18 March 2017d.

qxp_Cover 3/14/17 6:45 PM Page 1

18 MARCH 2017 £3
www.thetablet.co.uk | Est. 1840 THE

TABLET
Once a
Catholic
Far from wanting to split
Christianity, Peter Stanford
argues, Martin Luther was
reluctant to leave the
Church of his birth

Lorna Donlon interviews Mary McAleese

Stephen Bates profiles Justin Welby
PLUS: ADRIAN CHILES • LAURA GASCOIGNE • THEODORA HAWKSLEY • ALEXANDRA WALSHAM
02 Tablet 18 Mar 17 Leaders.qxp_Tablet features spread 3/14/17 7:10 PM Page 2
THE TABLET
P
LEAVING THE arliament has cleared the path for Britain to
EUROPEAN UNION leave the European Union, and the opening
of negotiations is imminent. With the
DIVIDED consequential announcement of another
referendum on Scottish independence, this moment
BRITAIN may turn out to be the tipping point in the break-up
not only of the European Union but of the United
AND THE Kingdom. The threat to both is similar – widespread
disillusionment and disappointment that institutions
FAILURE created for the betterment of ordinary life have failed
to deliver, and are now seen more as part of the
OF POLICY problem rather than its solution.
That suggests a fundamental failure of domestic
politics, not just in Britain and Europe but in many
cases elsewhere, including the United States. There is
a logic to this. Globalisation of the world economy has
seen manufacturing shipped out to countries where
labour and raw materials are cheaper and industry
more productive, but has also seen cheaper labour
drawn magnetically from the poorer parts of the world
to the better-off parts.
In both cases members of the indigenous working
class have felt, with some justice, that they have had a
raw deal. Society does not seem organised to serve their
interests, but the interests of anonymous corporations
and their equally anonymous international
shareholders. Major decisions affecting people’s lives
seem to be made not by politicians who are answerable
to them, but by market forces answerable to nobody.
Labour is seen merely as a commodity to be bought and
sold; commodities are disposable.
Politicians, by and large, do not recognise this as a
problem: their lazy default position is that this is just
the way the world is. The core truth about Brexit,
therefore, is that it is unlikely to achieve the things
that the people who voted for it wished for. If the
wave of populism now sweeping the political
world has a slogan, it is the grass-roots demand to
T
FOUR YEARS he famous smile on the face of Pope Francis
OF FRANCIS may become even broader when he reads
the fulsome tribute to his leadership from
PLENTY Cardinal Vincent Nichols on the fourth
anniversary of his election, thanking him for “the
TO SMILE steadfast way you uphold the teachings of Christ and
the Church”. The papal smile will be bigger still when
ABOUT the latest issue of America magazine reaches the
Vatican, with its interview with Cardinal Nichols in
which he spells out his enthusiasm for the present
papacy in more detail. With opposition to him
causing so much fuss in the media, Pope Francis
might be thinking, the more eminent friends I have
the better.
But he is not the first “smiling pope”. That title was
bestowed by the international media on John Paul I
almost as soon as he first appeared in public in 1978.
The warmth and informality of his manner was
widely interpreted as heralding a new and entirely
welcome papal style, which tragically did not last
long. Nor is Francis the first pope with an instinctive
understanding of how to use the media as a key part
of his ministry. Pope St John Paul II, though not
2 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
THE INTERNATIONAL
CATHOLIC WEEKLY
FOUNDED IN 1840
“take back control”. But that is unlikely to happen.
Governing and commercial elites will still be in
place; their faith in globalised free trade will continue.
The British economy has surrendered to an addiction
to cheap migrant labour that shows no sign of abating.
Immigration levels will still be high; the three million
EU workers in Britain today will still be there
tomorrow – as justice demands they should be. More
than half the immigration level to the UK is
attributable to non-EU migration anyway, and there is
no appetite amongst policy-makers to curtail it, again
for good reasons. And the National Health Service is
as short of money as ever; there is no sign of the extra
£350 million a week for healthcare that the Leave
campaigners dishonestly promised to deliver.
So what will happen to all that unfocused
disillusionment when those who thought they were
voting for an alternative find they have been cheated?
One possibility is that Scottish Nationalists will look
for a new political and economic settlement designed
to redress people’s complaints, whether reasonable or
not. Yet the SNP wishes to retain membership of the
EU, the one institution which populist politicians
elsewhere are urging people to reject. So if they are
successful, it may provide only temporary relief to
Scottish grievances.
The better solution, albeit much harder, is to
recognise that if globalisation is to work it must work
for everyone. That will require a willingness to
transfer massive amounts of economic wealth to the
perceived losers and to the places where they live,
nationally and internationally, in order to correct the
gross and growing inequality, manifestly unjust,
that globalisation has created. Either that, or abandon
globalisation itself and embrace protectionist and
anti-immigration policies – as the United States seems
to be doing under Donald Trump. The UK and the EU
urgently need to look to the US, and heed the warning.
much of a smiler, effortlessly commanded every
platform, as befitted a man who in his time had been
a stage actor.
While Wojtyla was a disrupter, as Eastern Europe’s
Communist masters quickly discovered, Bergoglio is
by nature a reconciler. That seems to be what his
famous smile signifies. It conveys openness,
approachability, warmth and kindness, especially
towards ordinary humanity in all its varieties. It
values people for what they are. Pope Francis turns
W.H. Auden’s famous line “Those to whom evil is
done, Do evil in return” upside down. Is this not at
the heart of the Gospel? The Prodigal Son was
humbled and won over by the undeserved generosity
shown to him on his return.
In The Tablet last month Cardinal Nichols observed
that it is first of all a sense of being embraced by the
Church that can open up a pathway of conversion.
“Pope Francis is a genius at creating this sense of
belonging for those who feel they are excluded,” he
wrote. As St Francis is reported to have said, “always
preach the Gospel, and, where necessary, use words.”
Sometimes a smile is enough.
03 Tablet 18 Mar 17 Contents.qxp_Tablet features spread 3/14/17 6:28 PM Page 3

The managerial style of

11 Archbishop of Canterbury
Justin Welby

Imelda Staunton in Who’s

22 Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the
Harold Pinter Theatre, London

COLUMNS B O O K S / PA G E 1 8
CONTENTS Alexandra
18 MARCH 2017 // VOL 271 NO. 9192
Walsham
Reformation
F E AT U R E S Divided: Catholics,
Protestants and
4 / Border lands the Conversion
The Tablet Interview: Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland, on Brexit of England
and Europe’s refugee crisis / BY LORNA DONLON EAMON DUFFY
Christopher
Howse’s
Presswatch 6 / Nouwen and the wounded healer Kathy Watson
‘He had fathered a With Francis open to the possibility of the ordination of married men, could the Ashland and Vine
work of Henri Nouwen provide a new model of ministry? / BY MICHAEL W. HIGGINS JOHN BURNSIDE
boy in 1974. It’s the
sort of thing that Caroline Jackson
could happen to 8 / Once a Catholic Molly Keane:
any man’ / 7 Luther has gone down in history as the man who shattered the unity of Western A Life
Christendom, but he was reluctant to leave the Catholic Church / BY PETER STANFORD SALLY PHIPPS

10 / Lent meditation
In the third of her meditations, a novice reflects on how the Lord is ready for us
long before we are ready for him / BY THEODORA HAWKSLEY
A R T S / PA G E 2 1
11 / Just about managing Art
Four years on from his elevation to Canterbury, events suggest there may be limits Madonnas and
Clifford Longley to the effectiveness of Justin Welby’s business-like approach / BY STEPHEN BATES Miracles: The
‘There needs to be Holy Home in
a discussion about Renaissance Italy
the pastoral care LAURA GASCOIGNE
of cohabiting
relationships’ / 9 NEWS Theatre
Who’s Afraid of
24 / The Church in the World / News briefing Virginia Woolf?
25 / Agencies respond as famine threatens 20 million Rosencrantz
REGULARS 27 / View from Rome and Guildenstern
From the Archive 13 are Dead
Puzzles 13
28 / News from Britain and Ireland / News briefing MARK LAWSON
Parish Practice 14 29 / Foreign Office training in religion
Notebook 15 labelled inadequate Music
The Dream
Letters 16
of Gerontius
The Living Spirit 17 COVER ILLUSTRATION: JENNIFER WADDELL RICK JONES

18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 3

FEATURES / The Tablet Interview
MARY McALEESE
Border lands
The former Irish president shares her concerns about
Brexit and Europe’s refugee crisis with Lorna Donlon
M
ARY McALEESE, Ireland’s former
president, knows what it’s like to
flee her home, to be, as she once
described it, “a refugee on my
own island”. Growing up in the Catholic
Ardoyne area of north Belfast in the 1960s
and 1970s, she witnessed first-hand the vio-
lent sectarianism that ruptured the city,
destroying lives and families, and buttressing
hatreds and fears that had blighted Northern
Ireland for generations.
Loyalist gunmen attacked her family home
in December 1972. The house was empty at
the time, but nothing could prepare her for
what she saw on her return. The front garden
was strewn with shells from machine guns;
her sister Nora’s bedroom, in the direct line
4 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
of fire, had been so riddled with bullets it was
like a colander. “They had shot only into the
rooms with the lights on. There were bullet
marks on the dressing table and the drawers.
It was the most chilling thing,” McAleese
recalled later. The family left immediately,
never to return.
That experience of watching her strong
parents become victims of circumstances
over which they had no control, impels her
response to the current refugee crisis.
Tomorrow, in the Church of Ireland cathedral
in Waterford, she will launch “Joy Bells”, a
bell-ringing initiative that will sound a note
of solidarity to counter the intolerance and
exploitation that swirls in the volatile ether
of Europe’s reaction to refugees. Churches
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
and bell-ringers across the world have taken
up the invitation of the Dean of Waterford,
Maria Jansson, to join this communal sum-
mons to a more compassionate, human
engagement with people who have been
forced from their homes.
It is the simplicity and timelessness of
Jansson’s idea that attracts her, McAleese
explained when we met recently in Dublin:
“There’s no dogma or doctrine going to get
in the way of it because this is something that
everybody can subscribe to. It seemed to me
all the more important that it would be a
Christian initiative because so often these
days the voice of Christians, or at least an
appeal to so-called Christian culture, is used
to exclude other ethnicities, other races, and
again to breed intolerance. And that’s always
seemed to be so counter-cultural and so con-
tradictory of the Christian faith.”
THE NOTION OF being an “emigrant people”
runs through the veins of Ireland’s history
and McAleese believes this is why the country
has responded with such generosity to the
inflow of a significant number of migrants
in a relatively short period, despite the finan-
cial crash and social dislocation that followed
the intoxicating years of the Celtic Tiger.
Across Europe, there is prejudice and hos-
tility to refugees. Pope Francis was recently
asked by a young Syrian woman about the
fears some have that refugees from outside
Europe threaten the continent’s Christian
culture. How would McAleese respond to the
question? Fear, she says, when it is distilled
into hatred, “challenges the credibility of
Christianity and tests our credentials”. The
test for Christians is to respond not only when
it suits us or when it is easy, she says, but when
it is hard.
McAleese believes Pope Francis has been
the outstanding world leader on the issue,
with perhaps only the German Chancellor,
Angela Merkel, his equal. His voice has been
in sharp contrast to that of other leaders,
including some Christian leaders, who, by
equating ethnicity with religious belief, have
aroused fears and fermented hatred. “He’s
right, you know. It is about leadership – and
leaders can give the imprimatur to people
to think and speak in a particular way.”
AS IRELAND’S PRESIDENT for 14 years from
1997, McAleese forged a distinct role in Irish
public life. She was the first head of state to
be born in Northern Ireland, a fact reflected
in the chosen theme for her first
term –“Building Bridges” between divided
communities. Officially, the role of president
requires the incumbent to be politically neu-
tral; experience shows it helps if you have
political nous. McAleese and her husband,
Martin, did a great deal of unobtrusive work
building those bridges with Protestant loyalist
communities in the years after the Good
Friday Agreement of 1998 ushered in a work-
ing, if at times truculent, peace.
Now, almost 20 years later, Dublin is having
to refocus on the border with Northern Ireland
as the fallout from Brexit and the relationship
between Ireland and the United Kingdom to interpret the complexities of church-state
rebounds around the political classes. Having relations in an increasingly secular Ireland,
campaigned for a Remain vote in last year’s which is still dealing with the legacy of what
referendum, when she was living in London, McAleese says are the “formidable and
McAleese still finds it hard to believe that the unfathomable” consequences of the clerical
UK will exit the European Union. and institutional abuse of children and the
Of particular concern to her is the extent failure of the Irish bishops to convince people
to which Northern Ireland was left off the that they cared about the victims as much
political agenda in the run-up to the referen- as they cared about the reputation of the
dum. Looking back to the Good Friday Church.
Agreement, she reflects that the role of the
EU was crucial. Without it, she suggests, there IF HIS VISIT is to be a success, Pope Francis
might have been a different outcome to the must offer something different – “something
vote in support of the peace process which richer and deeper” – than repeating familiar
took place in both parts of Ireland once the statements on abortion and gay marriage,
Agreement was signed. she says. “Given that we’ve been through the
gay marriage referendum very successfully
“I’M NOT SURE, to be perfectly frank, if we and that abortion will be an issue, this is the
had known at the time that Britain was going Ireland that he’s coming to. It’s a place that’s
to pull out of the European Union and with very confident in debating issues that previ-
it bring Northern Ireland out … that people ously might have been regarded as taboo but
south of the border would have been as quick no longer are. I think the World Meeting of
to sign off on changing the Irish constitution, Families has got to be very careful about how
because it was easier to do that [as] we were he handles that because undoubtedly, post
all members of the European Union. It was the same-sex marriage referendum, it was
an easier sell and nobody thought in terms hugely endorsed by Catholics. So there’s a
of withdrawing from the EU, so now we are need for reconciliation there.”
in a very, very different situation.” Speaking very movingly about the experi-
It’s gratifying, she adds, to hear politicians ences of her son, Justin, who is gay, McAleese
in both London and Dublin saying they will campaigned for a “Yes” vote ahead of the 2015
do their best to retrieve the referendum which made
situation, but “it is retrieval Ireland the first country in the
that we’re into now, because ‘The Pope’s world to support same-sex
if we’re talking about Britain reception in marriage by popular vote. The
withdrawing from the single challenge for Pope Francis, she
European market, [and] the north would believes, is to embrace those
withdrawing from the cus- be a test of the families who are outside tra- Summer Course
toms union … we know that
credentials of the ditional Catholic structures Cambridge Perspectives on
no matter who says and definitions.
‘Everything will be alright on peace process’ The most important part of
Science and Religion
the day’, it won’t, because it the visit, she thinks, would be
has to change. And if the bor- a trip to Northern Ireland,
der hardens, I would be worried that hearts possibly to Armagh, the historical centre of
would harden too.” Christianity in Ireland, although this has yet
Just over a year ago, at an event in the to be confirmed. The Pope’s presence in the
Westminster parliament, McAleese said north – and the reception he would receive –
Anglo-Irish relations were the healthiest would “be a test of the credentials of the peace Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
they had ever been. One year and one ref- process, it will be a test of how embedded 2 - 7 July 2017
erendum later, she worries that this may parity of esteem is”.
change. The mechanisms and the infrastruc- Does science tell us all we need to know
ture that it took to create those relationships ON THE OTHER challenges facing Pope about the world? How do science and
are about to be dismantled, she cautions, Francis, the way ahead is less clear. McAleese religion interact? Come and grapple with
particularly in the context of Northern has been critical of his post-synod document a wide range of issues in the science and
Ireland, adding: “I don’t think that’s a good on the family, Amoris Laetitia, which she religion dialogue, with plenty of opportunity
place for any of us to be in.” Her hope is that describes as having come out of “a very con- for discussion.
Ireland has a “vested interest in ensuring servative synod being cajoled by a pope who
that the relationship Britain maintains with had wanted more from them”. But what is Most speakers are staff at Cambridge
the European Union is as strong as it can significant, she adds, is the very real debate University, including Prof. Sir Colin
humanly be”. about subsidiarity and the push to move power Humphreys FRS, Prof. Simon Conway
away from Rome to the local dioceses that Morris FRS, Prof. Bob White FRS, Prof.
RELATIONSHIPS. Reconciliation. Reform. Amoris Laetitia has ignited. John Wyatt and many others.
For McAleese, these are not just the words As for the position of women in the
that anchor the peace process in Ireland. Church – of which McAleese has long been
They are equally applicable to the Catholic a stringent critic of the Vatican – she welcomes
Church as Ireland prepares for Pope Francis’ the Pope’s commission for the study of the
visit for the World Meeting of Families in female diaconate, but says it’s not enough.
Dublin in October next year. A committed “Francis, so far, is a little better than his pred-
Catholic, she studied for a doctorate in canon ecessors, but we still haven’t got action.”
law at the Gregorian University in Rome Does she think women will be given greater www.faraday-institute.org
after stepping down from the presidency. responsibilities and powers under this pope? admin@faraday-institute.org
This gives her a unique position from which “The jury’s out,” she replies.

