemorate them
in sculptures, paintings and stained glass / By ELENA CURTI
Remembered
in stone
PHOTOS BELOW AND RIGHT: ALEX RAMSAY © PATRIMONY COMMITTEE OF THE BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF ENGLAND AND WALES
T
HE SMALL piece of slate displayed
in front of the altar of St Joseph’s,
Pickering, is easily missed. It is, in
fact, a precious relic, being the altar
stone used by Blessed Nicholas Postgate to
celebrate Mass. Though pitted and worn, it
is possible to make out an inscription that
ends “Martyred 1679”. Postgate secretly min-
istered to Catholics for more than 30 years,
roaming the North York Moors disguised as
a pedlar. He was accused in connection with
the fictitious Popish Plot, and put to death at
York. He was 80 years old.
Martyrdom is an important theme in most
Catholic churches but there are some that
have special links with local men and women
who gave their lives for the faith. They often
house their relics and commemorate them
in sculptures, paintings and stained glass. A
number of North Yorkshire churches have
associations with Postgate, the so-called Priest
of the Moors: St Hedda, Egton Bridge, near
Whitby, is close to his birthplace and St Anne’s
is in the village of Ugthorpe, where he lived
during his ministry.
The builder of St Joseph’s, Pickering, a
gem on the edge of the North York Moors,
took his inspiration from Bl. Nicholas. Fr
Edward Bryan was a former Anglican from
10 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
Detail from the roundel at Our Lady Queen of
Martyrs and St Ignatius, Chideock. Below, Our
Lady and St Michael, Abergavenny
Tasmania, who arrived in 1901 determined
to revive the Catholic faith in the area, where
Catholics were very thinly scattered. Within
a year, he had founded a school and opened
a temporary chapel in a cottage. Though he
lived very humbly, he must have been knowl-
edgeable about art and architecture. He
commissioned Leonard Stokes – then pres-
ident of the Royal Institute of British
Architects, and a Catholic – to build the pre-
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
sent church. He asked Eric Gill to design
and carve a stone font. Gill was working on
the Stations of the Cross for Westminster
Cathedral at the time, but he accepted the
commission. He carved the eight panels
around the sides of the font, alternating fig-
urative scenes with foliage and flowers. One
panel portrays the Baptism of Jesus, another
the Crucifixion. Less conventional is an image
of Joseph holding the infant Jesus, the pair
gazing into each other’s eyes. They are in the
carpenter’s workshop, and Gill has lovingly
carved the tools of Joseph’s – and his own –
trade. The fourth figurative panel depicts St
Nicholas bearing a sack of toys and handing
a doll to a small girl. Is this an allusion to
this saint’s namesake, Nicholas Postgate?
Another dedicated pastor martyred in old
age, and a fellow victim of the Popish Plot,
was St David Lewis. A Jesuit active for 30
years in and around his home town of
Abergavenny, he was known as the Father of
the Poor. St David was the last Catholic martyr
in Wales, and was hanged, drawn and quar-
tered at Usk on 27 August 1679. The southern
Welsh borders were, in penal times, a Catholic
stronghold to rival north-west England. Jesuit,
Franciscan and Benedictine missions kept
the faith alive, and Abergavenny is a good
place to explore this rich history. A hidden
chapel there, where St David celebrated Mass,
has been discovered in the attic of an old
house, Gunter Mansion. An appeal is under
way for its restoration.
A SHORT WALK away is the parish church
of Our Lady and St Michael, which reflects
local Catholics’ surging confidence after the
restoration of the hierarchy in 1850. Here St
David has a chapel dedicated to him with a
fine wooden statue and a painting. The
stained-glass window shows him in illustrious
company alongside St Benedict and St
Ignatius of Loyola. The church was built by
the Benedictines, who employed as architect
Benjamin Joseph Bucknall, a convert to
Catholicism and pupil of Charles Hansom.
Completed in 1860, the style is Decorated
Gothic with a tall, six-bay nave and slim qua-
trefoil columns. The high altar features a
gloriously elaborate, wedding-cake reredos
with angels in attitudes of adoration before
the Blessed Sacrament. Along the top,
crowned by crocketed pinnacles, are the seven
archangels named in the Talmud.
The village of Chideock in Dorset, close to
the Jurassic Coast, was another pocket of
Catholic resistance in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries. Here is a church lovingly
created by a lord of the manor in memory of
seven local martyrs.
Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and St Ignatius
is in a quiet country lane almost hidden by
trees. Completed in 1872, it is a weathered
stone church with a small ribbed-terracotta
and black-tiled dome, such as you might find
in the Italian countryside. Catholicism sur-
vived the Reformation in the village thanks
to the Arundells, the old Catholic family that
lived in Chideock Castle. The Arundells shel-
tered priests smuggled in from the Continent
10-11_Tablet10Oct20 Elena.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 17:17 Page 7
via the nearby harbour at Lyme Regis. Three
of the martyrs were their chaplains while the
remaining four either died trying to save them
or were killed for their faith. An eighth man
died in prison.
Chideock Castle was destroyed in the
English Civil War, and the Arundells left the
area. Then, in 1802, the estate was bought by
Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle, a family
related to the Arundells, for his sixth son
Humphrey. Humphrey Weld built a manor
house, and converted a barn (where Catholics
had worshipped secretly for many years) into
a chapel. His son, Charles Weld, built the
church – assisted by Charles Hansom’s
brother, Joseph Stanislaus – incorporating
the barn-chapel and reusing its Gothic altar.
Weld created a shrine to the Virgin Mary in
memory of the Chideock Martyrs. It consists
of a gold baroque Madonna ascending into
heaven, her feet supported by cherubs. Light
streams down on the statue from a concealed
window in the dome above.
Charles Weld also designed and painted
the barrel roof, the sanctuary and the dome.
Members of his family painted the images of
the English Martyrs, including those of
Chideock, above the round arches of the nave.
Weld also carved the capitals of the columns
with motifs including the crossed keys, the
Sacred Heart and instruments of the Passion.
The sacristy (the former barn-chapel) has
wall paintings and decorations by Weld, and
The Tablet Readers’

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St Joseph’s, Pickering
a painting of five of the local martyrs by Francis
H. Newbery, who was director of the Glasgow
School of Art and mentor to Charles Rennie
Mackintosh, before he retired to Dorset. A
small rickety staircase led to the space where
Mass was first secretly celebrated. The building
is in trust to the Weld family, and run as a
private church under the auspices of the
Catholic parish of Bridport. It is cared for by
a dedicated group of Friends.
TO VISIT St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place, central
London, is to fall under the gaze of eight
English Martyrs whose statues look down on
the congregation from the nave walls. Painted
in browns and greys, they blend into the very
fabric of this building. The church is steeped
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Your full name in CAPITALS
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in stories of the martyrs. The building is close
to the route many of them took to Tyburn
while others were put to death nearby at
Smithfield and Holborn. St Etheldreda’s was
originally the chapel of the London palace of
the Bishop of Ely; in 1874 it was acquired and
restored by the Institute of Charity
(Rosminians), and is one of England’s oldest
Catholic churches.
The eight martyrs’ statues were sculpted
in the early 1960s by May Blakeman while
her husband, Charles F. Blakeman, a pupil
of J.E. Nuttgens, made the striking west win-
dow depicting the first martyrs of the
Reformation: three Carthusian priests of the
Charterhouse monastery and two other
priests. They stand beneath Tyburn Tree and
from this springs Christ Crucified clothed in
a robe in myriad shades of red. An account
of the martyrs’ torture and execution appears
on the left side of the window while Christ’s
Passion is on the right. The window brings
these elements together with the martyrs
sharing Christ’s suffering and the glory of his
Resurrection. It is a potent image which
underscores the words of St Irenaeus in the
second century: “The blood of the martyrs is
the seedbed of the Church.”
Elena Curti is a former deputy editor of The
Tablet. Her book, Fifty Catholic Churches to
See Before You Die, is published by Gracewing,
price £14.99 (Tablet price, £13.49).
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SINCE 1840

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12_Tablet10Oct20 Kelly.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 14:47 Page 12

MIND YOURSELF / A dispatch from the happiness frontline

Here’s to October were also the most connected

online. Neighbourhoods have
seed shops sold out as people
like me began birdwatching.

resolutions
become closer knit, too: in the
UK, 64 per cent of adults felt
that their communities had
“come together to help each
other” during the crisis.
n BY RACHEL KELLY We have gone deeper in our
Much is written about the
dangers of the digital world, but
we connected with each other
through online quiz nights, and
logged on to fitness and yoga
classes. We also volunteered. A

I
HAVE often thought that
October is a better time to
take stock and ponder the
kind of resolutions that
more usually bombard us in
January. The metaphorical
sharpening of pencils for a new
school year never quite loses its
pointedness. And this year, even
the least reflective among us
have been forced to face up to a
global transformation. People
around the world are facing
grief, redundancy, boredom and
loneliness. There have been
disturbing reports of increasing
anxiety and depression.
And yet … “Out of darkness
cometh light”, which sounds
biblical, but is actually the
motto of Wolverhampton. Or, in
the words of a recent Wellcome
Trust report on how people
coped during Covid by writer
and philosopher Jules Evans,
“Let’s not waste a good crisis.”
A study of 70,000 adults’
mental health during the
pandemic found that 22 per
cent were engaging more with
arts during the lockdown period
than usual. Engaging in a
creative activity – painting,
gardening, reading fiction – has
been the single most helpful way
to maintain well-being.
Or family life: a report by
Leeds Trinity University found
increased parental attention
during lockdown has led to
happier children, and improved
developmental outcomes for
some pre-school children. The
Wellcome report found that
while young people were the
worst hit by loneliness, they
search for meaning and for what
really matters. We banged our
saucepans for key workers, and
Google searches for “prayer”
reached their highest-ever level.
The National Trust found that
68 per cent of adults say
spending time noticing nature
had made them happier. And
million offered to help the NHS;
countless others delivered food
to the vulnerable or did the
shopping for elderly neighbours.
We’ve learnt much about
what makes for mental well-
being. It has reaffirmed my view
that we must not rush to
medication, or pathologise
mental health. The pandemic
has shown the value of other
approaches to well-being, not
least the search for meaning and
purpose rather than just
“happiness”. There are plenty of
new habits I hope to keep to
after this is over – not least
feeding the robins. Here’s to
October Resolutions.
Rachel Kelly’s latest book is
Singing in the Rain: An
inspirational workbook, published
by Short Books at £12.99.

Seafarers are keeping our shelves stocked
and cars fuelled throughout this pandemic.
They have been working at sea for months on end and many have
no idea when they will return home to their families; many are
exhausted and stressed out.
Stella Maris (Apostleship of the Sea) is the official maritime charity
of the Catholic Church, ensuring that these ‘Heroes At Sea’ are not
forgotten during these challenging times by providing spiritual and
practical assistance to them.
Please help us, in our Centenary year, to continue supporting them.
www.stellamaris.org.uk
Registered company number 3320318. Registered charity in England and
Wales number 1069833. Registered charity in Scotland number SC043085.
Please accept my gift to Stella Maris (Apostleship of the Sea) of: £
I enclose a cheque payable to: STELLA MARIS
First Name: ___________________ Last Name: ______________________
Address: ____________________________________________________
Post Code: ___________________
Telephone number: ____________
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information about fundraising events and activities, please tick the box here:
And provide your email address here: ________________________________
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made in the past 4 years to Stella Maris. I am a UK taxpayer and understand that if
I pay less Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax than the amount of Gift Aid claimed
on all my donations in the tax year, it is my responsibility to pay any difference.
Please send your donation to:
Stella Maris, 39 Eccleston Square,
London, SW1V 1BX
TOct2020