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 5
FEATURES / New models of ministry
Last week Pope Francis said he was open to the possibility of the ordination of married men. But the crisis
in the priesthood is about more than a dramatic fall in numbers. A fresh model of ministry is required
and in the life and work of Henri Nouwen we see what it might look like / By MICHAEL W. HIGGINS
Nouwen and the
wounded healer
T
HE RECENT Vatican document on
the formation of priests made the
headlines for its assertion that gay
men should not be admitted to sem-
inaries. Though it is not an especially
enlightening or forward-thinking document,
there is more to The Gift of the Priestly
Vocation than that. It reflects Pope Francis’
concern for human formation throughout the
process of training, and the need to safeguard
against the contagion of clericalism.
But the deeper questions are barely
broached: the relevance of seminary education
in itself; the limitations of a clerical culture;
the antiquated notion of priestly exception-
alism, and the general absence of women
6 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
from the formation of men for the priesthood.
Where might one look for a model of priest-
hood more suited to a time of flux, fracture
and turmoil around identity and relevance?
Jacques Loew’s worker-priest movement was
a bold attempt to re-connect with the de-
christianised working classes that emerged
in France in the 1940s. But it was eventually
doomed by papal skittishness.
PERHAPS IT’S AN idea worth resuscitating
in the Bergoglio era. The life and work of
Henri Nouwen, the most widely read Catholic
spiritual writer of the last 50 years, is another
model of a reformed presbyterate that is ripe
for discovery.
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
Nouwen, a priest of the Archdiocese of
Utrecht, saw himself simply as a pastor called
to witness to the power of God’s uncondi-
tional love through his writing, his countless
friendships, and his living qua priest. Denis
Grecco, a seminary professor who served as
Nouwen’s graduate assistant at Regis College,
Toronto, once asked him what his starting
point was: “His response was simple and
direct, ‘communion’. He went on to explain
that everything that a priest does flows from
his communion with God … I learned two
things from him that day about the spiritual
life of the priest as he understood and prac-
tised it: the centrality of the person and the
significance of relationship, and that both
ways of thinking are key to his understanding
of communion.”
NOUWEN WAS every inch the priest. From
the play-acting of his pre-teen years – cor-
ralling his siblings to serve as his devout
mini-congregation as he presided in full litur-
gical vesture – to his early years in the
seminary through to his ordination and sub-
sequent graduate studies in psychology and
theology, Nouwen never doubted his vocation.
But that sense of vocation would undergo
some profound transformations. Teaching on
both Catholic and secular university campuses
in the United States throughout the 1970s
and early 1980s, Nouwen weathered with
anguish and genuine searching the erosion
of the old securities, the assaults on authority
and the growing disinclination to affiliate
with institutions. He threw himself into the
joys and tumults of his time and place, and
embraced new situations as occasions of
growth – working in a barrio, lecturing in a
divinity school, testing the waters in a Trappist
monastery, and living in a L’Arche home as
an assistant and as a pastor – all with the
understanding that he was someone called
to be an instrument of God’s grace.

In The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward
Mobility and the Spiritual Life Nouwen
wrote that, irrespective of our particular
vocation – cloistered, lay, sacerdotal – our
common vocation was to define our spiritual
life as “a life in which we keep making con-
nections between God’s story and our own”.
But that narrative can be deeply disquieting,
sundering treasured “truths”. In a searing
self-disclosure, in Gracias: a Latin American
Journal, written shortly after touring some
Peruvian Catholic churches decorated with
gaudy and macabre devotional art, he noted
that “the nearly exclusive emphasis on the
tortured body of Christ strikes me as a per-
version of the Good News into a morbid story
that intimidates … but does not liberate …
Maybe deep in my psyche I too know more
about the deformed Jesus than about the
risen Christ.”
TO MOVE from the debilitating images of the
broken Jesus to the risen Jesus required both
a distancing from his Dutch pre-conciliar
seminary formation and an honest confronta-
tion with his own emotional and spiritual
inadequacies. It is that relentless self-honesty,
coupled with his promethean compassion,
that fuelled Nouwen’s writings. He knew in
his bones that recognising our vulnerability
is not a sign of weakness or failure. As he
wrote in Sabbatical Journey, just a few months
before his death in 1996: “I am increasingly
convinced that it is possible to live the wounds
of the past not as gaping abysses that cannot
be filled and therefore keep threatening us
but as gateways to new life.”
Nouwen did not think of priesthood as a
bastion of privilege. His liturgies were canon-
ically valid but informal; his spiritual
counselling exploratory but orthodox. He saw
himself as the “wounded healer”, not as an
ecclesiastical judge or gatekeeper. A chaste
gay priest committed to his solemn promises,
a writer who preferred humility to clerical
exhortation, and a servant of the Church who
loved his tradition and witnessed to Christ
with fidelity, Nouwen is the perfect role model
for a credible priesthood in our time. A letter
to a Dutch friend who was shortly to be
ordained encapsulates his own self-under-
standing as a priest:
“What I most want to say to you is that
living a deep and intimate relationship with
your Lord Jesus will allow you to be a source
of healing for many people as you walk
through life full of contradictions, conflicts
and violence. I also want to say to you how
important it is to be surrounded by good, car-
ing friends who will hold you close to Christ
by their affection, their care and their encour-
agement. Finally, I want you to fully trust that
when you stay close to Jesus and to those who
in the name of Jesus will embrace you with
their love, you cannot be other than a source
of life to others.”
Michael W. Higgins is Distinguished
Professor of Catholic Thought at Sacred Heart
University, Fairfield, Connecticut. His latest
book is Jean Vanier: Logician of the Heart.
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
CHRISTOPHER HOWSE’S PRESSWATCH
He had fathered a boy in
1974. It is the sort of thing that
could happen to any man
Joni Sledge, who died a
week ago aged 60, and
her sisters sang their
biggest hit for the Pope
when he visited
Philadelphia. The Daily Telegraph
obituary noted that “in 2015 footage of
them singing ‘We Are Family’ for Pope
Francis went viral when nuns in the
audience danced along”.
It’s funny how such details get nailed
to a life by the obituarist’s art. I suppose
the sisters were booked because the
theme of the gathering was the family.
The lyrics of their song go: “We are
family / I got all my sisters with me ...
Everyone can see we’re together.” But at
the time, The Philadelphia Inquirer, in
the way that newspapers have of
drawing attention to flies in ointment,
reported that only three of the four
sisters were on stage.
The missing sister, Kathy Sledge “said
she was in the audience [on] Saturday
night, but was denied clearance
backstage or anywhere near her sisters”.
Kathy had in any case left the group to
go solo in 1989, so it wasn’t as though
the audience, nuns or not, would have
been surprised by her absence.
Popes in recent decades are more
sung against than singing. Pope St
John Paul II’s name popped up in a
piece this week in the Sun online
about Katherine Jenkins, who is
singing in Carousel at the English
National Opera next month. From
humble beginnings, “the mezzo-
soprano went on to have six No. 1
albums and perform in front of the
Queen and the late Pope John Paul II”.
Other sources say that she performed
at Westminster Cathedral in 2003 in
honour of the Pope’s silver jubilee. He
was in Rome. But no doubt he’d have
looked pleased if he had heard her.
It’s not as though publicity has ever
been a stranger to acts of public
memorialisation. William Benson, the
man who put up the memorial to John
Milton in Westminster Abbey (when
the poet had been safely dead for 63
years), jumped at the chance to insert
his own accomplishments into the
lapidary inscription.
True, there was a bust of Milton by
Rysbrack, reckoned to be a good
sculptor, but the lettering beneath
celebrates Benson as “formerly
Surveyor General of the Works to his
Majesty King George the First”.
As the Abbey authorities today drily
put it: “The appointment only lasted a
year and was called ‘the most
disastrous episode in the whole history
of the royal works’.”
Benson, the rich son of an iron
merchant, also paid an Oxford don
£1,000 to improve Paradise Lost by
translating it into Latin, under the title
Paradisus Amissus. It was published in
two volumes. I have a copy at home, not
much thumbed.
News came this week of another
attempt to improve Milton’s
masterpiece, by cutting out most of it,
with luck the duller parts. In The
Sunday Times, John Carey explained
the problem. “Almost no one reads it,”
he declared, unchallengeably. His aim
in blue-pencilling 7,000 or so of the
11,500 lines was “to preserve those
passages that seem to me pre-eminent,
not only for their poetic power, but also
for their contribution to the poem’s
intellectual structure”.
Writing of his own cut-down
Essential Paradise Lost, Professor
Carey, a popular critic for The Sunday
Times for many years, made a couple of
interesting remarks about Satan. One is
that we are not to fall for Shelley’s line
that Milton’s Satan “as a moral being” is
“far superior to his God”. Carey pointed
out that Satan’s “purpose is to destroy
the innocent in order to spite God”.
Indeed, in “the destruction of the
innocent for political ends”, Carey sees
Milton’s Satan as the first terrorist in
English literature.
An altogether more agreeable figure,
if one remembered for having done
wrong, was Eamonn Casey, the retired
Bishop of Galway, who died on Monday
aged 89.
He had, it was revealed in 1992,
fathered a boy in 1974. It is the sort of
thing that could happen to any man,
and Casey, in a sympathetic obituary in
The Daily Telegraph, was said still to
have won hearts when, after years away
in Latin American missions, he served
as a hospital chaplain in Sussex.
I was surprised to see
him referred to as “Mr
Casey” by The Belfast
Telegraph, since he had
been a bishop for 47
years when he died.
Christopher Howse is an assistant editor
of The Daily Telegraph.
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 7
FEATURES / Martin Luther reconsidered

Luther has gone down in history as the man who shattered the unity
of Western Christendom. But he was reluctant to leave the Catholic
Church, and if he returned today he would find that many of the
reforms he proposed have come to pass / By PETER STANFORD

Once a Catholic

H
ERE IS ONE for the next parish the great man would reflect aloud over dinner
hall quiz night. When did Martin in his marital home, the Black Cloister in
Luther leave the Catholic Church? Wittenberg, once shared with fellow
As we limber up to mark the 500th Augustinians), “even though I wanted to go
anniversary of his Ninety-five Theses (though more than half-way in external matters, such
evidence is thin that he actually nailed them, as vestments, celibacy, abstinence from meat,
as legend has it, to the door of the castle church Lenten observances and so on.”
in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517), some may
answer that the date is obvious. ON ANOTHER occasion, he was asked what
The Ninety-five Theses were not just a he would do if he found himself at a Catholic “Those who will not accept the kernel [of his
protest against the sale of indulgences and Mass. “Don’t take the priest from the altar,” reforms] during my lifetime,” he predicted,
other corrupt practices in the Church but a he replied. “Don’t blow out the candles either. “will honour the shell after I am dead.”
rejection of papal authority. So their appear- If I myself were present in the church at the He was wrong on that one. Luther has
ance, nailed or not, surely marked the time of the elevation of the sacrament, I gone down in the headlines of history as
moment when Luther stopped being a would raise my hand just like the others [i.e. someone so unable to accept that he might
Catholic (and an Augustinian friar) and the other priests, as if he were still a Catholic be wrong that he shattered Western
struck out on his own. Formally, though, the priest in good standing with the Pope]. I Christendom. And, to an extent, there is
correct date should be 3 January 1521, when would show respect and honour the sacra- truth in that. He believed he was doing what
Rome finally acted on the threat of excom- ment. For the true sacrament is there in so God was directing him to do. Why listen to
munication it had made the previous year far as what is essential. And in general the other voices? And you cannot look death in
in the bull, Exsurge Domine (which Luther high Mass in the papacy is correct.” the eye and carry on regardless, as Luther
had publicly burnt at the gates of Wittenberg, Though he had married the redoubtable did repeatedly once branded a heretic, with-
in revenge, he said, for the torching of his ex-nun, Katharina von Bora, in 1525 and out a certain impermeable conviction.
own books, on the Church’s orders). quickly grew into a great love for her, Luther
took until 1532 finally to lay aside his friar’s YET, AT THE SAME time, in 1530, he was
BUT IS EXCOMMUNICATION the last word? habit, even though in his reforms he had working with his closest lieutenant, Philipp
Those thus punished are ex communio – “out little use for monks and monasteries. And Melanchthon – a “scrawny shrimp”, as he
of communion” – with fellow Catholics, but in those last two decades of his life, behind described him – on the Augsburg Confession,
because their baptism can never be revoked, the veil of his fiery rhetoric about the Pope the Lutherans’ position paper to be presented
they are, of course, still Christians. And, just being the Antichrist, Luther was also seeking to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 in the presence
as it inflicts the punishment, so the Church some accommodation whereby part at least of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (and
can lift it. Official teaching of his reform programme – the last, best chance of finding some sort of
stresses that excommunica- which by then had moved accommodation between the sides in the
tion is a “medicinal” ‘Francis has from sermons to Church Reformation schism). Here, Luther showed
imposition, designed to cure structures – might be himself remarkably flexible.
mistaken beliefs and bring spoken accepted by Rome. He explicitly endorsed the removal of any
about repentance. eloquently of From 1522, as he worked to reference in the Confession to the question
In that sense, the door was implement his reforms in of papal authority, one of the issues that went
still open to Luther – and he
Catholics Wittenberg and in the terri- to the heart of his dispute with Rome, in order
never attempted to close it, and Lutherans tories that came over to him, to strengthen the chances of an agreement
unlike his Swiss fellow “walking together”’ he deliberately fashioned not with the Pope. Furthermore, he absented him-
reformer and ex-Catholic a new Church but a Reformed self from the negotiations at Augsburg, leaving
priest, Ulrich Zwingli, who in Church-within-a-Church, par- them in the hands of the more diplomatic
1524 made an unambiguous statement that allel to official Catholicism. For example, it Melanchthon.
he was no longer a Catholic. Luther may have took him until 1542 to appoint his first “I cannot tread so softly and quietly,”
been violent in the language that he used in Lutheran bishop – to the vacant see of Luther explained. Self-knowledge, or a gen-
his tracts and sermons to decry “papists”, and Naumburg. It was almost as if he could not uine desire for compromise? All we can know
indeed popes, but increasingly, in the final bear to make that break final. is that it did not happen in his lifetime,
third of his life, he was also in his calmer In particular, in the years immediately though Melanchthon carried on meeting
moments hinting at an empty space inside before his death in 1546, Luther was to be Catholic theologians until his own death in
him since falling out with the Church of his found musing increasingly on what consti- 1560 – even suggesting that Luther’s slashing
birth and formation. tuted the “true Church” – those in communion of the seven sacraments to just two (Baptism
“The papists despised me,” he lamented in with Rome or the organisation he had created? and Communion) could be reversed. But, by
March 1539 in one of his Table Talks (when Or perhaps both mixed together once more? that time, the bloody, ruinous and devastating

8 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk

FLAME OF FAITH: Carl Friedrich
Lessing’s depiction of Martin
Luther Burning the Papal Bull
“wars of religion” that followed Luther’s death
in 1546 were already hardening positions
on both sides.
That antagonism remained between these
two Christian cousins right up to the Second
Vatican Council. Its decree on ecumenism,
Unitatis Redintegratio, initiated the first offi-
cial Catholic-Lutheran talks, which eventually,
in 1999, produced the “Joint Declaration on
the Doctrine of Justification”. A mere 453
years after Luther’s death, the theological dis-
pute had been laid to rest.
The healing process is now in full swing,
although even after half a millennium, schism
cannot just be magicked away by time, good
will, fine words – or even by papal leadership.
But it is a cause for celebration, and the dis-
tance covered is impressive.
Francis has spoken eloquently of Catholics
and Lutherans “walking together”, where in
1522 his predecessor, Hadrian VI, dismissed
Luther as “this petty monk”. In 2008, on a
visit to the former Augustinian friary in Erfurt,
where Luther was a student, Benedict XVI
referred so positively to the Protestant
Reformer that some began to speculate that
the excommunication order on Luther was
going to be lifted.
WHAT WOULD LUTHER make of the modern
Catholic Church? And might he want to
remain a member of it rather than leave?
Certainly, the sort of questioning of papal
authority that caused him to be excommuni-
cated in 1521 is now common among
Catholics, with the dissidents ranging from
liberals, such as Hans Küng, to the conser-
vative former curial cardinal, Raymond Burke,
who is candid in his distaste for some current
papal teaching.
My daydream of a still-Catholic Luther is
further encouraged by some of the recent
reforms in our Church, all of which the friar
from Wittenberg proposed 500 years ago.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
CLIFFORD LONGLEY
There needs to be a discussion
about the pastoral care of
cohabiting relationships
Years go I was chatting to
a priest in the north of
England when the subject
of second marriages came
up. His parish was full of
them, he said, as it was of co-habitees. Yet
neither of those types of relationship is
blessed by the Catholic Church. The
divorced were breaking the rules by
marrying again. Those couples who had
paired off together without benefit of
wedlock were “living in sin”. Yet such
couples would often ask to have their
children admitted to the local Catholic
school, to which he readily agreed. But
how to make sense of it?
His solution, he said, was to regard
both groups as being in de facto
marriages. Not de jure, obviously – no
canon lawyer had been near them. De
facto was OK, but the term “irregular”
was not appropriate – some of these
relationships, he pointed out, worked as
regular as clockwork. These marriages
were a human reality, at the core of
family life. The last thing he wanted to do
was to break them up. He regarded them
as under his pastoral care. He wanted
them to thrive.
The priest – who trusted me with his
secret, obviously – took from his jacket
pocket a two-page typed document, dog-
eared and tea-stained, whose condition
he apologised for. The reason it was in
such a state was because other priests
from neighbouring parishes kept
borrowing it. It was his own attempt at a
prayer service for the private blessing of
de facto marriages. His bishop didn’t
know of it, and wasn’t to be told.
His logic was that if it was right for
these marriages to continue to exist, that
was a very good reason to pray for them. I
suspect many parish priests feel the same
way, even if they do not go so far as to
compose unofficial liturgies. But the
pastoral care of de facto marriages is a
thorny subject.
There is a fear, possibly, of
undermining the case for de jure
sacramental marriage – which is a case of
making the best the enemy of the good.
The Church gets round the difficulty by
talking, often sensitively and non-
judgementally, about the pastoral care of
individuals in such marriages. But that is
not quite the same thing.
It ignores the bigger reality, the
elephant in the room if you like, of the
second marriage itself and of the family
that the marriage has given rise to. The
emphasis in a lot of well-meaning
preaching and writing is on the
imperfection of such relationships, of
how it is important, as a pastoral strategy,
to accompany them a few steps further
towards the ideal.
But that can easily sound like ignoring
the intrinsic good that is present in these
relationships already. Indeed, I doubt
that a pastor would be given a hearing if
he did not understand and appreciate the
joy the couple already take in their
relationship. That joy is a reason to
celebrate it, not to look down on it as
second class. Part of that joy, one has to
point out, is in their sexual relationship,
deepening their affection and
strengthening their bond. To treat it even
remotely as tainted would be offensive.
Many good things were said in the two
recent Rome synods on family life about
the need for pastoral care of those
individuals in second marriages, and also
of those individuals who cohabited
without marriage. Many good things
were said also about the pastoral care of
marriages that the Church recognised,
the de jure sacramental marriages. Both
themes were beautifully developed in
Pope Francis’ response to the synods in
his document Amoris Laetitia. But
nowhere were the two approaches
combined, so as to address the pastoral
care of de facto marriages per se.
Yet, as my north of England priest
friend had grasped, this is both illogical
and un-pastoral. For the individuals
concerned, their marriage – de facto or
whatever we choose to call it – is the
reality at the centre of their lives, the
most important, valuable and wonderful
thing they knew of. It was inconceivable
that God did not know that. Yet
somehow, the Church had missed it.
As well as a discussion about second
marriages, there also needs to be a
discussion about the pastoral care of
cohabiting relationships, many of which
are exemplary; and indeed about
homosexual partnerships, ditto. Not just
the individuals in them, but about those
relationships as such, as ontological
realities which have meaning and
purpose, and which are very often – in a
word – good. What the consequences
would be, I cannot begin
to imagine. But wherever
there is love, there is
goodness. And somehow
the Church must be in
there too, with its blessing.
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 9

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9
Latin has been replaced by the vernacular as
the language of the Mass. Communion comes
in both kinds. Francis is keen to devolve deci-
sion-making (for example, over the treatment
of divorced and remarried Catholics) to the
local churches. And he is tackling arrogance
and corruption in Rome with a gusto that
would surely impress Luther, who said of his
own unhappy visit in 1510 to the seat of
Catholicism that he went with onions and
returned with garlic.
YES, OF COURSE, I am excluding from my
dreamscape questions on ministry, the sacra-
ments, tradition-against-scripture and other
matters. But what a reborn Luther would find
most conducive in the modern Catholic
Church, I suggest, is the extent to which it
now echoes not just his practical reforms but
also his own more considered words – that
is, those he wrote when he wasn’t angry.
In his 1520 Appeal to the Christian Nobility
of the German Nation, Luther argued for “the
priesthood of all baptised believers”. It was
his strongest weapon in his fight against clergy
and monks imagining that they had a faster
track to salvation than those in the pews. He
was savaged for such a suggestion by his
Catholic critics at the time. It was, they said,
a recipe for chaos and anarchy.
Fast forward to November 1964, the
Second Vatican Council, and Lumen
Gentium, “The Light of Nations”, the dog-
matic constitution of the Catholic Church.
In it is found the promise that clergy and
laity should henceforth be equal partners
as “the people of God”, an equality rooted
in a “shared priesthood” of all Catholics,
received at Baptism but lived out thereafter
in different ways. To my ears, at least, that
is pure Luther.
Peter Stanford’s biography, Martin Luther:
Catholic Dissident, is published this week by
Hodder and Stoughton.
THE
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10 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
LENT MEDITATION / The reality of prayer
In the third of her meditations, Theodora Hawksley is
reminded by an everyday encounter that the Lord
is ready for us long before we are ready for him
“SAMARITAN WOMAN!” Sr Divya
hollered, and the woman looked up and
grinned from a distance. Each day,
about noon, she walked past our house,
past the tap that brought hand-hot
water from the plastic bins up the hill,
and down to the creek where the water
was cool and fresh. She carried the
bucket back up the village, water
splashing down her leg.
From an early age, we are schooled to
prepare for Jesus. It is part of our
liturgy, and it becomes part of our
prayer. When I was little, we even had a
book called If Jesus Came to My House.
If Jesus came to my house, I would be
nice and share my toys. We would put
on a gingham tablecloth and offer Jesus
something nice from the biscuit tin.
This idea of making ready for Jesus is
perfectly natural: we love him and we
want to be prepared. But as we grow up,
hospitality becomes a more risky
business. We learn hard lessons about
what makes us acceptable and
unacceptable to others, and discover
that, however much we prepare
ourselves, we can face rejection.
The innocent spirituality of If Jesus
Came to My House can become a source
of anxiety: we wonder whether Jesus
would come to our house at all. Our sense
of unworthiness keeps Jesus at a distance,
and we let him in only to the parts of the
house we think he will find acceptable.
We may even assume that he would
never come to our miserable home at all,
and so to protect ourselves from being
hurt we get our rejection in first.
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
ILLUSTRATION: MARIE-HELENE JEEVES
This week we hear in the gospel
reading the story of Jesus, tired, hot and
thirsty, sitting straight down at the well.
Give me a drink. This is not the social
call of If Jesus Came to My House, and it
is not the spiritual equivalent of a room
inspection. Can I believe that the Lord
needs something from me? Can I believe
that his need is greater than my need to
be ready for him?
More than that, can I trust that what
the Lord wants is not something that I
have prepared, but what is really flowing
in me – in my life, my thoughts, my fears
and desires?
This is not just a nice image, it is the
reality of prayer. This is the good news,
that “Christ died for us while we were
still sinners” (Romans 5:8) – in other
words, before we were ready. Christ is
already sitting on the well of my life,
tired, hot and thirsty.
Can I accept this encounter of
unreadiness? Can I trust that this
encounter of unreadiness between
myself and the Lord is itself the gift that
God is offering, the greatest “if only you
knew” of my life? Can I believe that
allowing the Lord to encounter me, a
sinner, without preparation, will
uncover in me a spring that will never
run dry?
Walk past the tap. Go down to the
creek. More than what you have
prepared, Jesus wants what flows.
Theodora Hawksley is a novice with
the Congregation of Jesus living with a
religious community in a village in Guyana.
FEATURES / Justin Welby’s fourth anniversary

A week after the election of Pope Francis four years ago, the Anglicans installed Justin Welby as their
new spiritual leader. His crisp, business-like approach contrasted with that of his predecessor, Rowan
Williams, but recent events suggest there may be limits to its effectiveness / By STEPHEN BATES

Just about managing

F
OUR YEARS AGO this month, both
the Catholic and Anglican churches
put into office leaders very different
in style and character from their pred-
ecessors. In Pope Francis, the conclave of
cardinals got more than they bargained for:
a zealous, humane figure seemingly bent on
giving Catholicism a thorough shake. But
what of Justin Welby, enthroned as
Archbishop of Canterbury a week after
Francis’ election – a managerial, evangelical
figure chosen to replace the deeply spiritual,
intellectual Rowan Williams?
Under Welby there seems to have been a
distinct tightening up of the CofE’s tradition-
ally meandering managerial style. Where
Williams agonisingly sought compromise and
delay, Welby seeks decisions. (It somehow
seems appropriate that while everyone called
Rowan by his first name, many use the current
archbishop’s surname.) The decisiveness is
not always welcome, but it is a change.
As is well known, Welby, 61, had a career
before ordination. The first Etonian to become
Archbishop of Canterbury for 150 years, he Welby’s style is said to be transactional: ‘You
read history and law at Cambridge and was support this and I’ll give you something else’
an executive in the oil industry until becoming
ordained in his mid-thirties. He had only two
years’ experience as a bishop before being ele-
vated to Canterbury, though he had previously had a brief affair. His assured handling turned Anglican life almost since he was ordained
served as dean of Liverpool. a potential embarrassment into a story of per- priest in 1993 – and his two chaplains at
sonal redemptive faith, and strengthened his Lambeth have both been women.
THE CRISP BUSINESS style is notable, accord- reputation. “He has done a world of good for
ing to those who have observed him at close the Church’s public image,” says Rod Thomas, BUT WHAT HAD appeared to be a done deal,
hand. Christina Rees was a lay member of the Bishop of Maidstone, whose pugnacious universally accepted, was called into question
the Archbishops’ Council – the Church’s exec- brand of conservative evangelicalism was by the appointment of Philip North, from
utive – working with four archbishops until often a thorn in the flesh of Williams. “He is the Church’s High Anglo-Catholic wing, to
she stepped down last year. “I think of him joyful in the faith and a reconciling presence.” be diocesan bishop of Sheffield. North,
as Action Man,” she says. “He is very brisk, Welby is impressive speaking in small although widely respected, is a council mem-
businesslike and a quick study. At his first groups, showing genuine interest and empa- ber of the quaintly named Society of St Wilfrid
meeting, someone was rambling on in tradi- thy, though his preaching style is bland and and St Hilda, a title commonly shortened to
tional Anglican style and the archbishop often mundane, rather than inspirational and “The Society”, composed of clergy and
started looking at his watch. When the man challenging. One vicar told me how he had parishes that do not accept women’s ordina-
finished, he just said: ‘That was six minutes, gone to a Lenten talk and heard the old trope tion. It has even taken to issuing membership
let’s keep comments down to 90 seconds.’ I’d about a crucifix ornament “with a little man cards to indicate their freedom from the taint
never seen an archbishop calling someone on it”: “We’ve all used that one, but not pre- of female clergy’s touch.
out for waffling before. It was quite brutal.” tended it had happened to us personally. I North would have inherited a diocese where
The brusqueness can verge into bad temper, thought it was weird and dishonest.” nearly a third of the clergy are women and
others say. One bishop remarked: “I haven’t following a welter of criticism he decided last
been spoken to like that since I was at school.” THE BUSINESSLIKE approach was seen early week to stand down, prompting a new out-
He is impatient of challenge or contradiction in the way the consecration of women bishops burst of internecine squabbling. This has left
and can be short with those who do not keep was hustled through shortly after Welby’s ele- the question unresolved whether a bishop
up or amuse him intellectually. vation: a decision that had caused anguished who will not ordain women whose orders are
Welby’s strengths include public relations debate for years was finally accomplished and accepted by the rest of the Church can fulfil
savviness – never shown to better advantage followed by something close to a rush by dio- the traditional episcopal purpose of being a
than when it was revealed last year that his ceses to be among the first to make the move. focus for diocesan unity. Thirteen years ago
father was not the man who had brought him Welby, unlike some evangelicals, is comfort- Rowan Williams retreated – disastrously for
up but a diplomat with whom his mother had able with women’s ordination – a fact of CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 11
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
his reputation – from the appointment of
Jeffrey John, an avowedly gay cleric, as Bishop
of Reading in the face of evangelical protests
on precisely the grounds that he could not be
a focus for unity.
THE NORTH appointment was not Welby’s
decision but that of the Crown Nominations
Commission. But on the still divisive gay issue
Welby is “on a journey”, as they say, and that
is what caused his first setback last month. At
the General Synod, a bishops’ report that both
Welby and Archbishop John Sentamu of York
had strongly supported advocating no change
in the Church’s stance on the blessing of gay
partnerships or the conducting of gay mar-
riages, was narrowly rejected. Although the
report was almost unanimously backed by the
bishops, and less decisively by the laity, it nar-
rowly failed by seven votes to obtain the assent
of the synod’s clergy members.
The report itself was the Church’s latest
attempt to reconcile deeply divergent and
antagonistic views on gays, and a number of
bishops have claimed privately that they were
coerced by Welby into supporting it despite
their reservations. “His style is a transactional
relationship: you support this and I’ll give
you something else,” said one.
Canon Chris Chivers, principal of Westcott
House theological college in Cambridge, says:
“I think the bishops now realise they were
played. It is his first major rebuff: he miscal-
culated – you can herd the bishops into line,
but the clergy are less easily controlled.”
After the vote, Welby and Sentamu issued
a statement promising a rethink producing
“radical inclusion” but, essentially, same-sex
marriage has been kicked into touch at least
until after the 2020 Lambeth Conference of
the world’s Anglican bishops. For now, Welby
has managed to keep the worldwide com-
munion show on the road and to head off any
boycott of the conference, but it is an uneasy
truce, achieved by bland words and sleight
of hand – and Third World conservatives are
suspicious. Welby has extensive experience
of Africa, where some of the most intransigent
bishops come from, but mutterings remain.
His whistlestop consultation tour before a
primates’ meeting last year did not go down
particularly well, being regarded as an exercise
in neo-colonialism by those determined to
look for slights.
AT HOME, OTHER critics suggest Welby has
shown a lack of interest in grassroots, rural
Anglicanism, coming as he does from the sub-
urban evangelical strand popularised by Holy
Trinity Brompton, originator of the Alpha
course. Professor Linda Woodhead of
Lancaster University, the leading sociologist
of religion, says: “Rural parishes are among
the most successful but he has neglected them
in favour of the city churches. The average
church attender is an older woman and yet
the initiatives have all been towards recruiting
and encouraging younger, urban people and
Alpha-type churches.”
OTHERS SUGGEST that the problem is a lack
of theological depth at the heart of the
Church’s episcopacy. “They are like a bench
of Labradors,” one suffragan told me. “Perfectly
nice, gentle creatures but you want a bit of
variety in the breed.”
Martyn Percy, dean of Christ Church
Cathedral, Oxford, has emerged as one of
Welby’s critics. He accuses the archbishop of
short-term pragmatism and not being reflec-
tive enough. Welby himself admits that he is
not a professional theologian and some sug-
gest that it shows in his recently published
first book Dethroning Mammon: Making
Money Serve Grace, a series of Lenten reflec-
tions. Percy says: “He has got an instinctive
grasp of what needs to be done but pragmatic
fixes have their limits. If you don’t do the the-
ology you can’t move forward, you just go
round in circles.”
On the other hand, Chivers says: “There is
something very middle-England about him
which appeals to the core constituency of
Anglicans. They don’t do theology much
either. That makes him ideal.”
Stephen Bates is a former religious affairs
correspondent of The Guardian.

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 FROM THE ARCHIVE

50 years ago 100 years ago

THE TABLET • 18 MARCH 1967 THE TABLET • 17 MARCH 1917

T he ordination of older
married men to the
priesthood who would continue
with their secular professions
while working part-time as
priests was described as “quite
possible” by Bishop Zak of
Sankt Pölten, Austria, during a
recent series of public
discussions. It was, however,
rather a distant possibility. But
the Austrian bishops had already
approved the introduction of
married deacons …
Seven out of ten American
Catholics want an end to the
Church’s ban on artificial
contraception, according to a
survey carried out for
Newsweek. The survey …
showed that Catholics felt birth
control was the most pressing
problem they were faced with. It
also found: one Catholic in three
used the pill or another means
of contraception frowned on by
the Church; half opposed the
Church’s teaching on divorce,
with 65 per cent wanting to see
the Pope provide annulments
allowing remarriage of the
innocent party; and 48 per cent
believed priests should be
allowed to marry.
O ur three Anglican
contemporaries, the
Guardian, the Church Times
and the Record, all announced
last week that in future their
prices would be doubled. We
understand that in
consequence there is
apprehension in some quarters
lest the price of THE TABLET
should be raised to tenpence.
We hasten to reassure our
readers. All newspapers have
been passing through a
difficult crisis, and the
increased cost of paper and
printing has added enormously
to the expense of production.
And there may be harder times
still to come. But we have every
reason to believe that for the
present, and for as far forward
as we can see, this journal will
continue to shoulder its own
burden, and to “carry on” as
usual, without making any
extra charge.
That we are in a position to
do this is due entirely to the
splendid way in which the
Catholic public, readers and
advertisers alike, have rallied to
the support of this journal from
the very first week of the war.

PUZZLES

PRIZE CROSSWORD 1 2 3 4 4 5 6 7 9 The OT 21 area a man’s ruined (9)

No. 550 | Axe 8 13 Book translator, ’e’s from the Newcastle area (7)
8 9
14 See 18
Across 15 Focus of Romans? Kind of vehicle to embrace all Essene sects at
1 Christian apologist’s in South Carolina, passing through the start (6)
Pennsylvania and Alabama (6) 10 11 16 Afraid, with accountant’s volte face, of becoming respected (6)
4 Clergymen are later in pocket, on return (6) 13 18 and 14 Down: Epigraph Dora composed for an NT ruler (5,7)
8 Religion, one that gets hit hard (5) 20 Paul’s companion on board is a stern-looking Arab (5)
12 13 14 16
9 Nephew of David born into Isaiah’s set (7)
10 Daniel saved her Esther’s place, rejecting another girl (7) 15 18 16

11 Battle against Bashan here which needed reinforcements in part (5) 17 18 19 20

12 Hindu Veda Theravada changed (9)
17 Account by Chinese family man who was stoned (5)
21 22
19 Like a Middle Eastern country, one of the past … (7)
21 … peoples from Surrey borders side with leader of rebel Scots (7) 25

22 Biblical outcast kept at bay is retiring (5) 23 24

23 Bishop fired up by Mary? (6)
24 Was curiously involved with ancient king and saint (6) Down
1 Rhode Island excluded nuisance cleric (6)
2 Part of Arabah, where a sailor goes to in the main? (4,3)
3 Here in old Jordan where Ham lost his head (5)
Win a copy of 5 Bad blood between a NE and a NW Damascus region (7)
The Saints: ! 3hort (istory 6 Son of Joktan originally from old place high in Rabbah (5)
7 Very soul of whisky, perhaps (6)
SUDOKU | Beginner
Please send your answers to:
Crossword Competition 18 March
The Tablet, 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY.
Please include your full name, telephone number and email address,
and a mailing address. A copy of The Saints: A Short History, by
Simon Yarrow, OUP, will go to the sender of the first correct entry
drawn at random on Friday 31 March.
l The answers to this week’s puzzles and the crossword winner’s
name will appear in the 8 April issue.
Solution to the 25 February crossword No. 547
Across: 7 Nazareth; 8 Holi; 9 Voodoo; 10 Merari; 11 Shishak; 13 Jonah;
15 Rhoda; 17 Massora; 20 Triune; 21 Tishbe; 23 More; 24 Chanukah.
Down: 1 Naboth; 2 Bard; 3 Jehovah; 4 Shema; 5 Pharaohs; 6 Gloria;
12 Sadducee; 14 Last Day; 16 Hermon; 18 Riblah; 19 Mercy; 22 Shur.
Winner: Pat Bergin, of Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland.