12 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
13_Tablet10Oct20 Diary Puzzles Enigma.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:00 Page 13
WORD FROM THE CLOISTERS
The last words
TALL, lugubrious, droll, and a great encour-
ager of the young, Brendan O’Mahony OFM
(Cap) has died in the Capuchin friary next
door to Holy Trinity church on Fr Mathew
Quay in Cork, aged 86. A native of Youghal,
County Cork, he had a seasider’s natural ease
in company and eye for the distant horizon.
When he succeeded his uncle James
O’Mahony – another Capuchin – as professor
of philosophy at University College Cork in
1965, he brought fresh life to the department,
providing an engagingly broad and confident
prospectus at a time when philosophy was
regarded as a slightly discreditable pursuit.
Gradually drawn into university administra-
tion as vice-president, and acting- and deputy
president, he combined these roles from 1976
to 1982 with that of Capuchin Minister
Provincial.
After his retirement in 2000 he published
a novel, Strano, and a number of short stories.
A sense of loss and lacrimae rerum hangs over
The Last Word, the bittersweet and elegiac
family memoir he published in 2013. For all
his gifts and achievements, Brendan remained
unpretentious, great company, reassuringly
human. He hated cant, especially the religious
PRIZE CROSSWORD No. 727 Enigma
1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 Affirmation that it sounds like “A”, for
7 8 8 example (6)
9
10 11
12 13
14 14 15 16
15 17 18
19 20 19 21
22 23
24 25
Please send your answers to: Crossword Competition 10 October,
The Tablet, 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY.
Email: thetablet@thetablet.co.uk, with Crossword in the subject field.
Please include your full name, telephone number and email address,
and a mailing address. Three books – on Saints, Monasticism and
Philosophy of Religion – from the OUP’s Very Short Introduction series
will go to the sender of the first correct entry drawn at random.
n We cannot process entries or prizes at present. Please keep
entering. Winners will be notified and prizes awarded as soon possible.
Prizes kindly donated by
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For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
diary@thetablet.co.uk
variety. He sometimes ruffled righteous feath-
ers. Not a stereotypical friar or academic, he
was hurt when it was suggested that his views
were untrue to either calling.
ALBAN MCCOY – from another branch of
the Franciscan Order, the Conventuals (“the
originals, actually”) – has retired as Dean of
St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. His succes-
sor, Ed Hone, is a Redemptorist priest. Alban’s
streamed weekly Mass - brisk, lucid, unfussy
– was one of the whispered consolations of
lockdown. Last Sunday, he preached on St
PUZZLES
Across
8 Being tempted to change my mind, I enter
and sign away my rights (6)
10 “Noise without end”, sir? From this great
composer? (7)
11 I am embraced by the one who invited me
to help with upward mobility (5)
12 Married around the beginning of Lent, to
join together forever (4)
13 Find a place in Surrey? That’s sheer
nonsense! (5)
17 The physicians go round and round inside
to find the exits (5)
SUDOKU | Challenging
Francis, whose feast it was. “Now that I have
retired as Dean, this is the last sermon I will
be sending out,” he tells us. Here’s a fragment:
“St Francis’ poverty wasn’t the ordered
poverty of a well-run monastery or the roman-
tic poverty of the bohemian: it was the
precarious and vulnerable poverty of the really
poor. What he was letting go of was an illusion;
an illusion best illustrated by our tendency to
be possessed by what we possess. And he chose
absolute poverty because he saw through the
illusion of ownership. No matter how many
things we possess, we don’t actually own any-
thing. We can’t count even our lives our own:
they’re given to us and taken from us. In letting
go, St Francis turned worldly values upside
down: where others saw security, he saw cap-
tivity; what for others represented success,
was for him a source of strife, an obstacle to
loving God and neighbour. The space previ-
ously occupied by all these things was now
filled with something the world can’t give us,
a joy that exceeded even his considerable pow-
ers of description. What his life teaches us, is
that letting go may leave you empty-handed,
but clinging on to whatever you can get your
hands on, leaves you empty-hearted.”
Alban is The Tablet’s religious books editor.
Whatever the virtues of letting go, we’re hold-
ing on to him tightly.
18 Can a place in the Gospel be easily found (4) 5 It’s nothing upon nothingness, but it has a
22 A last effort to show the world (5) shape (5)
23 Soft timber, good for plugging leaks (7) 6 Start triduum with a ceremony lacking
24 The sestet must be completed by originality and interest (5)
postgraduate students (6) 9 City clothing secures sheep internally (9)
25 People from such a minority were then 14 A lobster goes out of its way for a bed (7)
treated badly, I see (6) 15 Brilliant lament about the first-born (7)
Down 16 Arrive back when I’ve gone to heckle the
1 Means of transport cause altercations in speaker (7)
pubs (7) 19 It’s Disney’s dance, they say (5)
2 Foils evil infiltrators, using historic finds (7) 20 Runs away from the sound of the horrible
3 The returning sailor thus finds what is creatures (5)
fundamental (5) 21 Let someone else put words into your
4 That woman and I are in a vehicle with the mouth (5)
one who handles the money (7)
Solution to the 19 September puzzle
Each 3x3 box, each
row and each column
must contain all the
numbers 1 to 9.
Solution to the 19 September crossword No. 724
Across: 1 Mowing; 5 Grass; 8 Cheep; 9 Nosegay; 10 Dude; 11 Wellness;
13 Nepal; 14 Snaps; 19 Immature; 21 Ugly; 23 Patrick; 24 Posse;
25 Deign; 26 Racist. Down: 2 Overdue; 3 Imps; 4 Gander; 5 Gasoline;
6 Algae; 7 Says so; 8 Cede; 12 Bactrian; 15 Pegasus; 16 Limpid;
17 Broker; 18 Tyke; 20 Mitzi; 22 Opec.
10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 13
14_Tablet10Oct20 Ads.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 14:42 Page 14

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15-16_Tablet10Oct20 Letters.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 14:47 Page 15
All correspondence, including email, must give a full postal address and contact telephone number. The Editor reserves the right to shorten letters.
Covid Mass
l When I stood in the rainy
queue outside our parish
church last Sunday, the lady
inside was doing her best to
write down the names and
phone numbers of fellow
Catholics compelled by
government edict to endure the
same procedure for all church
attendance for Mass. What a
fatuous and oppressive measure
of state control!
When will our Church take a
stand for Christian values and
protest loudly at the
oppressions currently being
enacted in the name of a
frightened government whose
trust in the people’s honesty and
good faith is nil?
GERALD ROBERTS
BUXTED, EAST SUSSEX
l Following much criticism of
the online Masses keeping
everyone away from Sunday
Mass, I want to tell of my
experience during lockdown.
I came across a daily
9.30 a.m. Mass in Clifton
Cathedral, Bristol. It is a
modern church lacking the
usual over-adorned sanctuary,
and Mass is celebrated either by
the bishop or another priest.
I am not a member of the
parish or the diocese, but I do
manage to give a very little
financial help towards the cost
of running things. The time
each day suits me very well and
I am quite able to enter a
prayerful presence in spite of it
being shown on my laptop.
I am 84 years old, have just
lost my husband of 52 years and
have Parkinson’s, which
prevents me from hopping
around looking for suitable
Sunday Mass; instead I am
back to attending nearly daily
Mass! Thank you, Clifton
diocese. Long may you continue
this very valuable service.
JENY BUTLER
FALMOUTH, CORNWALL
Old kind of Mass
l Your editorial (“Wanted: New
kinds of priests”, 19 September)
pulls its punches. Sure, we need
a priesthood more open to
married men, and women too.
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
LETTERS
• THE EDITOR OF THE TABLET •
1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY letters@thetablet.co.uk
TOPIC OF T H E W E E K
Women’s ministry: time to choose
IT IS encouraging to see so much energy also started militant activity. Nuns did
generated in The Tablet over Francis’ latest circle dances in the square in front of
encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, and its relevance Westminster Cathedral. Roman Catholic
to the ministries and gifts of men and feminists picketed Father Christmas as a
women. Much has been made of the non- male chauvinist icon in an Oxford store. Is
inclusive title, and while I would have loved this the route we want go down?
to see evidence of the Franciscan balance, Is a feeling a vocation? What if I claimed I
including Francis and Clare, in the title, this had the vocation to be a bishop or even a
must not detract from much that is good nun? Such things would have to be
about equality and dignity in the document. submitted to the authority of the Church,
The Catholic Church has a choice in its the theological and disciplinary arbiter.
response to ministry post-lockdown. BERNARD CARTWRIGHT
Michael Knowles (Letters, 3 October) is STOURBRIDGE, WEST MIDLANDS
right. There has been enough talk about the
inclusion of women. Parishes are desperate I VERY MUCH agree with the point made in
for the gifts of women, as the pandemic has your editorial (“Time to remove the
highlighted the risks for older priests and gagging order”, 26 September) which
deacons ministering alone. We need “deeds suggested that Ordinatio sacerdotalis,
not words” as Emmeline Pankhurst said written by Pope John Paul II, was probably
just over one hundred years ago. an attempt to stem the tide of voices
To that end, a group of lay people from calling for a discussion on the ordination
many dioceses in the UK are launching a lay of women.
synod, rootandbranchsynod.org, to meet I have always felt that such a fundamental
virtually and physically over the next year, change of this kind would need to be
culminating in a conference where Professor considered by a council of the whole
Mary McAleese will speak on how we move Church. I also feel that there could be a
this debate forwards. She and I, like many of twofold approach to all of this: 1) further
your readers, are tired of waiting. deliberations by the commission set up by
KATHARINE SALMON Pope Francis to look at the ordination of
SHEFFIELD women to the diaconate; 2) the ordination
of married men to the priesthood, as
THE EXHORTATION by Michael Knowles to requested by the Amazon synod.
militant action on behalf of women priests THOMAS MCMAHON
contrasts greatly with the moderate tone BISHOP EMERITUS OF BRENTWOOD,
taken by Catholic female scholars when STOCK, ESSEX
approaching Pope Francis on the
ordination of deaconesses, followed by the THANK YOU for your exercise in conscience
gracious response from the church and common sense. How extraordinary
specialists on this issue. that we still belong to a Church that makes
At the time of the campaigning for the this at the same time an exercise in courage.
ordination of women in the Church of MARY RING
England, Roman Catholic sympathisers ABERGAVENNY, MONMOUTHSHIRE
But, personally, I dream that need for this practice to become such eucharistic celebrations in
the Eucharist might again be more frequent. their local community.
celebrated in the context of a For this to happen, we would They would have no formal
shared meal, as it was in the need many more priests, responsibility in the
early years of the Church’s implying a different form of administrative structure of the
existence. priesthood. Those concerned – Church. Rather, their role
Small groups of Christians let us call them “priestly would be to conduct
would gather in someone’s home, celebrants” – would be legitimately such small,
with a priest, and re-enact what proposed by their local parish intimate celebrations of the
Jesus did at the Last Supper community, on the basis of their Eucharist – open and
during a communal meal – recognised faith, maturity and welcoming to anyone who
retaining of course the essential commitment. Then, after a wished to come and participate.
elements of the Mass. The recent short period of discernment I am emphatically not
experience of church buildings and training, they would be proposing a kind of closed
being closed only underlines the ordained to preside only over CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 15
15-16_Tablet10Oct20 Letters.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 14:47 Page 16
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15
assembly of a particular social
group – like a middle-class
dinner party. Rather there
should be an attempt to draw
people in from the highways
and byways. Perhaps we then
would really begin to feel the
Holy Spirit breathing new life
into the Church.
STEPHEN MCCARTHY
SCHRASSIG, LUXEMBOURG
Spiritual starvation
l There appears to be a real
dichotomy within the Church
concerning the availability of
the Sacraments, particularly
the Eucharist.
On the one hand, we have
James Roberts’ report,
“Cardinal Sarah points the way
back to Communion” (Church
in the World, 19 September). In
a letter to the presidents of all
the bishops’ conferences, the
prefect of the Congregation for
Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments
“praises the bishops for the way
they have handled the …
pandemic … but welcomes
the resumption of the
communal celebration that
provides the essential spiritual
food of the faithful”.
In the same edition, we have a
letter from Fr Gerard Hanlon,
of Lima, Peru, lamenting that in
the recent Synod on the
Amazon, the curial cardinals
“strongly resisted” the
ordaining of suitable married
men in the remote parts of the
A Prayer to the Creator
Lord, Father of our human family,
you created all human beings
equal in dignity:
pour forth into our hearts a
fraternal spirit
and inspire in us a dream of
renewed encounter,
dialogue, justice and peace.
Move us to create healthier societies
and a more dignified world,
a world without hunger, poverty,
violence and war.
May our hearts be open
to all the peoples and nations of
the earth.
May we recognise the goodness
and beauty
that you have sown in each of us,
16 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
LETTERS
Amazon. Such ordinations
would have facilitated the
availability to the people of
those remote communities, of
that essential “spiritual food”.
As a great admirer of our
much-loved Pope Francis, I am
among those disappointed with
his decision not to confront the
curial cardinals and support the
bishops of the Amazonian
Church, who by and large
support the ordination of
suitable married men. It
appears that for some, the
politics take priority.
DON REID
JORDAN SPRINGS, NEW SOUTH
WALES, AUSTRALIA
Tyrrell’s dream
l I was very interested to read
Christopher Lamb’s comment
(View from Rome, 26
September) on “the diminishing
influence of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith”.
Apparently under some
forthcoming reform of the
Roman Curia the Congregation
will be playing second fiddle to
a new department for
evangelisation. Marvellous that
the preaching of the Gospel
may at long last take
precedence over a system that
imposed points of theology,
ethics and politics not by
discussion but by decree.
In the words of the late, great
George Tyrrell, may we dare to
dream of a world “where our
Church proclaims the gospel of
God’s Kingdom upon earth as it
THE LIVING SPIRIT
A N D L I T U R G I C A L C A L E N DA R
and thus forge bonds of
unity, common projects,
and shared dreams. Amen.
An Ecumenical Christian Prayer
O God, Trinity of love,
from the profound communion
of your divine life,
pour out upon us a torrent of
fraternal love.
Grant us the love reflected in the
actions of Jesus,
in his family of Nazareth,
and in the early Christian
community.
Grant that we Christians may live
the Gospel,
discovering Christ in each human
being,
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
was proclaimed by Jesus Christ;
to preach unity in essentials,
liberty in non-essentials, charity
in all things”.
(FR) IGGY O’DONOVAN
FETHARD, CO. TIPPERARY,
IRELAND
Wall of prayers
l I strongly disagree with
Marguerite Xerri’s letter (3
October) criticising the Wall of
Answered Prayer being built in
Birmingham.
She complains that “money
could be put to better use and
give greater glory to God if it
were used more charitably”, but
she is taking a very limited view
on what constitutes charity.
Christ proclaimed that “man
cannot live on bread alone”
(Matthew 4:4). The £9.3m
budget for the wall is not
vanishing into the ether, but
will also provide for those who
“are struggling to pay the rent
or provide food for their
families” by ensuring the
livelihoods of hundreds of
artists, builders, gardeners and
craftsmen involved in its design
and construction.
Christ also told us: “You are
the light of the world. The city
on the hill cannot be hidden”
(Matthew 5:14). A bold,
confident, assertive creation
like the Wall of Answered
Prayer is a powerful, positive
statement that impresses itself
on the wider community.
ROBERT FRAZER
SALFORD, GREATER MANCHESTER
recognising him
crucified
in the sufferings of the
abandoned
and forgotten of our world,
and risen in each brother or sister
who makes a new start.
Come, Holy Spirit, show us your
beauty,
reflected in all the peoples of the
earth,
so that we may discover anew
that all are important and all are
necessary,
different faces of the one humanity
that God so loves. Amen.
POPE FRANCIS
FROM THE ENCYCLICAL LETTER FRATELLI TUTTI,
ON FRATERNITY AND SOCIAL FRIENDSHIP
Nuclear peace
l Bruce Kent alerts us to a
brilliant opportunity (Letters, 3
October). The Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons (TPNW) will soon
come into force, making it more
difficult, operationally and
morally, to maintain a nuclear
weapons capability. Meanwhile
hard economic times coupled
with escalating costs of our
Trident replacement
programme will be forcing
choices between conventional
and nuclear military capability. 
What better time to seize a
moral high ground than by
being the first of the nuclear
weapon states to commit to the
TPNW? All it takes initially is a
programme for how we will get
to a position of compliance with
the treaty. This government
could do it at no electoral cost
and huge economic gain. We
could move from being a treaty-
breaking, directionless nation to
one that leads the world
towards a safer future.
MARTIN BIRDSEYE
HOUNSLOW, MIDDLESEX
l Does Bruce Kent not
understand that people break
laws? Even if you have laws
against nuclear weapons there
will still be rogue nations who
will have them and use them.
No wonder this country and
others are ignoring this
legalistic nonsense.
(FR) BARRY GRANT
CRANBROOK, KENT
✦ CALENDAR ✦
Sunday 11 October:
Twenty-Eighth Sunday of the Year
(Year A)
Monday 12 October:
Feria or St Wilfrid, Bishop
Tuesday 13 October:
St Edward the Confessor, Patron of the
Diocese and of the City of Westminster
Wednesday 14 October:
Feria or St Callistus I, Pope and Martyr
Thursday 15 October:
St Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor
Friday 16 October:
Feria or St Hedwig, Religious
or St Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin
Saturday 17 October:
St Ignatius of Antioch,
Bishop and Martyr
Sunday 18 October:
Twenty-Ninth Sunday of the Year
For the Extraordinary Form calendar
go to www.lms.org.uk
 Volunteering
as a family
For the Little’s volunteering is a family affair. Stuart and
Lynne volunteer with their son Matthew for Mercy Ships,
a medical aid charity that uses hospital ships to deliver
humanitarian aid and development to the poorest nations
on the planet.
Stuart volunteers as the ship’s carpenter, Lynne is a ward
administrator for the onboard hospital and Matthew, who is 19,
is a deckhand. Together with the rest of the volunteer crew of
the Africa Mercy, the world’s largest charity-run hospital ship, the
Littles help bring hope and healing to the world’s poor.
“Working and living in the Mercy Ships community is a joy
to get up and go out the cabin door, knowing that there is a
whole village of medics, finance people, cooks, cleaners, marine
engineers and administrators, onboard. People are all here with
the same purpose. To be a part of the Mercy Ships mission,”
said Stuart.
“Matthew had never expressed an interest in going to
university and the ship has offered him an opportunity to learn
so much more than he would have done at university. As a
deckhand, he works hard outside in the sun alongside the local
African day crew. He is enjoying the challenge.
“It’s a blessing having the school onboard. It means people
can volunteer with their families and the education is great,
and the classes are small. We waited to volunteer until our two
daughters were at university and our son Matthew had finished
tablet_a4ms.indd 1
his formal education. I sometimes wish that we had volunteered
earlier and put our children through the school onboard.”
Around the world, 2 out of 3 people don’t have access
to healthcare when they need it. Mercy Ships provide free
surgeries onboard the Africa Mercy and train local medical
professionals in every country they visit.
“Volunteering with Mercy Ships has given me a whole new
experience and reason for being” says Stuart. “The sense of
being part of something bigger than any individual and we
are all working together to provide hope and healing for the
patients. It gives me a real sense of purpose.
“We are volunteering for two years, but you can come for much
shorter than that. It’s so exciting being part of Mercy Ships. The
ship is a little city with any job you can imagine, not just medical
roles.”
The ship is staffed by volunteers from over 40 nations who live
and work onboard.
“It is nice to work alongside my parents, they can see me
develop, and we get to see things as a family that we would
never see anywhere else,” said Matthew. “It is a joy to live and
work in the Africa Mercy community, because it is cool to work
alongside a multi-national crew and team, learning from them
about theirs.”
To start your family’s next adventure go to
www.mercyships.org.uk/volunteering
02/10/2020 16:44
18-20_Tablet10Oct20 Arts.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:06 Page 12

ARTS
• DIGITAL ARTS •
IN UNCERTAIN TIMES, THINK LIKE A MOTHER, Yifat Susskind’s TED talk • ETERNAL BEAUTY, starring Sally Hawkins, Curzon Home Cinema
UNITED KINGDOM OF CULTURE, Google Arts & Culture • All links at WWW.TINYURL.COM/TABLETDIGITALARTS

Digital renaissance
Alexandra Coghlan is awed by the Marian Consort’s genre-defying online recitals –
and the surprisingly bawdy background to a sixteenth-century Mass

C
OVID HAS upended every life and
industry, but few as dramatically as
music. Overnight in March song gave
way to silence: music-making was
outlawed, and across the country soloists and
ensembles could only watch as their diaries
emptied and their work disappeared.
But by the time lockdown eased, shock had
given way to determination. Whether it’s stag-
ing opera in carparks or singing to audiences
over Zoom, groups have found ways to make
music outside traditional concert venues and
formats, offering a glimpse of a new kind of
music-making that changes not just where,
but how, who and even why we listen.
Leading the way in this new landscape is
the Marian Consort and its musical director,
Rory McCleery, whose genre-defying series
of films on sacred music offer something
beyond just a digital recital. “What’s wonderful
with this project,” McCleery explains, “is that
we’re able to draw out the context, background
and meaning of music – whether that’s with
experts, actors or audio-visual elements – in
a way that’s a lot harder in a concert. The
modern view of renaissance polyphony has
been somewhat whitewashed over the years.
People don’t appreciate – or sometimes
actively don’t want to know – the origins of
works they enjoy for their abstract beauty and
supposed purity.”
That purity is actively, not to say provoca-
tively, challenged in the ensemble’s online film,
CULT, a musical meditation and exploration
of the cult of the Virgin in all its historical con-
tradictions and complexities. With the help
of author Marina Warner (whose 1976 cultural
history of the Virgin, Alone of All Her Sex,
explores the changing symbolism of the mother
of Christ) and actress Ell Potter, the group
take a sequence of Marian motets as a prism
through which to explore sixteenth-century
attitudes towards women: their agency, social
status, and the physical and metaphorical sig-
nificance of their bodies.
“When we devised CULT we wanted to
shine a light on some of the issues around
women and their voice – or lack of it – in the
music of this period,” says McCleery. “The his-
tory of renaissance vocal music is of men
writing works for men, performed by men,
about women; I was very keen to find a female
compositional voice as a counterbalance.”
His research led him to Raffaella Aleotti,
a nun who entered the Augustinian convent
of San Vito in Ferrara in 1590 and later
The Marian Consort with musical director
Rory McCleery, fourth from left, and an advert
for its online film, CULT, pictured right
became the first woman to have a collection
of sacred music published in Italy. Where
marriage would have denied the talented
Aleotti a professional career, as a nun she had
both the time and position to devote herself
to composition, creating works that need no
special pleading to sit alongside music by
Clemens non Papa and Orlandus Lassus.
“She’s very much there on merit,” says
McCleery. “A lot of her music is unusually for-
ward-looking, anticipating techniques
Monteverdi later uses in the Vespers and else-
where. She has a particularly bold approach
to dissonance and word-painting, and it’s
interesting to contrast her setting of a text
like ‘Ego flos campi’, for example, directly with
one by Clemens.”
The group gives us that opportunity with
full performances of both. Where Clemens’
famous setting of this Song of Songs text is
unabashedly sensual, weaving its seven voices
(the number seven itself freighted with Marian
symbolism) into heavy waves of sound that
roll and swell with suggestive suspensions

18 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
18-20_Tablet10Oct20 Arts.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:06 Page 13

ARTS

P OD CA ST S
Past masters
The best history series for download
D. J. TAY LOR

Revisionist History; 1619; Wind of Change;

The British History Project
VARIOUS PLATFORMS

W
HAT separates the podcast
from a radio programme?
From one angle there is the
hint of a medium making
fewer concessions to its audience: listeners
sign in because they like the sound of it – if
they don’t, they can go. From another there
is the greater intimacy that exists between
and lingering sequences of tension, denial nary,” says McCleery. “It took on another presenter and patron. Podcasts are seldom
and finally exquisite release, Aleotti’s is lighter dimension in that space. Despite the social highly populated: often there is only a single
– a youthful dance of courtship passed flir- distancing rules, all of us really felt the close- voice talking to a solitary pair of ears.
tatiously between rival groups of voices. There’s knit fervour of this music and its intensity Complicity crackles in the ether.
another crucial difference: where Clemens here. We had rehearsed in a very resonant Certainly the American historian Malcolm
edits out verses that stray from the female church, so coming into that dry, domestic Gladwell, impresario of Revisionist History,
objects of his musical desire, Aleotti restores space gave us a totally different vantage point comes across as the emcee of a sophisticated
them, turning her female gaze firmly back on on the music. The text suddenly is everything; private members’ club, desperately hoping
the men. it’s not about wallowing in the beauty of the that you are having as much fun as he is in
The programme moves tellingly between sonorities, it’s about words – a ritual that peo- these spirited examinations of “things over-
commentary, performance and readings from ple were tortured and executed for enacting.” looked and misunderstood”. Recent offerings
poets Aemilia Lanyer and Tullia D’Aragona, Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices is the centre- have included “Hamlet Was Wrong” (billed
delivered with contemporary edge by Potter, piece here. Performed by just three singers as “the delicate science of hiring nihilism”)
bridging a gap of centuries to convey the frus- against the wood-panelled backdrop of and a roller-coaster exposé of the relationship
trations, the sardonic humour and the Ingatestone’s interior, the hall’s two priest- between subject and amanuensis that pro-
spirituality of these women. Cutting against holes out of sight but by no means out of duced The Autobiography of Howard Hughes.
these reflective extracts is the altogether earth- mind, it gathers a charge that would be pow- If the tone of the New York Times-sponsored
ier subtext of Lassus’ Missa erful even without the topical 1619 is a touch less exuberant, then this is down
Entre vous filles. While the resonances. Viewed in a time to the subject matter – nothing less than a his-
polyphony is coolly elegant, The tune that that has recently seen the ban- tory of slavery in the United States, in which
the tune that this Parody Mass this Parody Mass is ning of public worship, where no act of suppression or cultural expropriation
is based on belongs to a chan- congregations are still forbid- is left untouched. Nikole Hannah-Jones is at
son that is less bawdy than based on belongs den to sing together, it the helm, and the targets include present-day
outright pornographic, with to a chanson that becomes almost too poignant. racism by stealth as much as past injustice.
its author lingering over the CULT and Byrd Song are And so the two-part “Land of Our Fathers”
bodies of 15-year-old girls.
is outright the first two films in a six-part covers the dismal experiences of June and
Would Lassus’ audience pornographic series that will be rolled out Angie Provost, Louisiana sugarcane farmers
have been aware of the asso- over the next few months. whose progress was (allegedly) stymied by
ciation? Almost certainly. Future repertoire will include the First Guaranty Bank’s tardiness with crop
Would the composer have expected them to music by Tallis, Mundy and Tye from the loans. The lawsuit proceeds and there are
overlay the original’s erotic attitude onto the reign of Mary Tudor, as well as two separate echoes of the celebrated Pigford v. Glickman
Mass’ own sacred subject? That’s less clear, programmes of works by Germany’s Heinrich case from the 1990s, which led to the biggest
but the commentary from Warner both in Schütz, whose music reflects both the prag- civil rights settlement in US history.
the film and accompanying podcast offers a matic and emotional impact of the Thirty
bracing medieval corrective to today’s hermetic Years’ War. Coming first, though, is a film MEANWHILE, Wind of Change, presented by
categories of sacred and secular. Mass may devoted to one of the repertoire’s most the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, is a won-
never feel quite the same again. famous sacred works – Allegri’s “Miserere”. derfully obsessional piece of pop-cultural
Where CULT is clever and diverting – a Scraping away the layers of myth that have sleuthing. The song of the title, an international
fragrant bouquet of motets concealing a stuck to the work’s glossy surface, McCleery 1990 hit for a German ensemble called the
stiletto blade of an argument – another film, promises to send viewers away with a sense Scorpions, was regarded by European youth
Byrd Song, is more emotive. The life and faith of the work as it would have been heard orig- as a soundtrack for the tearing down of the
of English composer William Byrd are deli- inally, as well as a much richer understanding Berlin wall. Keefe’s suspicion that its begetter
cately teased out in material evocatively filmed of Allegri himself – “so much more than a was, in fact, the CIA, takes him on a worldwide
at Ingatestone Hall, Essex. Home to Byrd’s one-note composer” – as well as his prede- pursuit of songwriters, band managers and
patron, John Petre (whose family still owns cessors in Rome. spooks, and is highly entertaining.
the house today), the Tudor estate and its This is music as a window onto the world, Back on these shores, there is The British
chapel offered sanctuary to recusant Catholics, not an escape from it. Concerts as we know History Project, a mammoth undertaking now
including the composer himself. them will return, but I have a feeling that this past its 350th episode, and, when I last looked,
“Being able to perform Byrd’s music in the kind of intelligent, wide-ranging digital sup- getting round to King Cnut. All the above are
place for which it was written was extraordi- plement is here to stay. available free on the usual platforms.