Each 3 x 3 box, each row

and each column
This new prize is must contain all the
kindly sponsored by numbers 1 to 9.

www.oup.com
Solution to the 25 February puzzle

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 13
 PARISH PRACTICE
11-12 MAY Independent Schools Association Annual Conference in York, 10.00 a.m. to 2.30 p.m., focusing on fellowship and support.
For more information and to book, go to the website www.isaschools.org.uk. Tel: 01799 523619. Email: isa@isaschools.org.uk
All are sick and all need healing
Instead of seeing the Sacrament of Anointing as the kiss of death, it needs to become the kiss of life
and hope. At every Mass we should affirm that Jesus is the true physician of all our ills
T
HE FAMILY has always been the near-
est hospital when it comes to a
spirituality of care, consolation and
incentive, according to Pope Francis.
In his book, The Name of God is Mercy, he
says that the parish should be like a field hos-
pital ready to receive the sick, the wounded
and the dying at any time day or night. Both
metaphors present a huge challenge to mod-
ern-day parish life. Taking the family and the
parish together, both metaphors have enor-
mous implications. For example, on 11
February this year, I decided to offer the sacra-
ment of the sick to all those who came to daily
Mass on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes,
which is now an international day of prayer
for the sick.
I emphasised that everyone is suffering
from one kind of sickness or another.
Following what St James said, I also empha-
sised the forgiveness of sin implicit in this
very special sacrament. This resonated par-
ticularly with me because, a few months
previously, I had been called out on a sick call.
The lady concerned was unconscious, and
her daughter was very concerned that she
would not be able to confess her sins; but I
was able to reassure her that mercy was central
to the Sacrament of Anointing.
The communal celebration of the sacrament
was one of the great liturgical reforms of the
Second Vatican Council, and yet it appears
to be one of the most forgotten. I intend to
offer this sacrament at least once a quarter.
Celebrating the sacrament by the whole com-
munity helps to overcome the idea that this
sacrament is “extreme unction”. Instead of
seeing it as the kiss of death, it needs to become
the kiss of life and hope. However, we still
have a great distance to go before this sacra-
ment is recognised as a source of healing,
hope and love rather than a sacrament in
extremis. If we read the rite of anointing care-
fully, we find words like these again and again:
“heal his/her sickness and forgive his/her sins,
expel all afflictions of mind and body …”
The role of the laity in the care of the sick
and the housebound is a parish ministry that
has flourished in recent years. Eucharistic
ministers do not just take Holy Communion
to them, but give generously of their time to
help in many other ways. I have heard count-
less stories of people who attend to the
material and social needs of those who are
ailing. I would make a sincere recommenda-
14 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
• UPCOMING EVENTS •
THOMAS GRUFFERTY
To do
HIGHLIGHT the liturgical significance of
representatives of a healing community
going out with Holy Communion.
ALWAYS include the sick and the
housebound in the Prayers of the Faithful
during Sunday Mass.
HOLD a communal anointing of the sick
four times a year, to show that this is not
simply “extreme unction”.
tion that when extraordinary ministers of the
Eucharist take Holy Communion to the sick,
as the representatives of a healing community,
they should also be allowed to anoint them
with the oil of the sick. This ministry has been
done before in previous generations. There
are many physically and mentally ill Catholics
who are no longer able to receive Holy
Communion, but they could be anointed to
receive the healing touch of the Lord in
another way, and experience His forgiveness.
If the parish is a field hospital, we need to
assure the sick, the elderly, the weak, the poor,
the mentally ill, those suffering in any way
that we walk with them in their pain, but
much more importantly, Jesus walks with
them to Calvary and beyond.
The double power of the Rite of Anointing
during Mass becomes apparent when one
ponders the Eucharist. The Mass itself has
many healing references, and clearly there is
a prayer for all healing and the forgiveness of
sins in the Penitential Rite to Holy
Communion. “Say but the word and my soul
shall be healed” are words that are often said
automatically, without any thought of their
significance. When one thinks about the pres-
ence of Jesus in the Mass, one cannot but
reflect that the Mass is the ultimate sacrament
of healing. I sometimes spend time in the
Church itself as a place of healing and remedy
for my daily ills, and when I leave, those small
complaints are gone.
It is a profound privilege for priests to be
able to invite people to leave their sufferings
at the Table of the Lord. We are promised
wonderful blessings in the Eucharist and one
of these must be healing, for we are striving
towards a power greater than ourselves or
anything we ever imagined.
There is a prayer just before Holy
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Communion that is reserved for the priest
alone. He prays that his receiving of the Body
and Blood of Christ may not bring him judge-
ment and condemnation but a defence and
a cure for his mind and body. In a way, this
should be proclaimed from the roof tops, for
it echoes every desire for healing, well-being
and good health of the entire person. At every
Mass, we need to affirm and acknowledge
Jesus as the true physician of all our ills. This
must go hand in hand with the work of the
doctor’s surgery and the local hospital. By all
means go to the doctor when you are ill, but
go to Mass as well. Health, wholeness and
holiness are closely entwined when we receive
the Lord in the Eucharist.
Touch is very important in all healing. At
Mass, some of our parishioners hold hands,
especially during the Our Father. It is lovely
to see people standing together in prayerful
solidarity. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is
forgiveness, which is a crucial part of healing.
I know several broken Catholics who have a
deep sense of being forgiven by God and by
the people they have hurt, but they are not
able to forgive themselves. Physical contact
with your neighbour at the Lord’s Prayer is
palliative care in action. We should never
underestimate the work of Jesus the doctor
in such circumstances. The readings at Mass
frequently relate dramatic healings in the
ministry of Jesus. There are 41 references to
healings in the four gospels; and Luke’s gospel
is full of extraordinary cures.
In Luke, Jesus tells the disciples to go and
tell John that the blind see again, the lame
walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dead are raised, the poor have the good news
preached to them (Luke 7:22).
It is only in recent centuries that the care
of the sick has become the responsibility of
the hospital. Prior to that, most people who
were unwell were cared for by their loved
ones. Today in parts of Africa, for example,
the family joins forces with the hospital in
providing food for the patient. A recent survey
in the United States revealed that there were
better health outcomes and speedier recovery
for patients whose family were engaged in
the treatment of their loved ones (BMJ
Publishing Group). Similar surveys elsewhere
would no doubt reach similar conclusions.
Fr Tom Grufferty is parish priest of St
Thomas More Church, Eastcote, Middlesex.
 NOTEBOOK
PHOTO: CNS, BOB ROLLER

• QUOTE OF THE WEEK •

“A lot of people would be surprised to see the Vatican - to see a priest – at a thing like this!”
BISHOP PAUL TIGHE, who runs the Pope’s social media accounts, at South by Southwest technology conference

The Midlothian question

T
he Scottish press called it
“the Sermon on the
Mound”: Margaret
Thatcher’s 1988 address to the
General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland in its
Assembly Hall, which stands
below the castle in Edinburgh.
At a reception in London last
week to mark his retirement
after nearly 30 years as a senior
adviser to three cardinal
archbishops of Westminster,
Charles Wookey recalled sitting
with Cardinal Basil Hume,
watching the Prime Minister on
television lecturing the
members of the Kirk on the
meaning of Christianity. They
listened to her in stony silence.
Wookey asked Hume what he
should say if journalists called
to ask for a comment on Mrs
Thatcher’s address. “Tell them
that in a busy life I am only able
to cope with one infallible
person at a time,” he replied.
Sadly, the call never came.
The unflappable Wookey is
leaving his role as assistant
general secretary of the bishops’
conference to become CEO of A
Blueprint for Better Business, a
movement to encourage
companies to serve society for Gathering
which he has worked since 2011.
no moss
Pope Francis is the unlikely

God in the cover star of Rolling Stone

Italia this month. The

petrol station “Francis, Pop Pope” head-

line jumps out in neon pink
lettering from a Vatican-
friendly white and yellow

“Y
ou’re the God of the
poor” – Vos sos el
Dios de los pobres –
ring out the opening lines of the
famous Nicaraguan Misa
Campesina (Peasant Mass), the
rousing music of which was
heard again last Sunday at
Blackfriars, Oxford, with Fr
Timothy Radcliffe OP
celebrating. “You’re the human,
simple God, the God who
sweats in the streets,” sang the
predominantly British choir,
“I’ve seen you in the petrol
stations checking a lorry’s tyres.”
The Misa Campesina gave
fire and joy to the Sandinista
Revolution of 1979-90, but did
not entirely die out when the
US-funded civil war led to a
regime change. One of the
guests at the Mass was Maura
Jarquín, from the mountainous
northern region of Jinotega,
which suffered some of the
worst violence of the war: three
of her brothers were killed in
1985. Today, she works in a
cooperative of organic and
fairtrade coffee growers.
Since 2006, Nicaragua has
had a Sandinista government
again, and is pursuing “the
second stage of the Revolution”,
at least according to the
Nicaraguan guests, with
investment in jobs, health,
roads, electricity and culture.
“Education abounds,” said
Jarquín. “One of my daughters
is training to be a doctor and
another to be a vet.”
background; the Pope is
smiling, giving the thumbs
up. The wording refers to
the Pope’s widespread popu-
larity: the magazine’s profile
comes two years after the
English-language version
ran a cover story on Pope
Francis’ “quiet revolution”.
The beer
necessities
A Belgian village church has
seen attendance increase
tenfold after it opened a bar
at the back of the nave after
the Sunday Mass. The
church in Brielen, near
Ypres, asks villagers to
attend Mass before serving
the beer, wine or coffee. It
started after the village’s
last café shut and locals had
no place for their usual
EATING HABITS Sunday midday drink.
The church, consolidated
TASTE OF HISTORY with three other small
parishes, holds Mass once a
month. Now about 100 peo-
A recipe book dating back to 1793 is to be released by the ple fill what were almost
monks of Downside Abbey in Somerset (above, Fr Christopher empty pews.
Calascione). Discovered last year by an archivist working in “We don’t mean to run a
Downside’s library, the book contains 100 everyday recipes as real café here, but we want
well as dishes more unusual by today’s standards, such as people to get together,” said
“Fricassee of pigs feet and ears” and “Calves head turtle parishioner Christiane
fashion”. A chicken curry recipe provides insight into the Ameel, who serves drinks
spices obtained through the slave trade triangle, at a time under a large crucifix. The
when Bristol port was at the centre of the transatlantic route. after-Mass crowd is lively,
Also of note is that, in an age when few women could write, but there’s no music or
women probably wrote the recipes. Downside Abbey Presents: dancing, and the bar closes
Bristol Georgian Cookbook will be released on 5 April. at 1 p.m.

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 15
 LETTERS
• THE EDITOR OF THE TABLET •
1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY 020 8748 1550 letters@thetablet.co.uk
All correspondence, including email, must give a full postal address and contact telephone number. The Editor reserves the right to shorten letters.

Service as a deacon TOPIC OF T H E W E E K

l Whether or not I am
ordained as a deacon doesn’t
make any difference to my
commitment to serve the
people of God. To serve Jesus is
always enough.
But it would be amazing to be
able to celebrate the sacrament
with the young people I prepare
for First Communion. It would
be a great privilege to conduct
weddings and funerals for the
people I have worked with over
many years in the parish. It
would be something else to use
my voice and read and preach
the Gospel to our congregation
gathered on a Sunday as well as
in the many other forums God
has granted to me.  not God.
I would be willing to serve as
a deacon if the Church so called
me. Above all, I would welcome
the capacity that diaconal
ordination would give me to
offer more of the service that
Christians need from their
churches in order to go out and
fulfil their mission in the world.
So would thousands of other
women.
Please, Pope Francis, the
Commission on Women and
the Diaconate, priests, deacons,
bishops, people of God, please
let us be part of this
conversation of our times. If the
time isn’t right we will go on
waiting patiently until it is. But
what if the time was right now?
COLETTE JOYCE
BOREHAMWOOD,
HERTFORDSHIRE
Sex, shame and the abuse of power
IT IS SAID that the Catholic Church moves
in centuries. We also frequently hear of
people getting no response from Rome, be
they theologians under a cloud, victims of
sexual abuse, or anyone else daring to say
something critical. How does this square
with Jesus’ respectful way of operating? He
addressed people’s issues right there and
then.
Protecting the status quo, changing
nothing, risking nothing, shows a Church
ruled by fearful men, not trusting the Spirit
to see that things will turn out all right. We
must be allowed to make mistakes and
learn from them. We and the Church are
In her explanation for leaving the
Pontifical Commission for the Protection of
Minors, Marie Collins has summed up the
whole Church, not only as it relates to
sexual abuse. My only criticism is that she
has let Pope Francis off too lightly. The
Catholic Church, as represented by Rome
since an earlier handful of fearful, powerful
men sabotaged Vatican II, is a whited
sepulchre, a centre of power and control. It
ill serves all those Christians worldwide
who attempt to walk humbly in Jesus’
footsteps, often with impressive results for
all the sick, hungry, homeless, imprisoned
whom we are called to serve.
A position in Rome should not be seen as
a glittering prize, which inevitably
encourages unsuitable candidates.
Appointments to Rome, including the
papacy itself, should be for a fixed term.
It’s time to deal with Rome as Jesus did
the Temple, cleansing it, whip in hand. It is
the only way the Church will survive. We
need to act quickly because right now there
is no next generation.
MARGARET CALLINAN
MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
CLIFFORD LONGLEY (25 February)
valiantly juxtaposed the Anglican position
on artificial contraception and
homosexuality with that of the Catholic
Church. So long as ethical discourse on
these issues is  reserved to those who do not
marry and who abstain from sexual activity,
the sexual act will only be seen in the
narrow terms expressed by Fr Bryan Storey
(Letters, 4 March).
Furthermore, a substantial percentage of
the Catholic clergy and hierarchy
experience their sexual orientation as
something at best to hide, or to hide from,
and at worst to be experienced in the
context of fear, shame, regret and self-
loathing. So long as this is the case, the
Catholic response to the ethical issue of
homosexuality will never even approach the
messy, awkward, but  somewhat more
honest position adopted by our Anglican
brothers and sisters.
BRENDAN MCMULLAN
SHEFFIELD
FR BRYAN STOREY believes that “sexual
activity is to do with procreation”; does he
then believe that a husband and wife may
not engage in “sexual activity” after the wife
has passed the menopause?
ANDY BEBINGTON
CROYDON, SURREY

Eternal truths
l You have printed responses
to my letter of 11 February. John
Kirk asks (4 March) whether
the unchangeable nature of
Church teaching, which I
asserted on the basis that the
formula used at the reception of
separated Christians into full
communion says that it is
“revealed by God”, applies “to
every single Church teaching”.
The answer must be
affirmative because the formula
refers to “all that the holy
Catholic Church believes”.
However, clearly not everything
that every priest or Catholic
teacher teaches is genuinely a
belief of the Catholic Church.
Of the two examples he gives
of things that he was taught as a
child, it is clear that the missing
of Mass on a Sunday, if
deliberate and avoidable, is
indeed a mortal sin today just as
it was then, while, on the other
hand, whatever Kirk’s teachers
may have said, the Church has
never taught that she knows
who does and who does not go
to Hell.
Tom Woodman (25 February)
suggests that just because God
reveals something at a
particular time does not mean
that it is true for all time.  GRAHAM HUTTON
While he is right to cite parts
of the Jewish Law as no longer
applicable, this is because they
have been transfigured by the
New Law of Christ.
However, it cannot possibly
be the case that something that
God reveals through the
Magisterium as truth at one
time (such as St John Paul II’s
teaching of the impossibility of
the Church’s ordaining women,
which was the teaching that
first gave rise to this debate)
could be revealed as falsehood
at another. We know that
“Truth Himself speaks truly or
there’s nothing true”.
LONDON SW3
l Legal systems, including
Canon Law, have granite
principles like the Ten
Commandments, but movable
edges because humans are
living creatures and life is
change. So scholars and
decision makers have to work
out the implications for real
people in changing times and
contexts. “The letter kills, the
Spirit gives life.” Thank
goodness we have a Pope who
understands that. The zealous
Cardinals who want principle to
rule without ambiguity, need to
get out more.
JENNY TILLYARD
SEAFORD, EAST SUSSEX

16 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk

No magic in Latin
l Sara Maitland’s article (25
February) is rightly angry about
the use of latinised English in
the current translation of the
Mass. She rightly asks “why
does our Church so constantly
insist that there is something
magically spiritual about
Latin?”   (FR) CHRIS BENYON
However, if so few people
understand Latin why does she
and so many members of
English-speaking hierarchies,
clergy and Tablet writers
continue to use the Latin titles
for papal and Vatican II
documents when they all have
English titles?
I suspect an element of
snobbery. Why use Amoris
Laetitia when there is the
beautiful alternative of The Joy
of Love. Which title are the
majority of Catholics most
likely to remember and
understand?   the present mission focus of an
AIDAN HART
BANGOR, NORTHERN IRELAND
l The Council of Trent did
consider the possibility of
allowing the celebration of the
Eucharist in the vernacular.
After some discussion it was
decided not to do so. However,
the council added that: “The
Holy Council commands
pastors ... that they, either
themselves or through others,
explain frequently during the
celebration of the Mass some of
the things read during the
Would that I could persuade all
men to be devoted to this glorious
Saint [Joseph] … I have never
known anyone who was truly
devoted to him and honored him
by particular services who did not
advance greatly in virtue: for he
helps in a special way those souls
who commend themselves to him.
It is now very many years since I
began asking him for something
on his feast, and I have always
received it. If the petition was in
any way amiss, he rectified it for
my greater good … I ask for the
love of God that he who does not
believe me will make the trial for
himself.
ST TERESA OF AVILA
IN THE LIFE OF ST TERESA OF AVILA BY HERSELF,
TRANS. J. COHEN (PENGUIN CLASSICS, 1987)
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
LETTERS
Mass, and that ... they explain
some [thing of the] mystery of
this most Holy Sacrifice,
especially on Sundays and
festival days.”
Why has this instruction not
been regularly carried out? I
have never heard any bishop or
pope recommending this
practice.
SEAFORD, EAST SUSSEX
Bon Secours turmoil
l As St Patrick’s Day
approaches, the Church in
Ireland faces yet another period
of great turmoil. The national
controversy resulting from
discovery of the unidentified
bodies of hundreds of young
children at the Bon Secours
Order’s former mother and
baby home in Tuam raises
many issues.
An issue that concerns me is
order which in Ireland was once
highly regarded for its service to
the sick and poor. Today the
order is seen essentially as a
small number of ageing nuns
running a large private business
empire employing 2,700 staff,
including 350 medical
consultants, and which seems
to confine its medical services to
those with expensive medical
insurance.
For my part I have much
more time for those groups of
nuns, such as Mercy and
Presentation, who work in
THE LIVING SPIRIT
A N D L I T U R G I C A L C A L E N DA R
Our prayer during Lent
aims at awakening of
consciences, arousing them
to the voice of God. In fact, the
diseases of consciences, their
indifference to good and evil,
their errors, are a great danger
to man. They are indirectly a
menace to society as well, because
the level of society’s morals
depends in the ultimate analysis
on the human conscience.
ST POPE JOHN PAUL II
IN PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS: 365 DAILY
MEDITATIONS (VIKING PENGUIN, 1994)
When a liberation movement
attempts to manipulate the
Church for its temporal goals, it is
misusing the Church, and the
Church will not allow it.
parishes and associated
chaplaincies supporting the
poorest, loneliest and most
marginalised.
ALAN WHELAN
KILLARNEY, CO. KERRY, IRELAND
Too far to confession
l Are elderly people at a
disadvantage over access to the
Sacrament of Reconciliation,
throughout the year and
especially in the run-up to
Easter and Christmas?
Partly through the
diminishing number of priests,
and partly due to the change of
culture from when frequent
confession was the norm, slots
in parishes have generally been
cut down. The amalgamation of
churches can also mean people
have to travel to another
church.
Many elderly people no longer
drive and depend on public
transport or lifts. If confessions
are attached to a vigil Mass,
those who do drive often do not
do so at night, and many are
reluctant to go out at all at
night, so they are, in effect,
excluded.
The age group who were
brought up to believe in and
practise frequent confession
may well worry, feel unworthy,
and start refraining from going
up to receive Communion.
I offer this as a reflection in
the hope that priests, parish
councils, pastoral councils, etc.
will make their own
Likewise, when
influential persons with
political power want to
use or manipulate the
Church for their own ends,
the Church refuses to let them.
Christ does not want to lose the
perspective of eternity that he is
offering the Samaritan woman
just to satisfy his thirst. He
prefers to sacrifice the thirst of
his throat rather than betray the
thirst for eternity that he is
trying to satisfy in that woman
who thirsts for so much more
than water.
BLESSED OSCAR ROMERO
IN A PROPHETIC BISHOP SPEAKS TO HIS
PEOPLE: THE COMPLETE HOMILIES OF
ARCHBISHOP OSCAR ROMERO, VOL. 2, TRANS.
JOSEPH OWENS SJ (CONVIVIUM PRESS, 2015)
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 17
assessment, and anyone in this
situation takes heart and makes
his or her needs known.
ANN LARDEUR
CHALDON, SURREY
Scotland ignored
l Lord Hennessy’s “greatest
fear” is that, through the Brexit
shambles, “the UK could lose
Scotland” (4 March). Our
nation is not a trinket to keep or
lose. If the Union acts against
Scotland’s interests, then it is
time to leave.
The Scots voted 62 per cent to
remain in the EU within a UK
whose governing party has but
one MP for a Scottish
constituency in Westminster. In
a non-unitary state, democracy
demands that, at the very least,
the UK Government takes
account of the White Paper
published recently by the
Scottish Government to remain
in the Single Market while still
staying part of the UK.
Instead of even considering
this, May’s Government has
indicated that it will roll back
devolution when powers return
to London. It is no longer
possible to be both British and
Scottish. We must now choose
between the two, for it is plain
that the British Government
could not give a damn about
Scottish opinion. I expected
Lord Hennessy as a historian to
be more sympathetic.
DUNCAN MACLAREN
GLASGOW
✦ CALENDAR ✦
Sunday 19 March:
Third Sunday of Lent (Year A)
Monday 20 March:
St Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed
Virgin Mary
Tuesday 21 March:
Lent feria
Wednesday 22 March:
Lent feria
Thursday 23 March:
Lent feria
(St Turibius of Mogrovejo, Bishop)
Friday 24 March:
Lent feria
Saturday 25 March:
The Annunciation of the Lord
Sunday 26 March:
Fourth Sunday of Lent
(Laetare Sunday)
For the Extraordinary Form calendar
go to www.lms.org.uk