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18-20_Tablet10Oct20 Arts.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:06 Page 14
T H E AT R E
Temporary residency
One family’s struggle for citizenship
M A R K L AWS O N
An Evening With An Immigrant
BRIDGE THEATRE, LONDON
B
ECAUSE OF the six-month hole in
this year’s theatre, the 2020 award
ceremonies have been curtailed or
cancelled. But someone must surely
give a prize to Nicholas Hytner’s and Nick
Starr’s Bridge Theatre, beside the Thames,
which has used what chief medical officer
Professor Chris Whitty calls “mitigations” –
temperature guns, hand gel, hugely reduced
capacity – to mount by far the most impressive
post-lockdown repertoire of any UK theatre.
In its Covid-safe season of a dozen one-
performer shows, two thirds are Alan
Bennett’s Talking Heads from TV, but also
four newer pieces, the latest An Evening With
An Immigrant by Inua Ellams.
The 35-year-old Nigerian-born British-
based author is both a playwright – his Barber
Shop Chronicles (2017) was an international
hit – and poet. His last theatre piece, The
Half-God of Rainfall (2019), a mock-Homeric
epic about fate and basketball, was both a
published book and performance by two
actors at London’s Kiln Theatre.
T E L EV I S ION
Looking for Muriel
On the trail of an elusive
Scottish novelist
LUCY L ET H BR I D G E
Muriel Spark by Ian Rankin
SKY ARTS
I
AN RANKIN’S generous and perceptive
homage to Muriel Spark (inset) was
cemented by their shared affiliation to
the city of their births: Edinburgh.
Rankin, creator of the Edinburgh-based
Inspector Rebus detective novels, had many
years ago written a PhD on Spark – and
attributed to her inspiration his early efforts
in fiction writing. He only met her once –
“when I was a fanboy” – but no other celebrity
encounter apart from meeting the Rolling
Stones has been more important to him. In
one touching scene we see him holding to his
nose the handwritten manuscript of The Prime
of Miss Jean Brodie, in one of the James Thin
spiral notebooks that she always used. “Man,”
he breathed, “this smells like literature.”
Instead of a conventional cradle-to-grave
biography, Rankin gave this something else:
the genuine pleasure of a fellow writer and a
willingness to let a mystery lie. Talking to fel-
low enthusiasts of the novels or people who
20 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
ARTS
PHOTO: OLIVER HOLMS
Poet and playwright Inua Ellams
An Evening With An Immigrant is also for-
mally fluid. Ellams delivers a 90-minute
autobiographical monologue, during which
the lights periodically dim and he reads a
poem, written at, and/or relevant to, the period
of his life the memoir has reached.
The verse is swift and witty, featuring child-
hood, schooling and the dream that seemed
to be represented by England (where his father
had found a job in broadcasting).
But the interleaved soliloquy is the meat
of the evening, detailing the long struggle of
the Ellams family to achieve “permanent leave
to remain” in the UK. The son of a Christian
mother and Muslim father (who, counterin-
tuitively, lost his faith during a pilgrimage to
Mecca), Inua silently endured racism at his
London school, until, impressively, a white
friend told him he mustn’t tolerate it.
had known Spark, Rankin was engagingly
reticent, a good listener. The struggle for all
of them was pinning the Spark butterfly down:
she was, as the critic Allan Massie put it, “a
very slippery novelist indeed, like mercury”.
It is Rankin’s contention that everything
in Spark’s work was there in her first
18 years. She barely returned to
Edinburgh after her short mar-
riage but the city is always
there in the books. As Spark
herself said: “Nothing is lost
to the writer – even loitering
is loitering with intent.” Born
into a modest Jewish family
in the Bruntsfield area, Muriel
Camberg’s talent was recog-
nised early on. Her parents
scrimped to send her to a girls’ pri-
vate school where she was taught by Miss
Kay, model for her most famous creation –
Jean Brodie. Rankin tracked down Miss Kay’s
last surviving pupil who was razor sharp in
her 90s. She remembered that Miss Kay’s
devotion to Mussolini was due to him “drain-
ing the malarial marshes”. “It’s been an
honour,” said Rankin as he took his leave.
“Oh, don’t be so silly,” was her response. I’m
glad they left that in.
The Cambergs couldn’t afford university
so Muriel was sent instead on a course of
precis writing – the perfect way to hone her
pared back, condensed prose. An early mar-
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At risk of forced deportation when all the
documentation was mysteriously lost before
a crucial tribunal, the family was advised by
lawyers to go to Ireland (which had kinder
immigration policies), giving Inua yet another
cultural influence.
Granted temporary UK residence, their sta-
tus was further complicated by Theresa May’s
“hostile environment”. Astonishingly, the fam-
ily, even now, have only temporary residency.
Incredibly, an earlier attempt to deport them
for making insufficient contribution to Britain
came while Ellams’ version of Chekhov’s Three
Sisters was running at the National Theatre.
A striking aspect of the show is the disso-
nance between content and delivery. Whereas
this story of suspended identity might under-
standably be told in tones of hot or cold anger,
Ellams – a fantastically engaging stage pres-
ence – maintains throughout notes of geniality
and bemusement. Without reducing the horror
of the narrative, this demeanour gives a sense
of the doggedly optimistic personality that
has allowed him to live and work so effectively
in a country that officially didn’t want him.
Because Bridge co-founders Hytner and
Starr previously employed Ellams during their
tenure at the National Theatre, they formally
supported his appeals against deportation.
With a show that achieves the unusual com-
bination of enjoyability and provocation, they
continue to support him and also, with this
remarkable reopening season, those of us who
were feeling starved of live theatre.
PHOTO: PA ARCHIVE
riage to Sidney Spark was her escape route –
and took her to Rhodesia, the setting for her
first published story. Her biographer, Martin
Stannard, calls Sidney “more than slightly
deranged” – a phrase with a distinctly
Sparkian ring to it. She had a son, left Sidney,
came back to London, and abandoned
her son in Edinburgh with her par-
ents. But her work flourished.
Evelyn Waugh and Graham
Greene were early patrons,
Greene paying her an
allowance until she could
earn a living. But The Prime
of Miss Jean Brodie made her
a literary superstar: the New
Yorker published the novel in
its entirety, which was unprece-
dented, and gave her an office. She
loved clothes and parties but made ene-
mies. Ved Mehta, a colleague at the magazine,
said she “went through people like pieces of
Kleenex”. In 1966 she moved to Rome and
lived in Italy for the rest of her life.
In 1954, Spark converted to Catholicism,
saying “Freedom is what I experience in the
Catholic faith.” Rankin had thoughtful things
to say about Spark’s interest in the problem
of free will in her novels: “They are really all
about God.” But in the end, what makes Spark
so fascinating is elusive. As Rankin put it: “You
can keep on peeling the onion with Muriel,
but you never quite get to the centre.”
21-24_Tablet10Oct20 Books.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:05 Page 17

AUTUMN BOOKS
•OUR REVIEWERS•
MARY KENNY is a journalist, broadcaster, playwright and author • REBECCA WILLIS has worked at Vogue and Intelligent Life • LUCY POPESCU is the editor of
A Country of Refuge • TIMOTHY RADCLIFFE OP is a former master of the Dominicans • MARCUS TANNER is an author and a senior editor at Balkan Insight
MELANIE MCDONAGH writes for the London Evening Standard and The Tablet • MORAG MACINNES is a writer and poet • LUIGI GIOIA is a theologian and spiritual writer

A heart and a half

Ireland’s former president has always been
vigorous in challenging the Vatican
M A RY K E N N Y
PHOTO: PA, JOHN STILLWELL
She was already critical of the Catholic Church
Here’s the Story: A Memoir for a number of reasons: child abuse, female
MARY MCALEESE priests, homosexual rights. Her canonical
(PENGUIN IRELAND, 419 PP, £20) studies enhanced her radicalism, and even
her anger.
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £18 • TEL 020 7799 4064 The narrative covers an arc of our times,
with a diligent eye to the record: events and
encounters with numerous political and

M
ARY M C ALEESE was the second
woman to become president of
Ireland, following Mary Robinson.
Both were admirable holders of the office; both
brought judgement, grace and stature to the
presidency. Both were lawyers, and both, per-
haps, represented the last generation of Irish
women who were commonly named Mary.
This Mary’s memoir takes us from tor-
mented scenes in Belfast’s Ardoyne area to
the presidential residence for Ireland’s “First
Citizen”, and beyond. Among other achieve-
ments, she was the unique, historic host for
Queen Elizabeth’s only state visit to the Irish
Republic. She has held many esteemed posi-
tions in law, teaching and human rights. As
a qualified canon lawyer, she is also known
for her audacious feminist challenges to the
Vatican hierarchy, including Pope Francis
(whom she calls “all talk and no action”).
McAleese was born in 1951, an eldest child.
Her mother had 11 pregnancies: nine children
survived. After the last, a priest criticised a
medically necessary hysterectomy, which may
justifiably have contributed to McAleese’s
subsequent sensibilities about misogynistic
clerics. Her parents were conscientious, hard-
working Catholics, but circumstances were
modest. From early childhood until she
married Martin McAleese at 24, Mary shared
a bed with another sibling.
Her father, who ran a bar, had his premises
blown up by both republicans and loyalists.
The family was fortunately absent, marking
the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when
loyalist terrorists brutally destroyed their home.
Belfast was divided along the usual sectarian
lines and yet there were always kind Protestant
neighbours, too, and her mission to “build
bridges” was an early prompting. But it wasn’t
all misery: there was a supportive extended
family. And her mother fiercely defended
McAleese’s ambition to study law at a time
when not many Ardoyne girls did.
And so her ascent to academic success
Mary McAleese
began, via Queen’s University Belfast, and
Trinity College Dublin, where she followed
Mary Robinson as a professor of law. There
was a stint as a broadcast journalist, with
RTE, the national broadcaster, where her
experience with the Dublin media wasn’t
felicitous. As a Catholic “Nordie”, she was
patronisingly expected to be a republican
nationalist. When she emerged as a
presidential candidate in 1997, she was
described as a potential “tribal bomb”. It was
predicted she’d be an uber-Catholic and a
Sinn Féin republican fellow traveller, which
was not at all how things turned out.
She was easily elected, and moved to the
presidential residency, Áras an Uachtaráin,
with her husband Martin, and their three
children. And she did build bridges there:
even going so far as to invite the Revd Ian
Paisley and his wife, Eileen (among others),
to her official home. She also caused “apoplexy”
– her word – among the Irish hierarchy by
taking Communion in a Protestant cathedral
in Dublin (there are two).
SUCCESSFUL in her first term, she was
returned, unopposed, for a second period of
seven years. After that, she embarked on canon
law at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.
church people are described. She is caustic
about those she considers bigoted, misogy-
nistic, or who have failed in addressing child
abuse. Mary Glendon, Fr Tom Williams,
Cardinal Law, Dublin’s Cardinal Connell and
Fr Denis Faul, are not spared her ire. She has
her heroes too: Mo Mowlam, Cherie Blair,
John Hume, Francis Campbell, the Dalai
Lama, and Fr Alec Reid, to whom the book
is dedicated (and she has heroes, too, within
her own family). She describes the Vatican as
a “rather camp medieval court”, which makes
it sound rather glamorous. She’s incredibly
proactive: if she has to master Italian, or
church Latin, she just does it. She gained her
doctorate with flying colours.
SHE HAS a pleasing line in self-deprecation,
although she can occasionally take herself too
seriously. She was furious with John Paul II
for making a jest suggesting that Martin must
be playing second fiddle to his wife. I heard
my own husband banter on this theme with
Denis Thatcher and it was thought harmless.
But Mary elicited an apology!
There’s a happy photograph of her gay son,
Justin, with his husband, and she makes men-
tion of her and Martin’s energetic involvement
in the 2016 Irish referendum to legalise same-
sex marriage. There could have been a little
more political and social context about that.
Her influence was also considerable when it
came to the 2018 repeal referendum (repeal-
ing the Eighth Amendment, which
acknowledged the unborn child): she told a
feminist interviewer that she supported repeal
“with a heart and a half ”. This came as a dis-
appointment to pro-life supporters. She may
have a more complex explanation of this
situation, or she may feel so radically feminist
now that she is aligned with the pro-choice
movement, but it isn’t explored.
Yet, all in all, Mary McAleese’s story is
an important witness to the times we have
lived through.

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21-24_Tablet10Oct20 Books.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:05 Page 26
Spiritualism in suburbia
R E BECCA W I L L I S
The Haunting of Alma Fielding:
A True Ghost Story
KATE SUMMERSCALE
(BLOOMSBURY CIRCUS, 368 PP, £18.99)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £17.09 • TEL 020 7799 4064
E
VENTS THAT were public sensations in
their day but not the stuff of mainstream
history books have proved a rich seam
for Kate Summerscale. The Suspicions of Mr
Whicher, her 2008 retelling of the investigation
into a child murder of 1860, was as gripping
as a thriller and became a best-seller. Her
latest book, The Haunting of Alma Fielding,
reanimates an investigation into paranormal
events (initially a poltergeist) on the eve of the
Second World War. Its oxymoronic subtitle –
“A True Ghost Story” – gives the reader fair
warning that there won’t be any easy answers
or Poirot-style revelations.
The protagonists are a Hungarian-Jewish
ghost hunter, Nandor Fodor (who was, inci-
dentally but remarkably, the sixteenth of
eighteen children), and an apparently ordinary
housewife from Thornton Heath in south
London, Alma Fielding. Fodor had been
obsessed with the supernatural since childhood
and published in 1934 a half-million-word
Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science. He went on
to work for the International Institute for
Psychical Research in London, which aimed
to combine the spiritualist and scientific
approaches to the supernormal. Fielding
meanwhile had a problem with objects fling-
ing themselves violently around her house
and other mysterious happenings that terrified
her as well as her husband, her son and their
lodger, all of whom witnessed the chaos.  stories about hauntings and poltergeists, and
FODOR’S investigation into Fielding’s
haunting forms the skeleton of the book,
and he finds himself in an ambivalent posi-
tion: he wants to discover the truth and to
unmask Fielding if she is a hoaxer, but he
also wants the institute which employs him
to survive and therefore needs verifiable
psychic activity. He begins to suspect that
there is a psychological element to hauntings
and that repressed feelings might have a
part to play. The real fascination of the book
lies not in the objects and small creatures
that appear from nowhere, nor the tendency
of the poltergeist to shoplift, nor in the
methods employed in detection – everything
from strip searches, and flour on the floor
to catch footprints, to the new technology
of infra-red cameras and X-rays. Rather it
lies in the dawning realisation of the role
of the subconscious in psychic disturbance.
Many mediums had lost their own children
and much supernatural activity occurred
around people who were disempowered
and unable to escape their situations –
women, adolescents, servants. And Fodor
22 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
AUTUMN BOOKS
Nandor Fodor
realises that he himself, as detective, is also
a participant.  Despite witnessing unspeakable
Summerscale had access to his files and
letters and is possibly too faithful to them at
times (I wouldn’t have minded skipping a
seance or two). She conveys the background
tension as the political clouds gather and
darken before the war, and brilliantly com-
municates, as she did with Mr Whicher, the
mood and minutiae of another era.
It is hard nowadays to believe that a grown
man could be paid to travel across the country
to investigate a talking mongoose in the name
of science, but spiritualism – a faith which
started in the mid-nineteenth century –
boomed between the wars and psychic phe-
nomena were considered a legitimate subject
for scientific study. Newspapers were full of
large crowds would gather outside houses
where they were reported. A million people
had died in the First World War and the
influenza epidemic that followed, and the
bereaved were easy prey for mediums and
psychics. Some of these were sincere, others
opportunistic hoaxers, the equivalent of the
cyber-scammers who today persuade vulner-
able people to hand over their bank details.
Fodor realised, as Summerscale puts it, that
“the golden age of psychical study was also
the heyday of supernatural hustle”.
The real power of this book, which tells the
tale of a ghost hunter who becomes a psycho-
analyst, is that it depicts the transition from
pre-Freudian to post-Freudian consciousness.
It shows reality ceasing to be seen as an exter-
nal and objective truth and becoming the
subjective perception of an individual. In
doing so, it tells the story of the twentieth-
century mind. It also reminds us what a nation
will believe when it is stressed and frightened
by global events, and of how different things
look 80 years on. In ways that Summerscale
couldn’t possibly have foreseen, with or with-
out a crystal ball, it is spookily topical.
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S PE E D R E A DI NG
LUCY P OPE S CU
chooses debut novels
Based on a true story, The Stray
Cats of Homs (Doubleday,
£12.99; Tablet price £11.69), by
journalist Eva Nour (a
pseudonym), explores the
brutality of the Syrian conflict.
Nour was inspired to write the
novel after meeting and falling
in love with the real “Sami”, the
Syrian protagonist who lives
through the Homs nightmare.
He endures national service,
witnesses the death of friends,
survives bombing and starvation,
before escaping to Lebanon and
finding asylum in France.
horror, Sami manages to retain
his humanity and dignity.
In Natasha Randall’s Love
Orange (riverrun, £18.99; Tablet
price £17.09), Jenny and Hank
and their two sons live in
Bentonville, suburban America,
in a “smart” house that
anticipates their every need – the
fridge even tells them what to
buy. Stripped of her agency and
questioning her maternal role,
Jenny alleviates her boredom by
writing to John, in prison for
manslaughter. She becomes
strangely addicted to the orange
“glue” he uses to seal his
envelopes. This bittersweet
debut is about loneliness and the
destabilising effects of technology
– confessions are delivered by
text to the local priest with
unexpected consequences.
Set in rural Ireland, Gráinne
Murphy’s Where the Edge Is
(Legend Press, £8.99; Tablet
price £8.09) is narrated from
the perspective of several
characters over the course of
24 hours. After a bus falls into a
sinkhole, a tense drama ensues
involving the conflicting
emotions and entwined lives of
the rescued, those who remain
trapped, the media and the
rescue team. The accident
serves as the catalyst for
Murphy to explore diverse
subjects from grief, trauma,
faith and identity to the fine line
between love and obsession.
21-24_Tablet10Oct20 Books.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:05 Page 27
RECENTLY Love is the Way /MICHAEL B. CURRY / HODDER AND STOUGHTON, £16.99; TABLET PRICE £14.99 / Bishop Michael Curry picks up
PUBLISHED where he left off in his groundbreaking sermon at the wedding of Harry and Meghan
The theft of happiness
T I MOT H Y R A D C L I F F E
Jack
MARILYNNE ROBINSON
(VIRAGO, 320 PP, £18.99)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £17.09 • TEL 020 7799 4064
C
AN JACK CHANGE? He says, “I aspire
to utter harmlessness.” But is he
doomed to wreak destruction? This is
the question around which pivots this fourth
novel in a series begun by Marilynne Robinson
with Gilead in 2004, followed by Home in
2008, and Lila in 2014.
Everything takes place in the Protestant
world of the southern United States, in the
1950s. Here “the world’s great work was the
business of men, of gentle, serious men well
versed in Scripture and eloquent at prayer,
or, in any case, ordained in some reasonably
respectable denomination”. Catholics do not
count and are only mentioned once as “people
they barely knew”. The guiding light is Calvin.
Yet I cannot think of any other contemporary
novelist who explores more profoundly how
religious doctrine is tested against lived
experience. Is it possible to forgive those who
have sinned against one grievously? Can we
judge others? Are we free?
Gilead is the long letter written by the old
pastor John Ames to his young son, the fruit
of his late marriage to Lila. Jack, called John
Ames Boughton in his honour, is back visiting
his father, another minister. Already he is seen
as a disreputable figure, fated to fail. In Gilead,
Robinson gives us almost the whole plot
explored in all four novels. Each, told from
the perspective of a different character, drills
down more deeply into the tangle of emotions
Dream come true
M A RCUS TA N N E R
Piranesi
SUSANNA CLARKE
(BLOOMSBURY, 272 PP, £14.99)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £13.49 • TEL 020 7799 4064
A
YOUNGISH MAN wanders through
vast, echoing halls in a deserted palace
beside a nameless sea, dwarfed by
colossal statues and listening out for the sepul-
chral booming of tides surging in and crashing
against the walls.
At the start of this book, Susanna Clarke
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AUTUMN BOOKS
and beliefs that drive the actors. They all come
to Gilead seeking healing. “Is there no balm
in Gilead?” (Jeremiah 8:22). Each story ends
on a note of blessing and hope.
The shadow of predestination overshadows
their lives. When Jack demands to know
whether Ames believes in predestination to
perdition, the old pastor is evasive: “It’s a
fraught question, and I am careful with it.” It
seems to be only Jack, the agnostic/atheist,
who takes the doctrine with terrifying seri-
ousness. Della, his beloved and the daughter
of an upright Protestant bishop, refuses to
accept it: “You’re not doomed. Neither am I.
We’ve chosen a difficult life, that’s all.”
Doom is averted time and again by acts of
kindness. Each novel describes a love which
reaches across boundaries. In Gilead, the
pastor’s love crosses the gap between old age
and childhood. In Home it is the chasm
between the sinner Jack and his upright
father. In Lila, love binds the educated
minister and a feral young woman, formerly
a prostitute. In Jack, the ultimate division is
conjures up a bewitching but disturbing
dream world. But if the prospect of living
alone in a vast half-submerged palace might
sound terrifying to most, it doesn’t to the
main character.
Piranesi – if that is indeed his name –
finds life fulfilling. There are always new
halls to explore, statues to catalogue and
nets to make in order to catch fish and
mussels. Important votive offerings must
be made to favourite statues, and to the 13
skeletons lying in various niches whose
remains he tends. He is meticulous about
his journal. Moreover, he is not quite alone.
Piranesi’s known world contains a
fifteenth person – including the skeletons
– called the Other, whom he meets from
time to time and works with on a scientific
project, whose successful end will bestow
PHOTO: PA/SIPA USA, DREW ANGERER
Marilynne Robinson after receiving
the US National Humanities Medal
from former President, Barack Obama
transcended, the segregation of black and white.
The backdrop to all four novels is the great
sin of slavery and the hard struggle to over-
come prejudice and inequality. But the upright
Presbyterian minister, Jack’s father, sees the
non-violent protests in Montgomery as
nothing of importance: “In six months nobody
will remember one thing about it.”
Biblical figures haunt the narrative. Ames
is Abraham with his late-born child. Jack in
Home is the prodigal son returned. In Jack,
he is the fallen Adam. He “washes his face
like the first man that ever existed”. He seeks
clothing to hide his shame. He is the naked
man under the clothes, always looking for a
new suit, his fig leaves. Finally, he is the good
thief: “And this was his greatest larceny by
far, this sly theft of happiness from the very
clutches of prohibition.”
Will there be a fifth book? I would bet on
Robert or Robby, the name of the sons of both
John Ames and Jack. Surely they will meet
and carry forward this humane and spiritual
exploration of human struggle.
superhuman powers on the pair of them.
We would seem ensconced in the classical
or pre-classical era, in a time of gods,
Minotaurs and Argonauts – but Clarke then
shakes things up. The Other starts appearing
in natty suits and presenting Piranesi with
plastic bowls, a sleeping bag, a torch and
multivitamins. Piranesi finds crisp packets,
and an empty box called “fish fingers”. He
hears muttering behind the statues and,
shockingly, another person appears one day,
greets Piranesi and warns him that he used
to be an “arrogant little shit”.
Who is Piranesi and has he been kid-
napped, brainwashed and trapped in a
classically-themed version of The Truman
Show? Half dream sequence, half detective
story, this wonderfully playful exploration
of myth and reality keeps us guessing.
10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 23
21-24_Tablet10Oct20 Books.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:05 Page 22
Becoming human
M E L A N I E M C D ONAG H
Holiness and Desire
JESSICA MARTIN
(CANTERBURY PRESS, 144 PP, £16.99)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £14.99 • TEL 020 7799 4064
T
HE VERY Anglican nature of this book
means it offers no prescriptions on
how to behave. Jessica Martin
(pictured) is a canon of Ely
Cathedral, who used to teach
English at Cambridge.
Sounding off isn’t her thing.
Rather, this is an exploration
of aspects of sexuality, and of
what it is to be human.
The cover shows a human
eye – she talks a lot about look-
ing. Nowadays, a great deal of
looking is at screens, at pornography,
blurring the boundaries between real and
not real. “The drive towards the attention-
grabbing hyperpalatable faked image adjusts
the mind towards the fast, the bright, the
astonishing, the continuously sublime or ter-
rifying ... The slower modes of real experience
Sailing by
MOR AG M AC I N N E S
Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession
GAVIN FRANCIS
(CANONGATE, 256 PP, £20)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £18 • TEL 020 7799 4064
A
S WE LEARN to honour our doctors
anew, we have become more than
merely curious about the physical busi-
ness of caring. Gavin Francis is a doctor first
and foremost; but he’s got a poet’s eye, a
philosopher’s questioning mind and a restless




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become difficult to wait for.” Martin describes
compassionately how people are led by nudge
algorithms from one fantasy to another, down
to a hell they never planned to visit. She talks
about one user who tried to identify his sinful
watching with the actual machine he used,
so when he closed it, he could move on.
She has little patience with the way that
child pornography users are regarded as
untouchables by those who engage in other
kinds, as if to shore up their own fragile virtue.
As for sex in marriage, she finds herself
detached from both conservative and liberal
views of relationships: “patriarchal
authoritarianism” versus
“secular-led fashions of sexual
behaviour”. She wants more
emphasis on other aspects of
marriage: responsibility for
children, for example.  Some
of her most telling reflections
are based on her own experi-
ences as a teenager in the
Seventies when a kind of sexual
pushmi-pullyu directed girls towards
sexual availability while still punishing
them for it.
She’s sympathetic to gay marriage, and finds
contraception wholly liberating. She writes
beautifully, and she’s never dogmatic. Like I
say, this is a very Anglican book.
spirit. Here, he contrasts a life of medical
responsibility with his lifelong fascination
with islands.
Maps are his passion; there are lots. Robert
Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Map; a 1572 copy
of an early wall map featuring the Orcades
embellished with lobsters, fanged orcas,
delicate ships and a piper; a Turkish
navigational map; Nelson Mandela’s prison
island. There’s a mesmerising Nasa picture
of shifting wave patterns. The colours are
sumptuous – you’d be forgiven for wanting
the book just because it’s so pretty.
And the writing is very, very good. An
aurora is “like marbled endpaper spread over
the book of the sea”. The insignia of the
Northern Lighthouse Board is “a white
minaret of a lighthouse … towering over a
shallow bowl of white-topped Hokusai waves”.
He delights in the quirky – quoting Darwin
on a Pacific island where “no individual pos-
sessed a watch” and an old man “struck the
church bell by guess”. It’s a commonplace
book bursting with writers and explorers,
sunrises and frozen feet.
For Francis, there’s a tension between his
desire to immerse himself in “the torrent of
life through the clinic” and his need for “seren-
ity … the twinned but opposing allures of
isolation and connection”. He charts twenty
years of travel to the emptiest places. Solitude
can heal but it can also drive one mad. Islands
are retreats, but also prisons.
Francis hopes that we may “take a journey”
Harden not
your heart
LUIG I G IOIA
Staying Tender: Contemplation,
Pathway to Compassion
LUKE BELL OSB
(ANGELICO PRESS, 146 PP, £15)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £13.50 • TEL 020 7799 4064
T
HIS BOOK is a meditation to savour
slowly. The author invites the reader
to resist addiction to chronological time
and learn from the Benedictine wisdom of
stability. Dwelling, or abiding, are the per-
vasive images employed, betraying the
author’s deep roots in Benedictine spirituality.
This long rumination results from Lectio
Divina, “divine reading”, that is the
meditation of Scripture. Fr Luke Bell has a
long familiarity with this, and shares a wealth
of images and quotations that resonate long
after the book is closed.
His approach to contemplation is endear-
ing. It is about persevering in the inner
disposition summed up in the title of the
book: “staying tender”. In our competitive
and unforgiving world, tenderness is what
we need most: the ability to remain
accessible, open, within reach of God’s
consolation so as to be able to comfort one
another with the same consolation we
receive from God. “Staying tender” becomes,
according to Bell, a pathway to compassion
because it encompasses what contemplation
is about – abiding in God through constant
meditation of Scripture, and silent
meditation, to prevent our hearts from
hardening, making them inhospitable not
only to others but to ourselves.
For those unable to go on retreat, medi-
tating on these beautifully crafted chapters
will help achieve the same result. Each chap-
ter is linked to a day of the week and plays
with the same image from a different angle,
combining Scripture with poetry and liturgy.
The main object of Lectio Divina is Scripture
but those who practise it assiduously
discover that the slow, deliberate application
fostered by this habit of reading unlocks the
deep meaning of other literary or religious
texts – thus Bell manages to blend an
impressive range of poems in his meditation.
This is indicative of generosity of heart, the
trait of authentic contemplation.
Tablet binders.
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and store your issues
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the published review. with dreams of our own. He soothes, informs
and delights just when we need it most.