ALEXANDRA WALSHAM is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge • KATHY WATSON is the author of The Devil Kissed Her
CAROLINE JACKSON is a freelance writer • CHRIS NANCOLLAS is the author of Exhibitionism
An unnecessary rupture
A stimulating and provocative exploration of the powerful passions unleashed
by a cataclysmic movement that continues to shape the modern world
Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants
and the Conversion of England
EAMON DUFFY
(BLOOMSBURY, 448 PP, £30)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £27 • TEL 01420 592974
T
HIS YEAR marks the 500th anniversary
of the bold protest against the trade in
indulgences, when Martin Luther
posted 95 Theses on a church door in
Wittenberg. This possibly apocryphal histor-
ical event has become permanently etched in
the Western imagination.
It is 25 years since the publication of Eamon
Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars, a book
that transformed our understanding of the
process by which a vibrant tradition of piety
was violently dismantled by Henry VIII and
his successors, and by which this country
severed its links with the rest of Catholic
Christendom. Decisively undermining the
idea that the Late Medieval Church was a
moribund institution, no single work has left
a larger imprint on academic and popular
thinking about the Reformation and the spir-
itual world that it sought to consign to oblivion.
REFORMATION DIVIDED deepens and
extends Duffy’s distinctive vision of the
religious transitions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. He charts what he
calls the “strange death of Erasmian England”,
fills out the picture of the precocious and
dynamic “northern counter-reformation” he
painted in his book Fires of Faith, and traces
the pastoral initiatives of the godly Protestant
clergy who strove to bring about the inner
conversion of ordinary people.
A study of “attempted reformations” and
their repercussions, this book begins from the
position that “the Reformation” is “an
unsatisfactory designation concealing a battery
of value judgements”. But if Duffy has no truck
with conventional myths about the
Reformation as midwife of progress and
modernity, nor does he endorse Brad Gregory’s
recent controversial diagnosis of the unin-
tended but devastating consequences of
Protestantism: hyper-pluralism, rampant con-
sumerism and secularisation. Far more
important as both a source of inspiration and
a fillip to debate is the work of the late-lamented
John Bossy. Duffy is continuing his spirited
18 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
BOOKS
•OUR REVIEWERS•
A L E X A N DR A WA L S H A M
BRIDGEMAN
CARDINAL POLE: a revisionist reading
conversation with Bossy about the evolution
of the post-Reformation English Catholic com-
munity and the translation of Christianity from
a collective “social miracle” to a rigorously dis-
ciplinarian and individualist religion.
Written over 40 years but here updated,
the book’s 14 essays fall into three sections.
The first focuses on Thomas More’s visceral
response to the spectre of heresy – an entity
he regarded with palpable hatred as the foun-
tainhead of soul-destroying error. Offering
incisive readings of several of More’s more
rebarbative writings, these essays have a self-
consciously apologetic quality. They not only
repudiate the psycho-sexual explanations for
More’s polemic favoured by some earlier writ-
ers, but also vigorously contest Hilary Mantel’s
hostile fictional portrayal of More in Wolf
Hall. Duffy argues persuasively that the con-
trast conventionally drawn between More as
a hammer of heretics and as an eirenic
humanist has been overstated.
The second part investigates dimensions of
the English Counter-Reformation in both its
Marian and missionary phases, beginning with
three figures critical to the project for Catholic
restoration and renewal. In a revisionist reading
of Reginald Pole’s commitment to preaching
and Bible-reading, Duffy dismisses the claim
that he had “a fatal lack of imagination”. William
Allen emerges as a morally ambiguous figure,
an ardent apostle of re-catholicisation simul-
taneously embroiled in invasion and
assassination plots, whose actions led to the
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
sufferings of seminary priests even as they
ensured the community’s survival. Duffy
admires the neglected scholar and exile Gregory
Martin, heralding his unpublished work Roma
Sancta as a unique testament to the religious
energies of Counter-Reformation Rome at a
crucial moment. In promoting the piety of pil-
grimage, saints and relics and in responding
to lay demand for vernacular prayer books,
Elizabethan Catholicism remained firmly con-
nected with its medieval predecessor.
Dissenting from Bossy, Duffy insists that it felt
“no need for a hermeneutic of rupture”.
Other essays underline the organic links
between England and the Continent, inves-
tigating for example the impact of the
Jansenist controversy after the ejection of
James II. A concluding essay in this section
traces Catholic historical writing on the
Reformation, from Nicholas Sander’s vicious
account of Henry VIII’s lust for a scheming
courtesan to John Lingard’s more subtle
restatement of historiographical orthodoxy
in support of Catholic emancipation.
In the final section, Duffy offers a sympathetic
reading of clerics who tried to resolve the ten-
sion between an inclusive national Church and
a predestinarian theology that stressed the sal-
vation of a tiny elect, and whose compassionate
concern for the poor kept the “undertow
towards separation” within puritanism in check.
Yet these efforts to reconcile evangelical con-
version with parochial conformity ultimately
lost their moorings within the Church of
England: the mass ejection of dissenting min-
isters in 1662 marked the “wreckage” of the
English Reformation in this respect.
BY THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, the con-
stituent elements of the Protestant dream of
transforming England into a pious nation
became no more than “beads without a string”.
Aided by the religious orders, by its affinity
for drama and ritual and by its secret weapon,
sacramental confession, counter-reformation
Catholicism made “a better stab” at implanting
Christianity in the hearts of the populace than
Protestantism. Of all the “attempted refor-
mations” investigated in Duffy’s book, what
became known as Anglicanism was the least
commendable and successful.
Reformation Divided is a characteristically
stimulating and provocative volume. It skil-
fully excavates the powerful passions
unleashed by a cataclysmic movement that
continues to shape how we live today.
 BOOKS

RECENTLY The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic / EDITED BY OWEN DAVIES / OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,
PUBLISHED £25; TABLET PRICE £22.50 / 4,000 years of witchcraft and magical beliefs from the ancients through to Harry Potter and Buffy

the last part of the twentieth century. But let
Fine bunch of yarns us stay with our two heroines and their
K AT H Y WAT S ON unlikely friendship. Kate is an alcoholic still
grieving the death of her father. To please her
selfish and bullying lover, she agrees to become
Ashland and Vine an interviewer in an oral-history project. The
JOHN BURNSIDE subject is Jean.
(JONATHAN CAPE, 352 PP, £16.99) Kate arrives at Jean’s wild, disordered house
and expects to meet – what else given the
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £15.30 • TEL 01420 592974 quasi-Gothic setting – a ghost. Instead she
encounters Jean, “an elderly woman in an old
shirt, jeans and a pair of scuffed ankle-
Yet throughout these accounts, we are
offered the possibility that none of the stories
is true, nor mean what you expect them to
mean. The idea that things make sense is,
according to Jean, no more than “a com-
forting illusion”. Jean constantly casts doubt
on her narrative. “I’m not telling this right,”
she says. Two stories about wedlock are
“both puzzles”. Jean switches tales, holds
out on her listener, making her – and the
reader – wait.
Although the obvious comparison

W
ITH THE very first line, this novel
sets up its emotional world with
remarkable efficiency. “The day I
met Jean Culver was also the day I stopped
drinking,” writes the narrator Kate Lambert.
We know that Jean is going to be important.
We know that Kate has suffered. We can
sense that the next 300 or so pages are going
to bring us revelations, connections and
transformation.
Indeed they do, and not just in the case of
Kate Lambert or Jean Culver. By the end of
the novel, we have witnessed the ebb and flow,
ups and downs and utter strangeness of a
large family whose lives and circumstances
mirror the changes of American society during
high boots”. So far, so normal. However,
Jean swiftly surprises her by shrewdly
identifying her alcoholism. She agrees
to take part in the project provided
that Kate stops drinking for five days.
That is the start of Kate’s painful
return to a better life and Jean’s intense,
often rambling storytelling. We are introduced
to Jean’s father (“he cared about the law”) and
Jean’s brother and Arthur (the dumbest per-
son in town). Later, we meet Aunt Charlotte
and her husband Avery, who loved flowers
and taught Jean how to garden. Further on,
the stories turn political and we learn about
Jennifer, a “strange child” who grew up to like
“fiery political arguments”.
is with Scheherazade, Burnside’s nar-
rative is more complex than the
tale-within-a-tale structure. There is
a linear quality to the storytelling,
but it is one in which the lines switch,
double back and tie themselves in
knots, or are cast aside only to be
picked up again later.
At times the route is frustrating. What keeps
us going is Jean’s voice – mischievous, know-
ing, mysterious – “just spinning… a bunch of
yarns”. What emerges is that the listener is
just as important as the storyteller. Jean has
kept Kate from drinking and Kate has acted
as the custodian of Jean’s memories. For both
it has been a gift, like fiction itself.

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 BOOKS
further novels, Time After Time and Loving
Chronicles of a vanished age and Giving. It is a remarkable journey, all the S PE E D R E A DI NG
CA ROL I N E JAC KS ON more so considering that her husband died
suddenly in 1946 aged 36, leaving her a
grieving widow with two small children.
Molly Keane: A Life The 10 novels and four plays she wrote
SALLY PHIPPS between 1928 and 1960 were anything but
(VIRAGO, 352 PP, £20) frivolous, despite her Mills & Boon start. To
varying degrees, all chronicle the disintegration
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £18 • TEL 01420 592974 of the privileged, work-shy, philistine class C H R I S NA NCOL L A S
from which she hailed against a background selects three popular
of the troubled emergence of the Free State. science books

G
IVEN THE CAUTION about meeting Diana Athill, who published Good Behaviour
one’s heroes, should a similar warning under Keane’s real name, describes her as If you thought that space was a
attach to their biographies? Ever since “charming” and, of all the illustrious authors void dotted with stars, and time
the spectacular success of Good Behaviour, with whom she worked, the one she “loved a linear progression of events,
the extravagant, blackly comic novel which best”. Hence it is fascinating to learn from this then think again. As Carlo
eviscerated the toxic double standards of sensitive, even-handed biography that Keane’s Rovelli shows in Reality Is Not
Ireland’s Protestant Ascendancy, many long-sealed cupboard conceals a hoard of What It Seems (Allen Lane,
have prized the work of Anglo-Irish novelist skeletons, and it is remarkable how Sally £16.99; Tablet price £15.30),
and playwright Molly Phipps has followed “spacetime” is not constant but
Keane. Often dubbed the George Bernard Shaw’s a dynamic matrix of matter and
last of the “Big House” advice to make them energy, which bends around
novelists, she was born dance. Thoughtful, elo- stars and planets, and behaves
Mary Nesta Skrine in quent and scrupulously even more oddly near black
County Kildare and died unsentimental, she gives holes. Rovelli is good at
aged 91 in 1996. an account of lost worlds explaining complex theoretical
Until now, the facts of that can make painful models, which is just as well
her life, like the elements reading. Coming from the because some of the concepts
of a fairy tale, have seemed daughter of someone cele- are mind-bending. A
so established and so vivid brated for creating some challenging, if rewarding, read.
as to preclude further of fiction’s worst mothers, Numbers get a similar
scrutiny. Fairy tales, how- it is compelling. treatment in Living by
ever, frequently have their Numbers (Reaktion Books,
dark undertones, and this KEANE EMERGES as £15; Tablet price £13.50), by
account of Keane’s life, blessed with, and often Cambridge professor, Steven
written by her elder cursed by, a passion for Connor. This is a book about
daughter at her mother’s friendship. Towards the our relationship with numbers
request, tells a complex, end of her chronology, rather than the numbers
disturbed tale. Phipps recounts the late, themselves, and the way they
Her first novel was writ- intense and unlikely inti- influence all spheres of human
ten aged 17, so the story macy that developed activity including art, music,
goes, solely to fund an between her mother and poetry and literature. It leans
idyllic, prelapsarian life of parties and hunting television presenter, Russell Harty. Harty read more towards philosophy than
to hounds through the bogs of southern Good Behaviour and loved it so much that he mathematics, and is quite long-
Ireland. It was published by Mills & Boon, made a documentary about Keane. They winded in places. Nevertheless,
under the pseudonym M. J. Farrell, a name delighted in each other’s company and the an interesting take.
taken from a pub she spotted while out hunt- programme, broadcast in 1982, delighted A better bet for the layperson
ing and adopted “to hide my literary side from audiences: “Dearest Heart … Have you read is The Origins of Everything In
my sporting friends”. No women in her circle, The Tablet in which you are a big hit?” 100 Pages (More or Less) by
she observed, were ever to be seen even read- Despite Harty’s homosexuality, “their rela- David Bercovici (Yale
ing a book, let alone writing one. Her tionship had the exhilaration of the love affair”. University Press, £12.99;
best-known book, Good Behaviour, came out Phipps notes that both were “very talented, Tablet price £11.70). In eight
60 years later, when Keane was 77, after a shy show-offs who instinctively understood short chapters, Bercovici
20-year literary silence that followed the the vulnerability of people who expose them- explains the genesis of our
failure of her final play in the West End, selves through being creative, and their physical world, starting with
Dazzling Prospect. It was followed by two extreme need to be appreciated.” She seconds the Universe, and ranging
Melvyn Bragg’s estimation of Harty as “more down through stars and planets
vivid, more fun, more lively than almost any- to the Earth. Five chapters are
THE TABLET BOOKSHOP
one I have ever met”, yet tormented by “serious concerned with the Earth itself:
melancholy, sly snobberies”, as a precise reflec- its structure, climate,
Postage and Packing for books up to 1kg*
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tion of Keane. habitability and the origins of
EUROPE £. per book Keane identified herself as a “breaker- life and civilisation. The author
REST OF THE WORLD £. per book awayer” for whom the only way to live was writes with a light touch and a
*P&P for oversized books will be charged at cost
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“by taking things lightly”. Sally Phipps exposes gift for explaining complex
Cheques payable to Redemptorist Publications her talented, troubled mother – who went science in understandable
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20 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
 ARTS
• COMING SOON •
PEOPLE POWER: FIGHTING FOR PEACE, Imperial War Museum, London (from 23 March) • Damian Lewis in THE GOAT, OR WHO IS SYLVIA?, Theatre Royal
Haymarket (from 24 March) • Haydn’s NELSON MASS, Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Aldershot, Hampshire (8 April) • CEZANNE ET MOI in cinemas (from 14 April)

A religion of things
Devotion connects with domesticity in the Renaissance household
L AUR A GA S COIG N E