24 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
25_Tablet10Oct20 CiW Briefing.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 15:04 Page 24
Ethiopians celebrate Holy Cross
Catholics in Ethiopia last week
celebrated the Festival of
Meskel (“Holy Cross” in
Amharic), which marks the
discovery of the True Cross in
Jerusalem by the Roman
Empress Helena in the fourth
century. Cardinal Berhaneyesus
D. Souraphiel, the Archbishop
of Addis Ababa, said Catholics
had joined members of the
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo
Church to celebrate the festival.  travelled to Rome for four days
Bavarian bishops have voiced
strong support for Abbess
Mechthild Thürmer of the
Benedictine Abbey in
Kirchschletten, who has been
threatened with imprisonment
for preventing the deportation
of a woman immigrant by
granting her church asylum.  Vatican Secretary for Relations
Detroit Archbishop Allen
Vigneron, vice president of the
US bishops’ conference, offered
an opening prayer at a
fundraiser for Michigan Right-
to-Life, which used the event to
announce its support for
Deputy Headteacher: Pastoral
NEWS BRIEFING
T H E C H U RC H I N T H E WO R L D
President Donald Trump’s re-
election.
The Catholic Church in
Slovenia has praised left-wing
and Christian parliamentarians
for adopting legislation, drafted
with trade union backing, to
sharply restrict shop opening on
Sundays and public holidays.  Luc Marion, a former student of
Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop
Emeritus of Hong Kong, 88,
last week to lobby for “a good
bishop” for Hong Kong,
although he did not meet Pope
Francis. Meanwhile, China was
on the agenda at a meeting on
Thursday last week between the
US Secretary of State, Mike
Pompeo, Vatican Secretary of
State Pietro Parolin and the
with States, Archbishop Paul
Gallagher. A Vatican Press
Office spokesman said they had
“presented their respective
positions regarding relations
with the People’s Republic of
China, in a respectful, relaxed
and cordial environment”.

Former Vatican spokesman Fr
Federico Lombardi, president of
the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict
XVI Foundation, announced
last week that the 2020
Ratzinger Prize would be
shared by Australian Professor
and theologian Tracey Rowland
and French philosopher Jean-
philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Vatican’s wealth revealed
Last week the Vatican released
its first-ever detailed budget,
balance sheet and earnings
statement. It revealed that the
Vatican’s net equity is estimated
at €1.4 billion (£3.64bn), which
increases to some €4bn when
the Vatican Museums, the
Vatican bank and other sources
of funding are included.
An Anglican priest Canon
Christopher Chochoi says that
more than 200 girls have been
cared for by the centre he set up
in Baringo County, north-west
Kenya, 18 years ago to rescue
those fleeing forced marriages
and female genital mutilation.
FGM is widely practised among
the local Pokot community, but
Canon Chochoi said: “Those
girls are my responsibility and,
because they ran away from
outdated cultural beliefs, I will
not let them down”. A girl who
has been circumcised secures a
bride price of 50 cows. Those
who are uncircumcised secure
fewer cows.
Marking 60 years since
independence from Britain,
Nigeria’s Catholic bishops said
that the country was “almost on
the verge of total collapse”, and
added: “We must rebuild the
country on a fairer foundation.”
The Iraqi postal service has
issued its first commemorative
stamps to celebrate the historic
churches of Iraq’s different
Christian groups. Bishop
Shlemon Audish Warduni,
Chaldean auxiliary in Baghdad,
said the stamps were “a positive
gesture and a sign of good will”.
Compiled by James Roberts
and Ellen Teague.


  


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For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk 10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 25
26_Tablet10Oct20 CiW.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 17:06 Page 21
PHOTO: PA/AAP, DANIEL POCKETT
These are serious allegations and they need to be investigated properly and independently. Only then will we know where it’s gone.
Robert Richter QC, Cardinal George Pell’s barrister, on allegations that testimony against his client was ‘bought’ (see below)
ASSISI/ROME / Visit to Assisi places encyclical in care of Il Poverello
Pope ties his legacy to that of St Francis
JAMES ROBERTS
and VATICAN NEWS
IN THE clearest attempt yet to
cement his own legacy to that of
St Francis, Pope Francis went on
Saturday to Assisi for the fourth
time during his pontificate to sign
his new encyclical, Fratelli tutti,
and celebrate Mass before the
tomb of the saint.
The encyclical on fraternity and
social friendship was inspired by
St Francis, as was the Pope’s sec-
ond encyclical, Laudato si’, on the
care of our common home, pub-
lished five years ago.
The Pope travelled to Assisi by
car. On the way, he paid a visit to
the monastery of Vallegloria in
Spello. In Assisi, he paid a brief
visit to the Protomonastery of St
Clare and greeted the Poor Clare
nuns.
Greeting Pope Francis when he
arrived in Assisi were the Bishop
of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo
Tadino, Domenico Sorrentino;
AUSTRALIA
Witness denies bribery
allegations in Pell case
AN AUSTRALIAN man who gave
evidence that Cardinal George
Pell sexually abused him has
denied he was bribed for his tes-
timony, rejecting the latest
conspiracy theory sweeping the
Vatican, writes Mark Bowling.
Italian news reports claim that
Vatican funds were sent to people
in Australia to help secure a sex
assault conviction against the car-
dinal. Two newspapers, La
Repubblica and Corriere della
Sera, have reported that Cardinal
Pell’s rival in the Vatican, Cardinal
Giovanni Angelo Becciu, is sus-
pected of arranging for €700,000
(A$1.14 million) to be wired to
recipients in Australia to ensure
evidence was brought against Pell.
26 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
NEWS
•QUOTE OF THE WEEK•
DETAIL FROM A PORTRAIT BY PHILIP FRUYTIERS(1610-1660),
ROYAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ANTWERP
Francis invited Mgr Paolo Braida
to bring the copies of the encyclical
to be signed. He explained that
Mgr Braida handles the transla-
tions in the First Section of the
Secretariat of State. “He oversees
everything. This is why I wanted
him to be present here, today, and
that he should bring the encyclical
to me,” Francis said. After intro-
ducing two of the priests who also
work in the First Section, Francis
St Francis of Assisi said: “I am doing this as a sign of
gratitude to the entire First
Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the pon- Section of the Secretariat of State
tifical legate for the Basilicas of St who worked on the translations.”
Francis and St Mary of the Angels After Mass he briefly visited the
in Assisi; the guardian of the Franciscan community in the
Franciscan Friary, also known as Sacro Convento monastery
the Sacro Convento, Fr Mauro attached to the basilica.
Gambetti; and Fr Enzo Fortunato The next day, the feast day of
of the Franciscan Friary. St Francis, the encyclical was
About 20 friars and a few released to the public. In his
women Religious were present at Angelus address he said the coro-
the Mass in the crypt of the thir- navirus pandemic had proved that
teenth-century basilica, which the “magic theories” of market
houses St Francis’ remains. capitalism have failed and that
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope the world needs a new type of pol-
Vivian Waller, lawyer for the pros-
ecution’s key witness, one of the
former choirboys whose testimony
led a jury to initially convict Pell
in 2018, rejected any suggestion
that her client had been bribed.
“My client denies any knowl-
edge or receipt of any payments,”
Corriere della Sera quoted a Ms Waller said. “He won’t be com-
dossier of leaked documents, menting further in response to
including wire transfers linked to these allegations.”
Cardinal Becciu. Cardinal Pell’s barrister, Robert
Cardinal Pell, brought in by Richter QC, has called for an inter-
Pope Francis to restore account- national investigation into the
ability and transparency to the reports. Mr Richter told The
Vatican’s finances, was first con- Australian newspaper the allega-
victed but then cleared by tions were serious and should be
Australia’s High Court of allega- investigated by authorities with
tions he molested two choirboys the capacity to track money.
in St Patrick’s Cathedral in the “These are serious allegations
Victorian capital, Melbourne, soon and they need to be investigated
after his appointment as arch- properly and independently,” he
bishop in the 1990s. said. “Only then will we know
Corriere della Sera speculated where it’s gone.”
that Cardinal Becciu might have Cardinal Pell, 79, was jailed in
“bought” the testimony of Cardinal early 2019 and spent 13 months
Pell’s accuser to get him out of behind bars. In April this year he
Rome. However, on Monday, was released from prison and had
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
itics that promotes dialogue and
solidarity and rejects war.
He also made his first public
comments about Vatican financial
scandals following the dismissal
of Cardinal Angelo Becciu over
claims of embezzlement (see
below). He told the faithful in St
Peter’s Square: “It is awful to see
when people who have authority
in the Church seek their own inter-
ests.” He implicitly referred to the
mismanagement of money when
he reflected on the Gospel parable
of the bad tenants, who kill the
landowner’s servants and his son
when they come to collect his dues.
Francis explained: “In any age,
those who have authority, any
authority, also in the Church …
may be tempted to work in their
own interests instead of those of
God. And Jesus says that true
authority is … in serving, not
exploiting, others.”
St Francis, Il Poverello, gave up
a wealthy, dissolute life for one of
poverty and service to the poor.
his convictions quashed after an
appeal to the High Court.
The latest Italian media claims
of conspiracy coincide with
Cardinal Pell’s return to the
Vatican for the first time since he
took leave from his post as head
of the powerful Secretariat for the
Economy to return to Australia
to face the criminal charges.
The rivalry between Cardinal
Pell and Cardinal Becciu dates
back to at least 2016 when the
Australian, in his then role as the
Vatican’s treasurer, ordered an
audit of the Holy See’s finances.
Last month, Cardinal Becciu
was removed from his position at
the Vatican’s office responsible for
recognising saints. He and other
Vatican officials are being inves-
tigated over alleged involvement
in a financial scandal.
Victoria Police says it has not
received a complaint about the
money transfers reported in the
Italian papers and Cardinal Becciu
has denied any wrongdoing.
27_Tablet10Oct20 CiW.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 18:55 Page 26

NEWS
T H E C H U RC H I N T H E WO R L D

UNITED STATES / ‘Don’t be afraid of Covid,’ says Trump as outbreak hits White House BELARUS

Coronavirus infections disrupt Church rejects

claims of
presidential campaign Western
interference
PHOTO: PA/SIPA USA, KEN CEDENO
MICHAEL SEAN WINTERS professor of law at Notre Dame. A CATHOLIC bishop in Belarus has
Eighteen faculty of the school who rejected claims by Russian
THE US presidential campaign, as attended the event were awaiting government and Orthodox officials
well as the nomination of Judge test results as well, and concerns that his Church is being used by
Amy Coney Barrett, were thrown were raised that they had violated opposition groups and Western
into disarray after President university anti-Covid policies. Fr intelligence to fuel religious
Donald Trump was diagnosed Jenkins issued an apology for his conflicts and bring down the
with Covid-19 and hospitalised “error in judgement” but the apol- regime of President Alexander
on Friday last week before return- ogy did not forestall a petition Lukashenko, writes Jonathan
ing to the White House on drive calling for his resignation. Luxmoore.
Monday. Despite the fact that three “Our priests do not receive
First Lady Melania Trump also President Trump returns to the Republican senators – Senator instructions from anyone, least of all
tested positive but remained at White House Ron Johnson, who did not attend of a political nature,” said Bishop
the White House to recuperate. the ceremony for Barrett, is the Yury Kasabutsky, a Minsk-Mogilev
President Trump left the Walter ing two US Senators, Mike Lee of third – have tested positive for the auxiliary and vicar-general standing
Reed National Military Medical Utah and Thom Tillis of North coronavirus and must self-quar- in for the exiled Archbishop Tadeusz
Center early on Monday evening Carolina, tested positive for the antine, the chairman of the Kondrusiewicz.
to continue recovering at the virus. Video of the event showed Judiciary Committee, Senator The bishop was reacting to
White House after tweeting: that most of those attending were Lindsey Graham, announced he claims by Russia’s Foreign
“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t not wearing masks and no social was planning to continue with Intelligence Service director, Sergei
let it dominate your life.” distancing measures were in place. plans to begin hearings on Judge Naryshkin, who accused the United
Several others who attended Fr John Jenkins CSC, president Barrett’s nomination next week.  States of using the minority Catholic
the White House ceremony at of the University of Notre Dame, Archbishop José Gomez, pres- Church to undermine the
which the president announced also announced he had tested pos- ident of the bishops’ conference, Belarusian state.
his nomination of Judge Barrett itive after attending the event. called for prayers for Trump and “Extremist opponents of the
to the US Supreme Court, includ- Judge Barrett was a long-time for all those afflicted by Covid-19. current Belarusian authorities, now
hiding abroad, are hatching a high-
profile provocation plan, in which
an authoritative Catholic priest will
FRANCE The book has shaken the image be arrested, injured or killed,” Mr
of the infirm woman who Naryshkin said. “They calculate this
Venerable mystic was a attracted more than 100,000
Catholic visitors during her life,
will raise anti-government
sentiments among Catholics and
fraud, Carmelite argues including leading clerics and the-
ologians who came to consult her.
spur them into more active
involvement in street protests.” 
After Fr De Meester died in The controversy erupted amid
A NEW BOOK about the late late Belgian Carmelite Fr Conrad December 2019, his superior continuing protests against police
French mystic Marthe Robin, De Meester, began as a study of found the 400-page manuscript brutality since Belarus’ disputed 9
declared venerable in 2014 by the her writings to support the cause in his drawer and a 2012 contract August election, in which President
Vatican, accuses her of plagiaris- for her beatification. Robin died with a Dominican publisher that Lukashenko, in power since 1994,
ing  her spiritual writings and in 1981 aged 78.  had brought out several of his ear- was declared the winner with more
falsely claiming she survived for But Fr De Meester, a recognised lier books on saints. than 80 per cent of votes.
50 years on a diet solely of conse- specialist in Carmelite spirituality, The revelations also cast new
crated hosts, writes Tom found that Robin, a bedridden doubts about the recluse who n EUROPEAN UNION: Spurred
Heneghan. stigmatic who said she had visions inspired founders of several new by the coronavirus pandemic, the
The book, La fraude mystique of Christ and the Virgin Mary, had religious movements in France, world is going through a “huge
de Marthe Robin (“The Mystical taken passages from several well- some of whom have been posthu- epochal transformation”,
Fraud of Marthe Robin”), by the known mystic writers.  mously accused of sexual abuse the president of the EU bishops’
in their communities.  commission, Cardinal Jean-Claude
n Seven French women who met the papal ambassador in Paris to discuss Among them were Fr Thomas Hollerich, claimed in an interview
their applications for male-only ecclesial roles have said he received them Philippe, spiritual  guide  to Jean for KNA on Monday, writes Christa
cordially but avoided fully addressing the issue of women in the Church, Vanier, founder of L’Arche, his Pongratz-Lippitt. Such change is also
writes Tom Heneghan.  brother Fr Marie-Dominique reflected in the Catholic Church.
Paris nuncio Archbishop Celestino Migliore met each woman separately Philippe,  founder of the Cardinal Hollerich said the
to discuss their campaign to be made bishops, priests, deacons or lay Community of Saint John, and Church was exceedingly polarised
preachers, and assured them he would relay their arguments to the Vatican. the disgraced priest Georges Finet, at the moment. He said increasingly
Speaking after the series of one-hour meetings was over, the women in the the spiritual director with whom radical positions could be found on
group, “Toutes Apôtres” (All Apostles), welcomed the opportunity to Robin founded the Foyer de the internet, with bishops
present their arguments and said Archbishop Migliore was a gracious and Charité retreat centre in her home often openly contradicting one
careful listener. The women submitted their applications for the various town of Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, another and ordinary Catholics
men-only posts to the Paris nunciature in July. south of Lyon. denying each other’s Catholicity.

For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk 10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 27
28_Tablet10Oct20 CiW View.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 19:14 Page 27
POLAND
St John Paul II
academics
in row over
LGBT teaching
A FORMER student of St John Paul II
has resigned from the country’s main
Catholic university after it reprimanded a
fellow professor for criticising the Polish
Church’s hard-line position on LGBT
rights, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.
“I cannot continue co-operating with
an academy whose directors treat their
own professor so hurtfully, especially one
who has the courage, for ethical reasons I
share, to speak out on issues of such
moral significance”, said Professor
Andrzej Szostek, a Marian order priest
who studied with the future pope at the
Catholic University of Lublin, serving as
its rector in 1998-2004.
The 74-year-old philosopher was
reacting to the Catholic university’s
reprimand of a fellow-priest and ethics
professor, Alfred Wierzbicki, for publicly
questioning a recent bishops’ conference
statement on LBGT issues.
In a resignation letter, he said the
university had ignored messages of
support for Fr Wierzbicki, a former head
of the university’s prestigious John Paul
II Institute, from a dozen fellow
professors and 700 other Catholic
signatories.
MONTENEGRO
Bishops thank
Serbian voters
SERBIAN Orthodox bishops have
thanked voters for helping block
legislation to reduce their lands and
properties in Montenegro, as efforts
continue to maintain the Church’s
predominance in the former Yugoslavia,
writes Jonathan Luxmoore.
“We owe citizens of Montenegro
thanks for hearing our church’s cry,” the
bishops said in a statement published as
a new three-party coalition under
Zdravko Krivokapic, a technology
professor, attempted to secure power in
the Adriatic country, following the late
August election defeat of President Milo
Djukanovic’s pro-Western government.
The changeover is expected to lead to
the shelving of a law requiring the
handover of assets acquired by the
Church after Montenegro’s incorporation
into Yugoslavia in the 1920s.
28 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
VIEW FROM
ASSISI
Christopher Lamb
P
OPE Francis’ trip to Assisi last
Saturday to sign his new encyclical,
Fratelli Tutti, was his first outside
Rome since the onset of the coron-
avirus pandemic. The visit was a welcome
change of scene for Francis, who has hardly
left the Vatican since the lockdown was
imposed in March. It also offered him a chance
to escape the financial scandals that erupted
again in Rome this week, and to reconnect
with the heart of his pontificate.
Assisi is this papacy’s spiritual home, with
Jorge Mario Bergoglio the first pope to call
himself after St Francis, who was born in the
Umbrian hill town. In 2013, soon after his
election, the Pope travelled to Assisi on the
saint’s feast day, 4 October, following in the
footsteps of 18 of his predecessors. None of
them, however, had visited the room in the
bishop’s residence in Assisi where St Francis
had stripped off all his clothes and declared
before the bishop and his father, a wealthy
cloth merchant, “From now on, I will no longer
say ‘Father Pietro Bernardone’, but ‘Our Father
who art in heaven’.”
When he visited that room almost eight
years ago, the Pope was deeply touched by
the famous story of St Francis’ renunciation,
and later wrote to the Archbishop of Assisi,
Domenico Sorrentino, saying: “I relived what
Francis had lived with that prophetic gesture.”
Speaking to America, the Jesuit publication,
Archbishop Sorrentino says the Pope “con-
siders this icon very important for our day,
for the Church of our time”.
For Francis, it is only through a stripping
away, and even undergoing a painful purifi-
cation, that growth in the Church can take
place. Perhaps the recent scandals in the
Vatican are part of that process. I thought
about this as I watched the Pope arrive in a
wet and grey Assisi on 3 October. There was
none of the pomp and ceremony of a tradi-
tional papal visit. Francis arrived in his blue
Volkswagen, and waved at a small crowd gath-
ered at the entrance to the lower basilica. He
then celebrated a simple Mass, without deliv-
ering a homily, in the small chapel at the Tomb
of St Francis. In this pontificate, it is the
stripped-down simplicity of Assisi that is seen
as the pointer to the future for the Church,
and not the baroque splendour, elaborate rites
and unwieldy bureaucracy of Rome.
In the middle of the earthquakes and fires
of scandal, the Pope still trusts in the gentle
breeze of the Gospel that found its way into
the Umbrian hills 800 years ago, and inspired
the young Francis to “rebuild my Church”.
Now a prophetic Pope called Francis is trying
to do the same and, despite the difficulties,
has laid the foundations, and is starting with
the brickwork.
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
Just as the papal VW arrived, the drizzle
stopped and the sun peeked through the
gloom. It felt like a sign to stay hopeful.
T
HE AFTERSHOCKS felt in Rome fol-
lowing the earthquake of Cardinal
Angelo Becciu’s dismissal are still
being felt. The Pope has not given
any reasons for why he sacked one of the
Curia’s most powerful figures, although
removing Becciu’s cardinal privileges means
he can be prosecuted. It’s assumed the cardinal
will be called to account for his oversight of
the Vatican’s opaque London property deals,
but his dismissal also follows the disclosure
that he had financially favoured members of
his family. At the moment, the London prop-
erty investigation is distinct from the latter.
Sources close to Francis say he would not
have removed Becciu without being presented
with solid evidence of improper behaviour,
and that it only happened after the magis-
trates’ findings had been scrutinised. Becciu
also stands accused of being behind the release
to the Italian media of damaging information
about senior officials, including secretary of
state Cardinal Pietro Parolin. Could this too
be part of the reason he lost the Pope’s trust?
Becciu denies any wrongdoing.
The return to Rome of former Vatican trea-
surer Cardinal George Pell – whose conviction
for child sexual abuse was overturned by the
Australian High Court – has only added to
the tension, given Becciu’s success in foiling
Pell’s strategy to clean up the Holy See’s
finances. Sources say Pell had been looking
for a role in the Curia, but that this has –  so
far – been refused. No one doubts Pell’s abil-
ities and he retains influential supporters in
Rome, but others are wary of the damage his
shooting-from-the-hip style can cause. Those
who know him say expecting George Pell to
stay quiet is like telling the sun not to shine.
A
NNA ROWLANDS was among the
panel that presented Fratelli Tutti,
seated next to Cardinal Parolin, the
Secretary of State. Dr Rowlands,
professor of Catholic social thought and prac-
tice at Durham University, has collaborated
with the Holy See’s dicastery for integral
human development, and was asked some
weeks ago if she would help present the text
to the world. In a nod to the debate over the
encyclical’s title she opened her remarks by
greeting her fellow “sisters and brothers”.
The panellists met the Pope in the Casa
Santa Marta, and during her conversation
with him, Dr Rowlands told Francis she was
a Manchester United fan. She told me the
Pope replied: “You must be a woman with a
sense of humour.”
29_Tablet10Oct20 Home Briefing.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 14:45 Page 28

NEWS BRIEFING
F R O M B R I TA I N A N D I R E L A N D

Places of worship are exempt Leicestershire, Erik Varden,
from proposals for a new “traffic was installed as Bishop-Prelate
light” system of tiered Covid of the Catholic Territorial
restrictions. A leaked Prelature of Trondheim in
document, seen by The Norway last weekend. The
Guardian, outlines three tiers of Cistercian monk, who was born
lockdown. England is currently in Norway, said during his
at alert level one, where social installation Mass that he carries
gatherings are restricted. At the community “firmly in my
level two, household mixing will heart”.
be prohibited, and at level three,
hospitality and leisure facilities Covid survey appeal
will close. University College London has
PHOTO: ST JOHN’S CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL, PORTSMOUTH appealed for religious people to
take part in a study into the
impact of Covid-19 on worship,
including whether the virus is
spread during hymn singing.
Some participants will be asked
to sing, chant or hum as part of
an aerosol droplet test.
Information is available at:
www.confess-study.co.uk
A confidential and independent
telephone support service, Safe
Spaces, has been launched to
support those who have suffered
A mosaic (pictured) dedicated abuse within either the Catholic
to St Jerome was unveiled last Church or the Church of
weekend as part of celebrations England. The Churches are
for the Year of the God Who funding the service, which is run
Speaks. Portsmouth-based by the charity Victim Support.
artist Pete Codling was The number is 0300 303 1056.
commissioned by the Bible
Society and the Church in The Baptist Union of Great
England and Wales to mark the Britain, the Church of Scotland,
Vulgate’s translator, who died and the Methodist and United
1,600 years ago. Pope Francis Reformed Churches have united
marked the occasion with an with Church Action on
Apostolic Exhortation, Poverty to urge the
Scripturae Sacrae affectus. Government to create a Jubilee
Fund to provide grants for the
The former Abbot of Mt St UK’s poorest families. The £5-
Bernard Abbey in billion scheme would target
debts accrued during lockdown
to help prevent people from
losing their homes.
A stone commemorating the
first recorded black resident in
Liverpool was unveiled last
weekend more than 300 years
after his death. Abell was buried
at Our Lady and St Nicholas’
Church of England parish near
Liverpool’s Pierhead on 1
October 1717. The ceremony
took place at the church on 3
October to coincide with the
start of Black History Month.
Fr Slawomir Witon (pictured),
has been appointed as the new
Administrator of Westminster
Cathedral. A former Sub-
Administrator, he will take up
the role on 1 November,
succeeding Canon Christopher
Tuckwell, who died in June.
Fr Witon has served as parish
priest at Our Lady of Mount
Carmel and St George, Enfield
since 2011, where he also held
the post of Dean of Enfield from
2012 to 2018.
Bishops in Ireland expressed
grief over the 6,666 abortions
carried out in the Republic of
Ireland in 2019 as well as the
200,000 abortions in Great
Britain, which they said
included a significant number
from the island of Ireland. In a
statement for Sunday’s Day for
Life, the Irish hierarchy said it
sought a change of minds and
hearts about the dignity of the
child in the womb.
Christians across Scotland
joined in prayer last Sunday in
response to the pandemic.
Fourteen church leaders,
including Archbishop Leo
Cushley of St Andrews and
Edinburgh, signed a letter
calling for the faithful to
recognise that society was
undergoing a moment of “real
significance that will mark out
its future shape and course”.
Bus pass ‘discrimination’ claim
A group of Catholic parents in
Greater Manchester claim a
decision to refuse their children
free school-bus passes is
“discrimination” against their
faith. Stockport council says it
has withdrawn free bus passes
for the children as they live in
Edgeley but attend St James
Catholic High School in Cheadle
Hulme. The cash-strapped
council says they are not eligible
for free bus passes as there is an
alternative school within three
miles’ walking distance.
Compiled by Liz Dodd.