I
T SEEMS a particular cruelty of fate that
a country with such a rich cultural her-
itage as Italy should lie along not one,
but two tectonic fault lines. When earth-
quakes strike, as they did across central Italy
last year, the human tragedy is compounded
by the loss to history.
Among the casualties of last October’s
tremors in the Marche was the Franciscan
convent of Santa Chiara in Camerino, where
in the fifteenth century the mystic Camilla
Battista da Varano experienced visions of the
Madonna nursing the Christ Child. They came
to her while cradling a life-sized polychromed
wooden doll of the Infant Jesus called a bam-
binello, which after her death became an
object of veneration. At the Epiphany, the
locals still queue to kiss its feet.
The bambinello’s fame spread far and wide.
A couple of years ago, a research team of three
female academics from the University of
Cambridge investigating household piety in
the Italian Renaissance arranged to borrow
it for an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
When news of the earthquake broke last year
they feared the worst – until a photograph
arrived from the Mother Superior showing
the bambinello lying unscathed among the
ruins of the convent chapel. The miraculous
survivor now has pride of place at the entrance
to the exhibition, “Madonnas and Miracles:
The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy” (until
4 June).
COINCIDING WITH the quincentenary of the
Reformation, the Fitzwilliam’s show chal-
lenges the accepted view that Protestantism
encouraged personal piety in the home, while
Catholic piety was priest-ridden and practised
in church. In the past, this stereotype was
reinforced by the fact that the most obvious
evidence of Italian Renaissance piety consists
of altarpieces commissioned for churches.
Until now, relics of personal piety as practised
in the household – domestic artworks, devo-
tional objects and books – have been below
the academic radar.
Much of this material has inevitably been
lost, not through cataclysms as dramatic as
earthquakes but through general neglect and
© FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE
Naples. The resulting show is the obverse of
the usual exhibition of Renaissance glories:
the humbler the origins and the cheaper the
materials, the greater the interest.
One of the researchers’ proudest achieve-
ments has been to assemble 27 ex-voto
paintings from three religious sites: Tolentino
in the Marche, Lonigo in the Veneto and the
Madonna dell’Arco outside Naples. These
humble daubs occupy a wall of the exhibition,
opening a window on the home lives of ordi-
nary folk with their images of domestic
accidents and sickbeds. A topical example
from Tolentino, which was also struck in
October’s earthquake, gives a cutaway view
of an upstairs room where a kneeling family
prays with confidence to local patron St
Nicholas to save them from the tremors crack-
ing their neighbours’ walls.
With galleries done up like a Renaissance
palazzo, the show does not neglect the wealth-
ier classes: a cheap rosewood and bone rosary
shares a museum case with a luxury version
made of rock crystal beads incorporat-
ing miniature sacred paintings on a
gold ground. For the researchers,
though, a more prized exhibit is a
wrinkled scrap of paper known as a
breve, printed with prayers on both
sides and customarily carried folded
in a pouch. On one side is a prayer
to St Vincent Ferrer for protection
against fever, on the other an
invocation to St Anthony of
Padua against loss and theft.
That this fragile scrap has not
itself been lost is a minor
miracle, giving it a rarity
value above the beautiful
Book of Hours from the
Fitzwilliam’s collection of
illuminated manuscripts.
THE MUSEUM is also rich
in maiolica from the
Marche and has ran-
sacked its stores for
appropriate examples.
They range from an
elaborate panel of The
primitive Madonna Lactans from the four-
teenth century. Although clearly the work of
a potter more used to making jugs than sculp-
tures, the Madonna’s simplified design
anticipates Picasso’s ceramics by 600 years.
AT THE OTHER END of the scale, in terms of
craftsmanship, is Pinturicchio’s exquisite
Virgin and Child with St John (c.1490-95),
showing the Virgin teaching the pre-school
Jesus to read. Before Sunday Schools were set
up after the Counter-Reformation, religious
education took place in the home and hand-
books were published advising parents on
how to do it.
One example by the Dominican Cardinal
Giovanni Dominici recommends that instead
of play-fighting, little boys’ energies should be
diverted into performing pretend Masses,
assisted by little girls decorating the altar –
playing at priests and nuns rather than doctors
and nurses.
“Italian Catholicism was conspic-
uously a religion ‘of things’,” explains
the catalogue. In the home, that
meant things designed to be
touched as well as seen. On one
devotional medal, the image of
the Virgin and Child is almost
unreadable, worn smooth
with fingering; even a
delicate watercolour
of The Dead Christ
(c.1432) by Fra
Angelico has been
abraded around
Christ’s feet by
kissing.
The wear and
tear on these lov-
ingly handled
objects brings the
past to life. In
Renaissance Italy,
connection to the
divine was mediated
through a religion of
things; in today’s cul-
ture of connectivity,
an internet of

lack of interest. Undeterred, the Cambridge Crucifixion (1556) from things connects us
researchers trawled through archives and col- the celebrated workshop to our household
lections across Italy, steering away from the of Giacomo Mancini to a appliances. Has
great Renaissance centres of Florence, Rome civilisation
and Venice and focusing on the Marche, the Standing Virgin and Child advanced? You
Venetian terra firma and the area around c.1350–1450 have to wonder.

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 21

T H E AT R E
Timely revivals
Making death life-affirming
M A R K L AWS O N
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
HAROLD PINTER THEATRE, LONDON
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
OLD VIC, LONDON
P
LAYS SOMETIMES make such an
impact that even non-theatregoers
will know the title. The 1960s threw
up two – Edward Albee’s Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tom Stoppard’s
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead –
new productions of which opened within 48
hours of each other last week.
Beyond the plays’ similar vintage, the pair-
ing is also neat because critical views of both
plays have matured. The Stoppard was initially
considered a concoction of literary and philo-
sophical jokes arising from placing centre
stage two insignificant courtiers from Hamlet;
the Albee was thought to be a savage comedy
of marital dysfunction and alcoholism among
academics. It is now clear that the dramatists
used these situations to explore the strategies
that humans employ to get through life under
the shadow of death.
An emotionally gruelling three-hour tragedy
is not an obvious West End hot ticket, but
James Macdonald’s revival has become so
because Martha, trapped in a combative mar-
riage with a failed history teacher, is played
by Imelda Staunton, the supreme stage actress
of the moment after her performance in
Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy.
Martha demands an operatic range, emo-
tionally and vocally. In her conversations with
her husband George (Conleth Hill) and the
MUS IC
Impressions of paradise
Excellent Elgar
R IC K JON E S
The Dream of Gerontius, Hallé Orchestra
BRIDGEWATER HALL, MANCHESTER
N
EWMAN’S POETIC VISION of
death was the tumultuous conclu-
sion to Manchester’s four-day Elgar
Festival. The mighty ensemble of
the venerable 159-year-old Hallé Orchestra
with its choir and youth choir, rose in ritual
deference as the principal conductor Sir Mark
Elder took the stage and after a solemn pause
summoned the overture’s opening solitary
melody from violas, clarinets and bassoons.
The sad beauty of this line in the hall’s cool
twenty-first-century acoustic inspired the
entire evening: individual colours shone
22 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
ARTS
PHOTO: JOHAN PERSSON
OPERATIC: Imelda Staunton as Martha in
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
younger campus couple, Nick and Honey,
with whom they play a series of dangerous
verbal games, she ranges from big momma
to little girl: authoritarian, seductive or sub-
missive, depending on her goal. Staunton hits
every note. Hill magnificently meets the chal-
lenge of George, which is to suggest enough
of the wit and intelligence that won Martha’s
love, but also the brutality and mediocrity
that make her hate him.
Albee’s play belongs to a key line of American
dramas that present the “American dream” of
prosperity and moral purity as a consoling lie.
George twice screams at Martha to distinguish
between “truth and illusion”. This warning
had resonance when the play was premiered
during the Kennedy presidency, but has even
through and at key moments the organ
coursed its cathedral tone into the ensemble
from its gleaming panoply of silver pipes.
Young tenor David Butt Philip sang old
Gerontius with compelling presence. His high
announcement that he was near to death
gripped the hall with its calm serenity. Here
was no rage against the dying light but ready
acceptance, fear suppressed. His thinned tone
rode Elgar’s magical chord to express perfectly
Newman’s “strange innermost abandonment”
and his anxious crescendo for the “dire sum-
mons” over the orchestra’s urgent tread
quickened the pulse. His one slight throaty
crackle on the glottal stop of “adoration” added
to the tension. One’s heart went out to him.
The chorus’ unaccompanied Kyrie had a
magical ghostliness and for such a vast throng
their chanted list of Old Testament heroes
was synchronised precisely. As Demons, their
crisp diction was tested to the limit as Elder
took the Low-born clods movement a notch
too fast and the sneering “ha ha” slurred dis-
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more kick during the Trump administration.
Staunton and Hill, surely destined for awards,
are the acting equivalent of an Ali-Frazier
heavyweight boxing bout.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
also looks in great fighting shape in a revival
on the Old Vic stage where it was first seen
in 1967. Apart from the play’s fame, another
draw is Daniel Radcliffe, impressively con-
tinuing the extension of his post-Harry Potter
career into theatre, as Rosencrantz, the dim-
mer and more trusting of the title characters.
Stoppard’s backlist includes After Magritte,
theatricalising the Belgian artist’s trick-of-
eye images, and director David Leveaux and
designer Anna Fleischle seem to take their
cue from this in a production filled with
Magrittean repeating and receding images.
As the characters Stoppard imports from
Hamlet include the troupe of travelling players,
we are sometimes watching a play within a
play within a play within a play. And, when
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in this version,
suddenly catch sight of us in the stalls, yet
another layer of subtext is added.
The play’s detractors have accused it of
having more head than heart, but the key
word in the title is the last one. A clever game
with Shakespeare it might be, but the drama-
tist had a father who, like the Prince of
Denmark’s, had been murdered: killed by
the Japanese in Singapore, from where the
infant Tom had been evacuated by ship to
India. The playwright later discovered his
dad had drowned at sea, while attempting
to escape by boat.
These biographical details make it hard to
view the final act of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead as an entirely cerebral
exercise. Emphasising the text’s obsession
with mortality, this production shows, like
the new Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, that
deadly issues can be life-affirming when tack-
led by great writers and actors.
appointingly. There was no time to dwell on
Newman’s ironic cynicism that a saint is noth-
ing but “a bundle of bones which fools adore”.
Gerontius dies in the interval between the
two halves. Here there was too short a pause.
Elder remained on stage when he might have
chaperoned on mezzo Sasha Cooke whose
entry as the angel starts the second half. She
sang with effortless power and low compas-
sionate warmth her dialogue with Gerontius,
ushering him before the Judge Eternal.
Bass-baritone Iain Paterson sang the bit-
parts of the priest and the angel of the agony
with a hint of pomposity for the former and
jobsworth perfunctoriness the latter. His is a
difficult task after the extraordinary climax of
the work when the full choir sings Newman’s
great hymn “Praise to the Holiest”. To a last
chord of emphatic certainty, Elder called for
more volume as he raised his tremulous arms
like wings and took on the appearance of an
angel himself. The few sins were forgiven and
for a moment, we glimpsed heaven.

DIGITAL The Treasures of Timbuktu How the city with one of the most famous names in the world saved its cultural
ARTS treasures from jihadis in 2012 http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/065334-000-A/the-treasures-of-timbuktu
CINEMA
Domestic fault lines
High drama worthy of Hitchcock
A N T HON Y QUI N N
The Salesman
DIRECTOR: ASGHAR FARHADI
A
SGHAR FARHADI, the Iranian
director, unfolds his intricate moral
thrillers with the precision of a
bomb disposal expert. The audience
watches in fear of the plot going off in its
face. Farhadi is best known for A Separation,
an Oscar winner in 2012, though I rated the
one before, About Elly, even higher. Like
those films, The Salesman peeks beneath an
apparently sturdy middle-class unit to find
hairline cracks and flaws, partly the result of
its uneasy relationship with a repressive gov-
ernment. Those cracks become alarmingly
physical in the film’s opening scene as a quak-
ing Tehran apartment building is evacuated
in panic: the construction diggers next door
have undermined its foundations.
Among the fleeing occupants are a married
couple, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana
(Taraneh Alidoosti), the lead actors in a pro-
duction of Arthur Miller’s Death of a
Salesman. One of the cast recommends them
an apartment to rent, and the couple move
in. “For once it looks like we’re in luck,” says
Emad, speaking too soon. One day the buzzer
goes and Rana, thinking it is Emad with the
groceries, unlocks the door and steps back
into the bathroom. It is not him. (The shot
of that half-open door is as sinister as anything
in Hitchcock.) When Emad returns he finds
blood on the stairs and the floor; he goes to
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ARTS
WRENCHING:
Taraneh Alidoosti as
Rana answers a
knock on her door
the hospital, where Rana is in trauma, having
her brow stitched from an unspecified assault.
What exactly has happened? She will not talk
about it, and getting the authorities involved
is risky; so Emad is left with only his festering
suspicions for comfort.
Farhadi stokes the mood of dread by filming
in tight corners and enclosed spaces. The film
plays on the precarious nature of “home”, not
in the punitive way of a Michael Haneke film,
but in subtle increments that are no less excru-
ciating. It transpires that the apartment’s
previous tenant entertained “clients”, one of
whom may have stumbled on Rana by mis-
take. That is what Emad believes, and baulked
by Rana – both terrified and taciturn – he
pursues his own scheme of vengeance.
But as gripping as the plot becomes, what
resonates more is the picture of a marriage
slowly starting to unravel. The engine of this
estrangement is something we hardly
encounter any more in Western cinema,
though it still looms large in a country like
Iran. It is shame tearing this couple apart –
for her because she has suffered an assault
that is whispered about by the neighbours,
for him because his role of manly protector
has been thwarted. His anguish finds bitter
expression on stage as Willy Loman, another
husband who failed his wife.
Hosseini, a marvel of brooding, compacted
fury as Emad, takes the acting honours,
though Alidoosti and Farid Sajjadi Hosseini,
in a small but key performance, are hardly
less moving. The way this trio play out the
denouement is wrenching, and tense almost
beyond endurance. At times I had to remind
myself to keep breathing. The Salesman,
already an Academy Award winner for Best
Foreign Film, will surely be one of the great
movies of this year.
PHOTO: SENANI P
R A DIO
Putting theory into practice
Thunderous finale in the north
D. J . TAY LOR
The Ferryhill Philosophers
BBC RADIO 4
T
HE FIRST instalment of Michael
Chaplin’s latest despatch from
Ferryhill, County Durham (14 March)
stirred welcome memories of Peter
Flannery’s mid-1990s television saga Our
Friends in the North. Not only did it feature
Alun Armstrong as Joe, the ex-miner who
enjoys ruminative chats with posh philoso-
phy-lecturing Hermione (Deborah Findlay),
but also Gina McKee in the role of his old
friend Isabel, last seen 25 years back, but
returning with some deeply upsetting news.
The Ferryhill format relies on a sudden
acceleration from theoretical to practical in
which the abstract good sense generally
expounded by Hermione is forced to assume
a human focus. Isabel, it turned out, needed
Joe’s help with what Hermione rightly
described as “an ethical dilemma of a most
shattering kind” – nothing less than the cycling
accident that, seven years ago, had left her
“golden boy” Danny in a vegetative coma from
which he would never emerge.
With the question of why exactly Joe was
the man to sort out the life of a woman he
had last seen a quarter of a century ago, the
drama moved on to the conflict between Isabel
and her husband Gordon. But while the for-
mer (“This isn’t disability … This is
devastation”) yearned for an end to Danny’s
plight, the latter had experienced a religious
conversion and believed steadfastly that
human life of any kind was sacred.
As is her wont in these situations, Hermione
quoted Locke, suggested that a “person” had
more rights than a “being”, and provided logis-
tical support by driving Joe to his meeting
with Danny’s dad. Or rather, not Danny’s dad,
as the alert listener may already have deduced.
Isabel, we learned, had walked back into Joe’s
life on the grounds that decisions about Danny
could only be taken by his biological parents.
All this made for a thunderous finale in
which the staginess that usually accompanies
the sound of philosophers expostulating was
cancelled out by the sheer vigour of the per-
formances. Armstrong and McKee were on
top form and the scene in which Hermione
accused Isabel of shifting her responsibilities
on to Joe fairly crackled with tension. If the
ending confounded certain expectations while
confirming others, then it also advertised one
of The Ferryhill Philosophers’ most attractive
features – the sense of characters adding extra
dimensions to themselves from one episode
to the next.
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 23