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30_Tablet10Oct20 News.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 17:36 Page 30
PERSON IN
THE NEWS
FRATELLI TUTTI / Good Samaritan is central to text
Leaders welcome
encyclical’s call
to solidarity
LIZ DODD, RUTH GLEDHILL
and SARAH MAC DONALD
THE CHURCH in Britain and
Ireland has welcomed Pope
Francis’ new encyclical, Fratelli
Tutti, and its call to solidarity and
social friendship, with head of
Cafod Christine Allen describing
it as putting forward the unflinch-
ing argument that “politics is
failing the poor”.
In England and Wales Bishop
Richard Moth, the lead bishop on
Fratelli Tutti, described it as a
“new world view” that advocates
for listening and dialogue to
achieve the common good.
In an interview with The Tablet
Bishop Moth noted that the para-
ble of the Good Samaritan was
central to the text, which chal-
lenges individuals and
governments to treat other
nations and peoples with the
same compassion the Samaritan
showed his wounded neighbour.
“This calls us to a new world
Concerns raised over
Silverstream Priory
A VISITATION carried out at the
Silverstream Benedictine priory
in Co. Meath has warned the com-
munity that the visitors were “very
concerned” about its financial sit-
uation and the economic viability
Bible Translation that excludes Women
You will be aware of the Bishops’ decision to use
the translation from the English Standard edition
of the Bible for the forthcoming Liturgy. This is a
divisive choice since the language is NOT INCLUSIVE.
If you wish to express your disapproval
go to the following link
https://www.change.org/watchyourlanguage
30 | THE TABLET | 10 OCTOBER 2020
NEWS
F R O M B R I TA I N A N D I R E L A N D
Christine Allen, director of Cafod, on Fratelli Tutti: “Pope Francis is unflinching in his message:
politics is failing the poor and it is shameful that people are plunged further into poverty.” (See below)
Theologian Tina Beattie
view. If I may take the example of
the refugee, and the Holy Father
recognises the situation of the
refugee a number of times in the
document, the temptation is there
to ask: ‘Where have you come
from? Why have you come here?’
The Holy Father asks us to look
deeper and say, you are a brother,
a sister, that dignity is yours
because you are a human being.
The only valid response will be
that of welcome,” he said.
“I’m sure that many people will
pick up on the Holy Father’s words
of the monastery, writes Sarah
Mac Donald.
The Silverstream community,
which promotes traditional
Catholicism and the Latin liturgy,
was founded in 2012 by American
monk Dom Mark Daniel Kirby.
Before the visitation it had a com-
munity of 15 monks.
The visitation was ordered by
Bishop Thomas Deenihan of
Meath and conducted by Abbot
Brendan Coffey OSB of Glenstal
Abbey, Abbot Richard Purcell of
Mount Melleray Abbey and Mgr
Gearóid Dullea of the diocese of
about the death penalty and about
war. He recognises the possibility
of the use of arms for defence but
warns of the broadening of the
principle of defence. His ques-
tioning of the applicability of the
Just War tradition in our modern
times calls us to think in new ways,
calling the world to the often dif-
ficult and slow path of listening,
dialogue and the development of
all peoples for the common good.”
The director of Pax Christi,
Theresa Alessandro, welcomed
the Pope’s reading of “the signs of
the times”.
“We deeply appreciate his con-
tinuing affirmation of the human
dignity of all and our responsibility
as Christians to be artisans of
peace,” she said. “We are encour-
aged that in the ‘Injustice of war’
section, Pope Francis continues
to find Just War theory wanting
in the modern world.”
Cafod’s Christine Allen said the
encyclical warned against a return
to politics “as normal” after the
pandemic. “This encyclical is a
radical blueprint for a post-coro-
navirus world. Now is the time to
change the framework of our eco-
nomic systems, through debt relief
for the poorest countries, the
reduction of inequality, and invest-
ment in local, green sustainable
economic development.”
The leader of the Irish Church
called the encyclical a “timely and
provocative” call to solidarity with
all of humanity. “Perhaps the real
Cork and Ross, who is a former
secretary to the Irish bishops.
They reported that in 2016-19,
the community spent more than
€2.5m (£2.27m) in purchasing
the property and renovating it,
even though the monastery’s
income in 2019 dropped by 50
per cent of what it was in each of
the three previous years. Expenses
have been rising by 20 per cent
each year over the last four years.
In 2019 more than 80 per cent
of the monastery’s income came
from donations. In previous years,
it was as high as 95 per cent.
The visitation report warned
the community that the civil and
legal structure of Silverstream
Priory needs attention to make it
compliant with civil law, the
Revenue Commissioners, the
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
social distancing is the way that
the great majority of people in the
world can get on with their lives
seemingly oblivious or ‘anaes-
thetised’ to the tremendous
suffering, inequality and neglect
of the poor and the most vulner-
able among us,” the Primate of All
Ireland, Archbishop of Armagh
Eamon Martin, said.
Catholic women continued to
express concern over the encycli-
cal’s use of exclusive language,
including its title, which the
Bishops’ Conference of England
and Wales said could be translated
as, “‘All Brothers’, ‘Brethren all’ or
‘Brothers and sisters all’”. No
women are cited in the encyclical,
which describes itself as present-
ing “a new vision of fraternity”.
Theologian Tina Beattie noted:
“Women might struggle to believe
we’re part of a fraternity that
excludes us in so many ways. Not
a single woman quoted. Nothing
to suggest deep dialogue with
women thinkers.”
Papal biographer and journalist
Austen Ivereigh said on Twitter
that those who resent that the
Pope had “ignored” or “over-
looked” particular groups “miss
its point”.
“Fascinating how all the faux
indignation about Fratelli Tutti’s
supposed gender exclusivity has
vanished in the hours since its
publication. People can see for
themselves how radically inclusive
it is,” wrote Mr Ivereigh.
Charity Governance Code and
data protection legislation.
Other concerns focus on the
monastery’s governance and fail-
ure to present annual accounts to
Silverstream’s chapter for
approval, or to present regular
reports to the chapter on the state
of each area of the monastery’s
activities.
The Tablet understands that the
canonical visitation remains open
and that police in Ireland are
investigating concerns relating to
the monastery’s finances.
A spokesman for the Irish bish-
ops said that Dom Kirby has
returned to Silverstream Priory
“as an ordinary member of the
community, and is refraining from
public ministry until the Garda
investigation is complete”.
31_Tablet10Oct20 News.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 19:06 Page 31

HERITAGE / Pilot schemes could lead to government fund for repairs

Churches put faith in grants

to tackle Covid shortfalls
ELENA CURTI Ms Andreae is hoping that the independent
evaluation of the Taylor Review Pilot published

T
HERE ARE hopes that the govern-
ment will create a national fund for
repairs to listed places of worship fol-
lowing the success of pilot schemes
in Greater Manchester and Suffolk. Historic
Catholic churches were among 136 buildings
that received grants totalling £1m for minor
repairs during the Taylor Review Pilot.
The schemes were funded by the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and
Sport, and run by Historic England between
September 2018 and March 2020. As well as
awarding grants, the two teams conducted
site visits and arranged workshops to advise
volunteers about maintenance, encouraging
a “stitch in time” approach to repairs. The
pilot was one of the recommendations in the
report by Bernard Taylor on the funding and
sustainability of Church of England churches
and cathedrals published in December 2017.
“The Taylor pilots were a very important
piece of work because it is the first time that
the government has provided specific funds
for issues around the protection of historic
places of worship to be explored,” said Sophie
Andreae, vice chair of the patrimony com-
mittee of the Bishops’ Conference of England
and Wales.
on Saturday will support the case for public
funding to be made available for capital works
on listed churches. The Covid-19 pandemic
has reduced the income of Catholic churches
by half to three quarters while many have
accumulated a huge backlog of urgent repairs.
The Catholic Church and the Church of
England have applied for a share of a £34m
fund announced by the government last
August for the restoration of Grade I and
Grade II* listed buildings in England. The
Grants for Programmes of Works has been
heavily oversubscribed and the Churches are
waiting to hear whether their applications
have been successful.
Historic England’s Diana Evans said the
entire sector is hoping they will be successful.
“No matter how well you look after your place
of worship, stonework crumbles, roofs fail,”
she said. “Many of these buildings have been
working very hard for over a century so,
inevitably, these things happen. To be able to
AN ONLINE EVENT
access some help would be very encouraging
for the people looking after them.”
Ms Evans praised the response of Catholic
churches to the Taylor pilots. She cited the
example of Sacred Heart, Southwold, Suffolk,
which received £10,000 to repair the sacristy
roof. Parishioners then forged a partnership
with five other local churches to support each
other with maintenance.
“The key thing we’ve learned is we want
people to feel proud of what they can achieve,”
she said. “If four or five of them get together
with a flask of tea and clear drains on a
November afternoon, that is doing your build-
ing an enormous amount of good and
prepares it for the winter.”

Ampleforth outlines Scripture: A uniting giift?

vision for the future sponsored by The Tablet and Reform
m

Confirmed speakers:
AMPLEFORTH College is to increase the num-
ber of girls on its roll to a half as part of a
series of changes it hopes will make the school
more inclusive and diverse, writes Liz Dodd.
The plans, described in a document released
this week, also include the setting up of a
small global network of Ampleforth schools,
and an increase in bursary support. Dr Andrew Davies Janet Scott Fr He
enry Wansborough
The college has also addressed the safe-
guarding issues that were raised by the WEDNESDA
AY
Y 14 OCTOBER 2020 | 6.00 - 7.30P
PM BST
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s
(IICSA) 2017 investigation into the abuse that v Eventbrite: SfESscriptureuniting.eventbrite.co.uk

Please book for this event via
took place at the school. The college now has All the details with links can be found on the Churches To ogether
oget e in England
ga d
a safeguarding charter. website: XXXDUFPSHVL4G&4TDSJQUVSFVOJUJOH
“We are building an intuitive culture of This discussion will takee place through Zoom. You will need to download
safeguarding,” reads the document, which the Zoom app onto
o your device to be able to join the call.
also reveals that the college, which has been Full details of how to join the call will be sent in the days before the event.
constitutionally separate from the monastery
for a few years, will be financially independent
from it by September 2021.
The changes came after the 2019 appoint-
ment of new headmaster Robin Dyer,
following a highly critical Independent Schools
Inspectorate report on safeguarding, leader-
ship, behaviour, bullying and complaints.

For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk 10 OCTOBER 2020 | THE TABLET | 31
32_Tablet10Oct2020 Back Vineyard.qxp_Tablet features spread 06/10/2020 14:44 Page 32

F ROM T H E V I N EYA R D

Tippling point
N. O’ PH I L E

C
OVID’S IMPACT on the economy slashed this year by two thirds. And
has been dramatic, but for some Brexit is still to come, with problems
industries in particular, it is expected at the ports and endless queues
catastrophic, comparable in at the borders.
depth and scale to the Great Depression. The long-term effects of the pandemic
The near collapse of the travel and leisure on both supply lines and patterns of wine
industry has already had a dire effect on consumption are yet to unfold. No one
the wine market. Not only have knows the shape of the global slump: will
restaurant sales dipped disastrously, but it be a V-shaped recession followed by a
the purchasing power of collectors and rapid rebound? Or a W – a double-dip
investors has also suffered. Many of the recession caused by a second outbreak?
lucrative landmark events in the wine The long-term effects of What is dismally certain is that the longer
trade calendar have been postponed or and deeper the recession, the more
cancelled. Perhaps most significantly,
the pandemic on supply damaging to the wine market, affecting
Bordeaux’s annual en primeur tasting lines and patterns of adversely both quality and cost. The long,
week, an event that sets the benchmark multi-link chain leading from vine to
for the year’s sales, was effectively wiped
wine consumption are wine on our tables is easily dislocated.
out. But many of the world’s major wine yet to unfold The impossible ideal would be an
competitions and fairs, such as the inverse ratio between quality and cost –
Decanter World Wine Awards in London, in one direction only, of course. Aldi’s
ProWein in Düsseldorf and Vinitaly in vintage, 2019 has turned out to be less Animus Portuguese Douro,
Verona, have also disappeared. than distinguished. Distil or destroy seem recommended in this column long before
Now, as harvest time is upon them, wine the only viable alternatives. Covid, was a perfect example of
producers in the northern hemisphere The closure of restaurants and bars in affordable, everyday easy-drinking wine.
face the same cruel Covid-induced Mediterranean countries, where they are Happily, it still is precisely that, though it
dilemma that was experienced by their far more deeply embedded in the social has recently risen in price from £4.99 to
colleagues in the southern hemisphere fabric, has been felt even more acutely £5.29. But even more remarkable for
between February and April, just as the than pub closures in Britain. But the value is the supermarket’s newly
pandemic burst upon the world. In order economies of these countries are also introduced Portuguese blend, also by
to secure space for this year’s vintage, being more immediately affected, due to Animus, priced at a painless £3.99.
many producers are finding themselves a severe slide in wine exports. Italy, for Along with its Portuguese Dão (£5.99),
forced to reduce vast amounts of wine to instance, the world’s biggest exporter of Aldi’s range of Portuguese reds affords
alcohol for onward sales of sanitising wine by volume and second only to just the kind of recession-proof
products. A costly alternative is to build France by value, has seen a disastrous reassurance we wine-bibbers need.
storage space, but this is a precarious decline. In 2018 it produced 7.56 billion
investment in an unstable situation. And bottles, of which 37 per cent was N.O’Phile is The Tablet’s wine writer. He is
anyway, unlike this year’s promising exported. It’s feared that that will be also a senior Catholic priest.

Glimpses of Eden
JONAT H A N T UL LO C H

IT’S THAT time of year again. Just when V-shape of a goose skein is what enables
the summer songbirds have all flown south, these heavy birds to fly the great distances
and the world feels empty and silent of their migration. It conserves the energy
without them, the winter guests have of the flock. Each goose flies slightly higher
started to fly in from the north. Our first than the bird in front, reducing wind
visitors arrived this week. We were in turbulence. The birds take it in turns to
the house when we heard what sounded lead, dropping back when they are tired.
like a pack of excited puppies scampering The flock passed directly over our house,
past. Thrusting open the window, we and their great yapping honks were as loud
looked up to see a skein of geese passing Having nested on cliffs in Iceland and as the billowing dawn choruses earlier in
high overhead. The shifting chevrons of Greenland, the pink-foots were now fleeing the year. Slowly the skein dissolved, and
their huge flock seemed to fill the sky – the Arctic frosts, seeking asylum in our silence returned. But the world no longer
pink-footed geese. warm, Gulf Stream lands. The classic felt empty. Who’ll be the next to arrive?

Volume 274 // No. 9372 // ISSN: 0039 8837

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