The leaders of the Catholic and
Protestant Churches in
Germany, Cardinal Reinhard
Marx (above right) and Bishop
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
(above left), celebrated an
ecumenical service of
Repentance and Reconciliation
at Hildesheim on 11 March with
German political leaders.
The service is seen as one of
the most important joint
celebrations in the Reformation
Year, marking its 500th
anniversary, and a milestone in
ecumenical relations.
The celebration at St
Michael’s Church marked the
end of the “Healing of
Memories” process of recent
years. Both Church leaders
spoke of the “burden of our
divisions and separation” and
the “present signs of a
reconciled togetherness”. The
service was attended by
Chancellor Angela Merkel,
President Joachim Gauck, and
Bundestag President Norbert
Lammert. The celebration at
Hildesheim was “almost a
miracle”, Mr Gauck said.
Death penalty reimposed
The Catholic Church in The
Philippines said it was “in
mourning” after the country’s
House of Representatives
approved a plan to reimpose
capital punishment for drug-
related and other crimes. The
bishops had led opposition to
the move, which was supported
by President Rodrigo Duterte.
The bill still requires Senate
approval before the President
can sign it into law.
For daily news updates
on the top stories, visit
www.thetablet.co.uk
24 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
NEWS BRIEFING
T H E C H U RC H I N T H E WO R L D
Bishops issue chaos warning
The bishops of the Democratic
Republic of Congo are warning
that rising violence and political
unrest are threatening the
nation with “unravelling and
chaos”. In a statement, they
lamented the “thousands” who
had lost their lives in recent
months, including many
children enlisted by various
militias, and expressed concern
that the crisis might trigger a
famine. An accord signed on 31
December 2016, brokered by
the bishops’ conference, paved
the way for presidential
elections later this year, with
President Joseph Kabila due to
end his 16-year rule and not
pursue an unconstitutional
third term in office. The bishops
fear that the growing number of
violent attacks on church
property and personnel reflect
resentment at the Church’s role
in brokering the accord.
‘Obamacare’ plea
Four committee chairmen at the
United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops published a
letter sent to all members of
Congress, urging the legislators
to consider “moral criteria” as
they begin debating legislation
to repeal and replace the
Affordable Care Act, known as
Obamacare. The bishops called
for legislation that demonstrates
“respect for life and dignity”,
protects conscience rights,
provides “access to all” and
makes health care truly
affordable, comprehensive and
high-quality. The placing of
conscience rights above
universal access in the list of
concerns reflects the USCCB’s
long fight with the Obama
administration about a mandate
rule requiring all employers,
including Catholic institutions,
to provide insurance coverage
for contraception. The Trump
administration has not
rescinded that rule so far. The
current proposal in Congress
prohibits “direct spending” of
federal money on any
“prohibited entity”, including
those that provide abortions for
anything other than a risk to the
life of the mother, incest, or
rape. This prohibition would
seem to include major abortion
provider Planned Parenthood.
The bill, the American Health
Care Act, replaces federal
insurance subsidies with a new
form of individual tax credits
and monetary grants to help
states shape their own policies.
Bishops in South Korea have
urged their country to strive for
harmony and stability following
the news last week that scandal-
hit President Park Geun-hye
(pictured) had been forced from
office after judges unanimously
upheld the decision of
parliament to impeach her.
Bishops’ conference president
Archbishop Hyginus Kim Hee-
jong said: “We should now build
a stable country through
harmony and we need to
overcome the confrontation and
tension among Koreans.”
Josef Mayr-Nusser will today
be beatified in Bolzano
Cathedral, Italy. Mayr-Nusser,
(pictured with his wife,
Hildegard), was killed as a
consequence of his refusal to
swear the military oath of
loyalty to Hitler when he was
forcibly conscripted into the
German army in 1944. He was
ordered to be transported to
Dachau, where he was to be
shot, but, much weakened by
prison starvation and feverish
with dysentery, he died on 24
February at Erlangen, in the
cattle wagon taking him there.
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
His feast day will be 3 October.
Pax Christi Italy and the
Bolzano Centro per la Pace are
involved in various events to
celebrate the beatification.
A top Polish Church leader has
criticised his country’s centre-
right Government for opposing
last week’s re-election of
Donald Tusk as European
Council president, and urged it
to uphold its European Union
commitments. “His re-election
expresses the trust felt for him
by EU heads of state,” said
Archbishop Henryk Muszynski,
Poland’s former Catholic
primate. “During the voting, we
observed Europe standing in
solidarity against the Polish
Government’s stance – if our
Government is isolated today,
this shouldn’t mean Poland and
the Poles are isolated.” The
Eurosceptic Government of
Prime Minister Beata Szydlo
has threatened to disrupt EU
business after failing to gain
support against Mr Tusk.
Mining ban urged
On 9 March the Catholic
Church held a demonstration in
San Salvador calling on the
Legislative Assembly to support
a government bill to ban
metallic mining in El
Salvador. San Salvador
Archbishop Jose Escobar Alas
spoke at the march and warned
that the country’s mining law
was obsolete and El Salvador
was vulnerable to exploitation.
European Church leaders have
condemned a vote by
Hungarian MPs to tighten
their country’s asylum law,
forcing all asylum seekers into
detention camps. Cardinal
Rainer Woelki of Cologne said:
“After the distressing expulsions
of the Second World War, I
didn’t expect something so
inhuman to happen in Europe”.
The German cardinal was
reacting to the law,
overwhelmingly adopted in the
Budapest parliament, under
which all refugees will be held in
a border transit zone while their
asylum requests are processed.
Hungary’s Bishops’ Conference
declined to discuss the new law
at its 7-8 March plenary. 
Compiled by James Roberts

The doomsayers say the Church is dying and has no future. In a way they are right – but only half right.
Parramatta’s Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen speaking at the Rite of Election in his cathedral (see page 26)
EAST AFRICA, NIGERIA, YEMEN / Conflicts and drought reduce populations to starvation level
Church agencies
respond as famine
threatens 20 million
ELLEN TEAGUE
and JAMES ROBERTS
THE UNITED Nations says the
world is facing the largest human-
itarian crisis since the end of the
Second World War, with starva-
tion and famine threatening more
than 20 million people in Nigeria,
East Africa and Yemen.
UN humanitarian chief
Stephen O’Brien said last week
that US$4.4 billion (£3.6bn) was
needed by the end of March to
avert disaster.
The 14m people facing food
insecurity – or an inability to get
enough good, nutritious food – in
Yemen, are suffering because of
the civil war between the
Government, backed by Saudi
Arabia, which has bought billions
MYANMAR
Bo defends Aung San Suu Kyi Francis to visit Bogotà – and
over Rohingya crackdown maybe Cairo
MYANMAR’S cardinal has
defended his country’s de facto
leader Aung San Suu Kyi from
international critics who say she
has failed to speak out against a
violent crackdown on Myanmar’s
Rohingya minority by the coun-
try’s military, writes Ellen Teague.
Cardinal Charles Bo, Arch -
bishop of Yangon, told The Tablet
at last Saturday’s Flame 2017
youth gathering, where he was a
keynote speaker, that when he
met Ms Suu Kyi in February, she
took the view that the interna-
tional community was focusing
too much on the Rohingya situ-
ation when the country faced so
many problems.
“Of course, she does not deny
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
NEWS
• QUOTE OF THE WEEK•
of pounds of arms from Britain,
and Houthi rebels, supported to
a greater or lesser extent by Iran.
The plight of the 4.9m people
on the edge of starvation in South
Sudan is a result of the tribally
based civil war between President
Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and
his dismissed vice-president, Riek
Machar, an ethnic Nuer.
The 1.8m people facing food
security in northeast Nigeria are
going hungry as a result of the
activities of the Islamist militant
group Boko Haram.
Instability and insecurity caused
by the al-Shabaab Islamist mili-
tant group, combined with a
drought that has killed livestock
and crops, means that 2.9m
Somalis are immediately threat-
ened by famine, including more
there is a problem with the
Rohingyas, and she is trying to
take steps to resolve that situation,
but she is moving in a cautious
way,” the cardinal said. He felt
there was insufficient interna-
tional appreciation of the power
the military still wields in
Buddhist-majority Myanmar. “She
cannot just give a command to
the military to stop war,” he said.   Medellin, Cartagena and
It has been reported that a
recent army offensive has killed
hundreds of Rohingya ethnic
Muslims, including children, while
50,000 people have fled to
Bangladesh. The UN has accused
the security forces of serious
human rights abuses including
gang rape and serious beatings.
than 363,000 children who are
acutely malnourished.
Cafod and other agencies in
Britain have launched emergency
appeals for South Sudan, Somalia
and Yemen, as well as for Kenya
and Ethiopia, both affected by
severe drought. Cafod’s Director
Chris Bain (pictured) said on
Monday that “vulnerable people
in East Africa are now on the
brink of starvation”. He added:
“We have been working over the
long term with our partners in
some of the worst-hit areas but
have reached a point where we
need more support to help
communities facing
severe hunger.”
The agency’s Head
of Africa, Fergus
Conmee, who recently
visited South Sudan,
said: “Hunger is evident
in the thinness of chil-
dren, the blindness of many
men and women, the way clothes
hang from bodies of people
already suffering and the weary
looks of people who know that
over the next six months things
are only going to get worse for
them and their families.”
COLOMBIA
POPE FRANCIS will visit
Colombia from 6 to 11 September,
following a peace agreement
between the Government and the
FARC rebel group, writes Martha
Pskowski. President Juan Manuel
Santos said the Pope was travelling
to the country to help “in building
the peace.” He will arrive in the
capital, Bogotà, and will visit
Villavicencio on the five-day trip.
The announcement was made on
Friday last week at a press con-
ference with the President and a
number of senior bishops.
Archbishop Ettore Balestrero,
the Nuncio to Colombia, said that
Pope Francis “wants to come
together with Colombians, those
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 25
Christian Aid’s Mohamed Adow
blamed climate change for the cri-
sis. “Across the Horn of Africa
we’re seeing what happens when
temperatures rise and rainfall
becomes more erratic,” he told The
Tablet. “This is the human face of
climate change and we can expect
more of this in future if nothing
is done to tackle it”. He called for
“a dual response of providing
emergency humanitarian assis-
tance to save lives right now but
also address the causes of this cri-
sis by tackling climate change”.
The Kenyan Government has
declared the drought a
national disaster, affect-
ing more than 2m
people in the north of
the country.
Tearfund reports
that Ethiopia is cur-
rently in the worst
drought for 50 years,
with over 10.2m people
needing food assistance. Harvests
have failed and the water sources
are drying up.
The 13 agencies, combined in
the Disasters Emergency Com-
mittee, have already raised £20m
for the Yemen emergency.
who live in cities and those in the
countryside, who have a different
culture and different necessities.”
The Catholic Church has played
an important role in Colombia’s
peace process, to end a decades-
long conflict with the FARC rebels.
The Vatican has also confirmed
that a papal trip to Egypt is under
consideration, but that no dates
or itinerary have been finalised.
The statement came after Italy’s
state-run RAI reported Francis
would visit Cairo’s al-Azhar uni-
versity on 20-21 May. The Vatican
and al-Azhar recently restored
relations that the university sev-
ered in 2011 over comments by
then-Pope Benedict XVI on the
plight of Christians in Egypt.

GERMANY
Francis considers ordination
of ‘proven married men’
CHRISTA PONGRATZ-LIPPITT
IN HIS FIRST interview with a
German newspaper, Pope Francis
admitted that the lack of vocations
to the priesthood was an “enor-
mous” problem, which ordaining
proven married men might help
to solve.
“The problem is the lack of
vocations, a problem that the
Church must solve. Making
celibacy voluntary has often been
proposed but voluntary celibacy
is not a solution. We must think
about whether [ordaining] viri
probati is one possibility; but that
also means discussing what tasks
they could take on in remote
areas,” Francis told Giovanni di
Lorenzo, the editor of the German
weekly Die Zeit, in a 4,000-word
interview published on 9 March.
“In many communities at the
moment,” he added, “committed
women are preserving Sunday as
AUSTRALIA
Pro-life TV advertisement ruled ‘political’
MARK BROLLY / in Melbourne
ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S three com-
mercial free-to-air television
networks has expressed concern
about a ruling that an advertise-
ment produced by a Christian
group, directing viewers to an
anti-abortion website, is a political
advertisement.
The Australian Communi-
cations and Media Authority
(ACMA) has ruled that Network
Ten’s Perth licensee breached the
Broadcasting Services Act 1992
by not broadcasting the “required
particulars” of a person or organ-
isation behind a “political” ad, in
this case Emily’s Voice – an asso-
ciated ministry of the evangelical
Toowoomba City Church in
Queensland – for the advertise-
ment for its “notbornyet”
campaign on 7 September 2016.
The ad, broadcast only in Perth,
featured a man talking about how
26 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
NEWS
T H E C H U RC H I N T H E WO R L D
Francis in Rome’s St Magdalene
of Canossa parish on Sunday
a day of worship by holding serv-
ices of the Word but a Church
without the Eucharist has no
strength.”
Di Lorenzo recalled that
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi had
recently told KNA that he thought
the diaconate for women was a
possibility, and asked the Pope
whether Ravasi had “coordinated”
with him [Francis] beforehand.
Francis said he would explain
in detail what had happened.
he had coped with fathering seven
children, despite his initial fears,
and encouraging viewers to visit
the notbornyet.com website. The
ad featured all the family mem-
bers  smiling as each held
ultrasound images of unborn
babies towards the camera.
The Emily’s Voice website says
it aims “to be responsible for sig-
nificantly reducing the abortion
rate in Australia without shaming
and condemning women, regard-
less of the choice they make”.
n A leading Australian bishop has
said that the three-week “wrap-up”
hearing of the Royal Commission
into institutional responses to child
sexual abuse – and in particular the
final public hearing into the Catholic
Church – was “a threshold moment
and a transition point of profound
significance for the Church in this
country”, writes Mark Brolly.
At his meeting with the
International Union of Superiors,
in May 2016, one Superior had
suggested that a commission be
set up to study the women’s dia-
conate in the Early Church in
order to find out whether women
deacons were ordained or not and
what sort of work they did.
He, Francis, had agreed that
this would be a good opportunity
to study the subject. He had then
chosen people for the commission
from two lists, one from the
Superior who had made the sug-
gestion and the other from the
Prefect of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal
Gerhard Müller. “I chose people
who I thought were the most
open and the most competent. It
is a matter of studying the subject
and not of opening a door,” the
Pope underlined.
Up to now, he went on, the
commission had found that in the
A submission by the broad-
caster to ACMA said: “There are
many circumstances where a dis-
cussion around pregnancy
termination is not political.
Advising couples or women on
the options available when con-
fronted with an unplanned
pregnancy is not and should not
be seen as inherently political.”
But ACMA said the Emily’s
Voice advertisement “may be char-
acterised as attempting to
influence public opinion on the
Parramatta’s Bishop Vincent Long
Van Nguyen said: “The doomsayers
would say that the Church is dying
and there is no future at all for it. I
happen to think that they are right –
but only half right. Yes, the Church is
dying; it needs to die to that which is
unworthy of Christ. It is also rising
again to new life and to what Christ
calls it to be: a sacrament of God’s
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Early Church women deacons
had helped at baptisms, at the
anointing of women who were
sick and “if a woman complained
to her bishop that she had been
beaten by her husband, the bishop
sent a woman deacon to examine
the woman’s bruises”. Francis said
he planned to call in on the next
commission meeting and inform
himself on how the matter stood.
Francis also explained that he
did not consider Cardinal
Raymond Burke an adversary.
Earlier this year the Pope side-
lined Burke as patron of the
Knights of Malta by re-instating
a Grand Chancellor whose
removal Burke had supported.
“I have not taken away his title
of Patron. It is a matter of clearing
things in the Order up a little and
that is why I sent a delegate who
has a different charism to Burke,”
Francis said.
The bishops’ conference pres-
ident, Cardinal Reinhard Marx,
said he thought Francis was
thinking of ordaining proven
married men for remote areas like
the Amazon Rain Forest where
the priest shortage was “extreme”
and Catholics could only receive
the Eucharist once a year or so.
formulation of public policy about
abortion as part of the political
process, in conjunction with a
social message about the option
of continuing an unwanted preg-
nancy”. ACMA claimed that “a key
purpose of the ad was to promote
the aims and objectives of Emily’s
Voice and to change people’s views
about abortion”. Political ads must
include the name of the person
who authorised it, the location of
its office and the name of every
speaker in the ad.
presence and love in the world.”
He was preaching at the Rite of
Election at his cathedral in western
Sydney, St Patrick’s, earlier this
month. The bishop added: “The
history of imperial Christendom
shows that power, dominance,
privilege, control and clericalism has
characterised our attitudes and
practices more than service.”

GUATEMALA
Girls die in
children’s
home protest
THE POPE HAS expressed his “closeness
to the people of Guatemala” after a fire
in a youth shelter run by the
Guatemalan Government claimed the
lives of at least 40 teenage girls and left
many others critically ill in hospital on 8
March, writes Martha Pskowski.
There had been allegations of sexual
abuse at the overcrowded shelter and
there was concern over poor conditions.
The federal welfare ministry operated
the Virgin of Assumption “Safe Home”
in the town of San José Pinula, outside
Guatemala City, for children aged
between 14 and 17 who have suffered
abuse or been abandoned. The shelter,
that also reportedly operated as a
juvenile detention centre, was built to
house 400, but many hundreds more
teenagers were said to be living there.
The home has been closed temporarily.
Police say a group that had been isolated
as a punishment protested by setting fire
to mattresses, starting the blaze.
ROME
Collins rebukes
Cardinal Müller
A CLERICAL sexual abuse survivor has
launched a stinging rebuke to a cardinal
who denied his department resisted the
work of a papal child protection
commission, writes Christopher
Lamb. Marie Collins resigned from Pope
Francis’ safeguarding body in frustration
at what she described as resistance from
inside the Vatican, with opposition
coming mainly from the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the CDF
prefect, hit back in an interview with
Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera
saying that he “couldn’t understand” the
claim about his department not co-
operating. But in a letter published this
week by the National Catholic Reporter,
Ms Collins states that it took more than
a year before the CDF started to engage
with the commission. She also criticised
the cardinal’s assertion that a structure
for the CDF to hold bishops who cover
up abuse accountable was only a
“project”, pointing to a June 2015
statement from the Pope authorising the
establishment of a new panel.  still raw and the Irish embassy to the Holy
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VIEW FROM
ROME
Christopher Lamb
E
ARLIER IN THE DAY there had been
a cool breeze, but by mid-afternoon
Rome was basking in spring sun-
shine, allowing a brilliant white light
to stream through Bernini’s window of the
Holy Spirit in St Peter’s Basilica as the choir
of Merton College, Oxford, began singing the
introit to evensong. Catholic and Church of
England clergy processed in together to the
hymn “O Praise ye the Lord” before taking
their seats at the altar beneath the throne of
St Peter, the wooden chair used, according to
tradition, by the first Bishop of Rome.  planned. One Rome source described the
This was history in the making. For the first
time, an Anglican liturgy was being celebrated
at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church.
In his sermon the Yorkshire-born Archbishop
Arthur Roche, secretary of the Vatican’s liturgy
department, told us that the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit symbolised by the dove
depicted in the window above them breaks
down barriers so that “the unthinkable can
be made possible”.  though he had been a close collaborator of
A few years ago it would have been unthink-
able to celebrate a liturgy written by the
English Reformation’s hero Thomas Cranmer
in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet on Monday a 300-strong congregation
of Anglican visitors, Catholic clergy, seminar-
ians and diplomats stood next to the tombs
of popes singing “Dear Lord and Father of
Mankind” and reciting prayers from the 1662
Book of Common Prayer.
Such a quintessentially English liturgy cel-
ebrated in Rome could have felt strange but
it didn’t. Much credit must go to Archbishop
David Moxon, director of Rome’s Anglican
Centre, who had been given special permission
to hold the service in St Peter’s. A New
Zealander who studied theology at Oxford,
Archbishop Moxon’s courteous and scholarly
approach has helped build bridges with the
Vatican since he arrived almost four years
ago. Monday’s service took place the day after
the feast of St Gregory the Great – the Pope
who sent Augustine of Canterbury to evan-
gelise England – is marked by Anglicans
(Catholics celebrate the feast on 3 September)
and concluded with a procession to Gregory’s
tomb. The event was also a reciprocal gesture
after Australian Cardinal George Pell had
been allowed to celebrate Mass at the high
altar of Canterbury Cathedral last July. Pell
was there on Monday, his flowing robes adding
a dramatic flash of scarlet to proceedings.
A
RCHBISHOP Charles Brown was
sent to Dublin in 2012 at an all-
time low point in the Vatican’s
relationship with Ireland, with feel-
ings over the clerical sexual abuse scandal
See closed. The last five years have seen the
New York-born ambassador working hard to
mend fences with the Government while mak-
ing regular visits to parishes and schools across
the country. His work has paid off: Ireland’s
embassy to the Vatican has been reopened
and the Pope is to visit Ireland next year. 
But last week Francis announced that his
nuncio to Ireland was being transferred to
Albania, a reshuffle that surprised some, given
that papal ambassadors are rarely moved
when a scheduled visit from their boss is being
move as “bizarre”, and others have been asking:
“What did Charlie do wrong?” While there
are some sensitive issues to be tackled in the
Albania post, it’s hard to see the new appoint-
ment as anything other than a demotion. 
Is Archbishop Brown’s previous job as an
official at the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith (CDF) a clue? He had no diplo-
matic experience before he was sent to Dublin,
Pope Benedict XVI, the former prefect of the
CDF. The Redemptorist priest Tony
Flannery – who has had his own run-ins with
Archbishop Brown’s old comrades at the doc-
trine watchdog – criticised the outgoing papal
ambassador for declining to meet reform-
minded groups in Ireland and for a lack of
consultation in the appointment of bishops. 
S
T FRANCIS of Assisi was always look-
ing for innovative ways of spreading
the Gospel and was famous for preach-
ing to the birds. Today, his successors
are looking to bring Good News to the digital
world with a new website and a revamp of
their internal administration on the Google
Cloud Platform – a way of sharing data and
information within a worldwide organisation.
The Franciscans unveiled their new “digital
media vision” at their Rome headquarters
last Friday. Friars in brown habits tapped
away on iPads while talking about the digital
revolution. The gathering was attended by
the Minister General of the Order of Friars
Minor, Br Michael Perry, who urged all mem-
bers of his order to use new media tools to
serve their mission while afterwards a Lenten-
sized glass of the Franciscans’ own sparkling
white wine was raised to digital success. 
The order’s digital revamp has been led by
Matthew Saunders, a Canadian tech expert
whose company Longbeard Creative has been
helping a number of religious orders and a
Vatican department with their online strate-
gies. Their services are so much in demand
that they’ve recently relocated to Rome. 
“The Church never has a content problem,”
Saunders explained. “But sometimes it has a
marketing one.”
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 27

A leading Scottish politician has
revealed plans to “chip away” at
Catholic education. Tommy
Sheppard (above), SNP MP for
Edinburgh East, was recorded
at a Humanist Society Scotland
(HSS) fringe event at the 2016
SNP Conference saying that he
wanted to end mandatory
representation by faith groups
on local authority education
committees and that he wanted
to help achieve a completely
secular school system in
Scotland. A church spokesman
described the MP’s comments,
made in support of HSS’s
“Enlighten Up” campaign, as
“chillingly intolerant”.
Mr Sheppard advocated an
accumulation of “little victories”,
and a move next to a situation
where humanists would
advocate against religion
defining “the value system in the
school”. He told the Sunday
Herald that his comments had
been taken out of context and
that at no stage did he criticise
Catholic schools. The SNP
spokesperson said that the
views expressed at the fringe
meeting were personal to Mr
Sheppard and did not represent
the position of the party or the
Scottish Government.
The BBC’s Songs of Praise will
be produced by two external
independent production
companies, after the new
charter agreement led the
network to outsource more of its
output to competitive tender.
Avanti Media and Nine Lives
Media will produce the
programme for three years.
Fatima Salaria, the BBC’s
commissioning editor, religion
and ethics, said Songs of Praise
remained the BBC’s flagship
religious programme. The
Bishop of Norwich, Graham
James, told the Daily Mail that
he feared the decision would be
28 | THE TABLET | 18 MARCH 2017
NEWS BRIEFING
F R O M B R I TA I N A N D I R E L A N D
“another nail in the coffin of our
religious literacy as a nation”.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols has
said that Pope Francis is correct
in not responding to four
cardinals who submitted a
dubia or request, calling for
clarification on Amoris Laetitia.
In an interview with America
magazine, he said such a
response would amount to
applying a law, which he
believes the Pope is trying to
avoid, rather than responding
to people to help them in their
journey to God. The cardinal
said his archdiocese is still
considering how to implement
Amoris Laetitia, which appears
to open the way for
Communion for divorced and
remarried Catholics.
Praising Malta’s bishops’
guidelines, which move in that
direction, Cardinal Nichols said
there should be a willingness
from ministers to journey with a
divorced and remarried
Catholic seeking Communion
and a willingness on the
believer’s part to acknowledge
that he or she is not living in
accordance with church
teaching. Calling Pope Francis
“one of the toughest people I’ve
ever met”, the cardinal said that
although the Pope was being
met with resistance to his efforts
to reform church bureaucracy
he would not be diverted. “By
‘tough’, I mean his work regime
is astonishing. If he’s got
something in his mind and he
thinks it’s right, he’s not going to
waiver this way and that. He’s
immensely patient but clear.
He’s clear. When he decides, he
decides,” he said.
Around 10,000 young people
and their youth leaders, along
with several diocesan bishops,
packed the Wembley SSE Arena
in London last Saturday for the
Flame 2017 gathering,
organised by the Catholic Youth
Ministry Federation.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols
delivered a message from Pope
Francis, who said that he hoped
that “Flame 2017 may foster a
greater zeal within all of you to
be witnesses to Christ’s love in
the community”. Cardinal
Charles Bo from Myanmar was
warmly received when he urged
the young people to “carry the
flame of hope” in today’s world,
countering hate and violence.
Flame participants were told
that “anyone helping refugees is
doing God’s work”.
Abuse inquiry setback
Scotland’s child abuse inquiry
has undergone a further setback
after a leaked email revealed
that the Scottish Government
was at “serious risk” of missing a
crucial deadline. In an internal
email a senior civil servant
warned that if no staff could be
found to service the Scottish
Government’s part of the
inquiry, the deadline would be
missed, “with consequential
reputational loss for ministers,
and a potential loss of credibility
with key stakeholders in the
inquiry itself ”. The inquiry,
which is due to report in 2019, is
investigating historical
allegations of child abuse at
more than 60 large institutions
in Scotland including a number
run by the Catholic Church, as
well as some top private schools.
The three-day Spring General
Meeting of the Irish Catholic
Bishops’ Conference at St
Patrick’s College, Maynooth,
County Kildare, covered issues
including the Citizens’ Assembly
on abortion, the World Meeting
of Families 2018, justice and
peace in Northern Ireland, the
2017 Trócaire Lenten campaign
and famine and conflicts across
central Africa and the Yemen, as
well as mother and baby homes.
Labour MP for Kingston upon
Hull North Diana Johnson has
won the right to introduce a bill
to parliament which would
decriminalise abortion by
repealing a law that dates back
to Victorian times. The 10-
minute rule bill, which was
tabled this week, succeeded by
172 votes for and 142 against. If
passed, the Reproductive
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
Health (Access to Terminations)
Bill will, according to its critics,
deregulate abortion and make it
easier to have abortions after
the current 24-week limit,
whatever the reason. Ms
Johnson said that the bill would
protect women currently
threatened with criminal
punishment for having
abortions illegally, that is
without the consent of two
doctors. Pro-life charity Life’s
education director Anne
Scanlan urged MPs to act now
to stop the bill. “One can only
imagine the operational and
procedural free-for-all, placing
the health and safety of women
at risk, if legal restrictions are
totally removed,” she said.
PHOTO: BEN PATEY
Seven nuns from the Carmelite
Monastery in Ware,
Hertfordshire, became unlikely
celebrities last weekend when a
photograph of them standing
next to the station sign at
London’s Seven Sisters station
went viral. The nuns, four of
whom can be seen above, were
returning from a meeting with
Cardinal Vincent Nichols.
Kuby to give talks
The Diocese of Shrewsbury is
holding three separate talks by
German writer and sociologist
Gabriele Kuby on the “Ideology
of Gender”. Ms Kuby is author
of the international best-seller
The Global Sexual Revolution:
Destruction of Freedom in the
Name of Freedom. The
conference for the laity, entitled
“Man or Woman – A Matter of
Choice” will take place at St
Christopher’s Church Hall in
Romiley, Cheshire on 21 March.
The diocese’s clergy and
educationalists will be invited to
separate meetings on “The Gift
of Human Sexuality”.
Compiled by Liz Dodd

PERSON IN
THE NEWS
LONDON / Decisions taken by officials ‘educated beyond their intelligence’
Foreign Office training in
religion labelled inadequate
ABIGAIL FRYMANN ROUCH
FOREIGN OFFICE officials’ under-
standing of the importance of
religion is still insufficient to
enable them to understand its role
in regions of the world torn apart
by sectarian conflict, a senior gov-
ernment defence adviser said.
Major General Tim Cross, now
retired, was a senior British officer
in the planning of the 2003 inva-
sion of Iraq. He told The Tablet
that the religious literacy course
introduced by the former faith
and communities minister,
Baroness (Sayeeda) Warsi, gave
people only an “intellectual”
understanding of the role of reli-
gion in geopolitics.
The persistent belief at the
Foreign Office that religion did
not matter had begun to shift, he
said. Asked about the impact of
the course, Major General Cross,
a practising Anglican, said he had
“a lot of time” for Baroness Warsi.
“The trouble is … I call them ‘intel-
lectual idiots’ –  people educated
beyond their intelligence – if you
sit there in Whitehall thinking
North turns down promotion after attacks
CHURCH OF England clergy have
spoken of their disappointment
at Anglo-Catholic Bishop Philip
North’s decision to decline the See
of Sheffield following a backlash
over his position on the ordination
of women, writes Carina Murphy.
Bishop North, suffragan bishop
of Burnley and a leading member
of conservative group The Society
under the patronage of St Wilfrid
and St Hilda, was publicly criti-
cised by Professor Martyn Percy,
dean of Christ Church, Oxford,
and others, for his refusal to accept
the ordination of women as priests.
He will now take a period of
leave before returning to his cur-
For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk
NEWS
F R O M B R I TA I N A N D I R E L A N D
Bishop of Burnley Philip North , on his decision to decline the See of Sheffield: “The highly
individualised nature of the attacks upon me have been extremely hard to bear.” (See below)
‘well all this religion stuff is com-
plete bollocks’ –  then you can go
and sit for half a day and be told
it’s important and you can under-
stand this stuff, but you don’t own
it in your heart,” he said.
The Foreign Office’s basic intro-
duction to religious literacy
module can take half a day, and a
spokesman confirmed the
optional Religion and Foreign
Policy course takes two days.
He said that officials still failed
to grasp why, for example, Sunni
and Shia Muslims would fight
each other. “So you can explain
the distinction, but I don’t think
anyone in Whitehall really under-
rent position in the Diocese of
Blackburn. He was offered and
turned down the role of Bishop
of Whitby in 2012, for similar rea-
sons. In a statement he said: “It
is clear that the level of feeling is
such that my arrival would be
counter-productive in terms of
the mission of the Church of South
Yorkshire and that my leadership
would not be acceptable to many.”
However, he continued: “The
highly individualised nature of
the attacks upon me have been
extremely hard to bear.”
The Archbishop of York, John
Sentamu, said: “What has hap-
pened to Bishop Philip clearly
stands how somebody can blow
themselves to pieces on the basis
of believing that the prophet
Muhammad’s successor was bloke
x instead of bloke y,” he said.
Major General Cross, who has
publicly criticised the lack of plan-
ning before the 2003 invasion,
highlighted two consequences of
the Foreign Office’s religious illit-
eracy. Firstly, he said that officials
“struggled” to understand “that
the influence you’re trying to bring
to bear has to be seen in a com-
pletely different light” in the
Muslim world.
Secondly, regarding people who
had fled their homes as a result
of conflict, it had resulted in non-
Muslims such as Christians, “who
have suffered terribly …  being
largely cut out of the equation”
when it came to receiving aid.
He said he had challenged offi-
cials at the Department for
International Development about
the channelling of aid through
Muslim-run organisations so that
it did not reach minorities who
felt unsafe in the big refugee
camps, but without success.
does not reflect the settlement
under which the Church of
England joyfully … opened up all
orders of ministry to men and
women.” Julian Henderson, the
Bishop of Blackburn, described
Bishop North as “a fine episcopal
colleague” whom the diocese of
Sheffield could see “as an excellent
next Bishop of Sheffield”. He said
his “immediate response to the
difficult decision he has made is
one of overwhelming sadness”.
Colin Podmore, director of the
Anglo-Catholic group, Forward
in Faith, said: “The amount of sup-
port [for North] across the board
is a huge encouragement to us.”
18 MARCH 2017 | THE TABLET | 29
TRIBUTES TO CASEY
Bishop who
resigned after
fathering child
dies aged 89
SARAH MAC DONALD
THE PRESIDENT of Ireland,
Michael D. Higgins, and the
Primate of All Ireland,
Archbishop Eamon Martin, led
tributes to the former Bishop of
Galway, Eamonn Casey, who
died this week aged 89.
Bishop Casey stood down in
May 1992 after it was revealed
he was the father of a teenage
son, born to an American
woman, Annie Murphy, in 1974.
He tendered his resignation
to the Pope as questions were
raised over his use of £70,000
of diocesan funds to support his
son, Peter. The charismatic
prelate, who was instrumental
in the setting up of the aid
agency Trócaire, then fled the
country. He remained in exile
for 14 years, serving initially as
a missionary priest in Ecuador.
In 1998, he moved to the
diocese of Arundel and
Brighton where he was
involved in parish ministry and
hospital chaplaincy.
Bishop Casey was appointed
director of the Catholic Housing
Aid Society in 1963 and in 1966
he founded the Shelter charity
for the homeless. President
Higgins said as chairman of
Trócaire, Bishop Casey
encouraged the organisation to
become a leading NGO
campaigning for justice and
responding to humanitarian
distress. He recalled how the
bishop attended the funeral of
Archbishop Oscar Romero
following his assassination in El
Salvador in 1980, where bomb
and gun attacks on mourners
left almost 50 dead.
Bishop Casey was reportedly
the only bishop to leave the
church to help the wounded. His
funeral Mass was to take place in
Galway Cathedral on Thursday
this week. An appreciation by
Sally O’Neill will appear in next
week’s Tablet.
 NEWS
F R O M B R I TA I N A N D I R E L A N D

IRELAND / Politicians call on Pope to ensure payments are just “The Pope and religious leaders
in this country need to intervene

Orders ‘must pay fair share of and say to the institutions pay over
and pay up,” he said, adding that
the Government would now look

compensation for abuse’ at every legal tool at its disposal

SARAH MAC DONALD
THE CHURCH’S commitment to
pay compensation to abuse vic-
tims “cannot be reneged on”,
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of
Dublin has stated.
His comment was made amid
a row between the Government
and the 18 religious orders who
n The Vatican’s decision to
move the papal nuncio to
Ireland, Archbishop Charles
Brown, to a new posting in
Albania has reignited a
debate over the choice of
bishops made during his
five years in Ireland, writes
Sarah Mac Donald. In a
statement responding to
to ensure the orders pay more of
the €1.5bn compensation bill.
In the US, the Taoiseach Enda
Kenny warned: “The Church and
ran residential institutions in the The Government believes that the congregations should measure
past over their level of contribu- an equitable share-out of costs up to the responsibility that they
tion to a compensation fund for would see a 50-50 division of costs accepted here.” He also revealed
those who suffered institutional between state and Church. that he had “referred a number of
abuse as children. The Minister for Health, Simon matters to the Pope when I met
Last week Ireland’s Comptroller Harris, speaking on RTÉ’s The with him last year and I would
and Auditor General published a Week in Politics programme, expect the Vatican to respond”.
new report which showed that the called on Pope Francis to instruct The Christian Brothers and
18 orders have paid 13 per cent of the 18 religious orders to make a Sisters of Mercy, the two orders
the €1.5bn compensation fund. greater financial contribution. that ran the largest number of the
institutions investigated by the
the news of his departure, The Association of ushered in by the election Ryan Commission, defended their
Bishop Kevin Doran of Catholic Priests said the of Pope Francis”. contributions. Christian Brothers
Elphin credited Archbishop policies Brown pursued, Archbishop Brown told leader, Br Edmund Garvey, said
Brown with renewing the particularly in relation to The Tablet that he was the Comptroller and Auditor
Irish Episcopal Conference the bishops appointed looking forward “with real General’s report cited figures from
through the appointment during his years in Ireland, enthusiasm to my new over a year ago and these did not
of 11 new bishops since his were “inadequate to the mission” ... but that he was take account of the congregation’s
arrival in January 2012. He needs of our time ... and “sad to leave Ireland, more recent €14m payment. The
has also set in train another out of sync with the new where I have met so many Sisters of Mercy said they had
seven appointees. church dispensation wonderful people”. honoured all their commitments.

Visa restrictions force Catholic training centre to leave the UK

THE INSTITUTE of St Anselm in
Margate, Kent, an international
training centre for leaders, for-
mators and evangelisers in the
Catholic Church, is relocating to
Rome, following a Home Office
letter revoking its licence for stu-
dent visas, writes Carina Murphy.
Nearly 5,000 students from
around 90 countries have gained
certificates and diplomas at St
Anselm over the past 32 years.
The institute has been told it is
“considered a threat to immigra-
tion because more than 10 per
cent of our students have been
refused a visa”, a spokesman said.
The institute claimed many of
these refusals followed mistakes
on the part of the Home Office.
The institute said that over the
past few years there had been
“fresh hoops to jump through”
with many students spending
extra money applying for visas
more than once to meet all Home
Office requirements. Brexit would
only worsen the situation, said St
Anselm’s founder Fr Leonard
Kofler, who has made the decision
to move with “a heavy heart”.
Courses at St Anselm will finish
in June and resume at the new
facility in Rome in January 2018.
The Home Office has revoked
over 900 Tier 4 licences (for
enrolling students from outside
the European Economic Area)
since 2010. A spokesman denied
there had been a recent upsurge.

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E XT R A T I M E

We hate to lose you…

A DR I A N C H I L E S

W
HEN Claudio Ranieri was immaculate windows were no good to me
appointed manager of now that I could barely see through them.
Leicester City before the The only loyalty to be found in football
start of last season there is between the fans and the club they
was dismay from fans of the club. There support. But it’s the club as an entity we
was about as much dismay when the adore, warts and all; no individual within
Italian got the sack last month. it can ever elicit as much love. Ranieri is
Distressing as it must have been for actually lucky to have been shown the
Ranieri, he’s been in the game long door while there was still some love there
enough to know many a manager would for him. Trust me, if Leicester had carried
have settled for this narrative: a fan base on like they were, affection would have
underwhelmed by his appointment, but It’s the club as an turned to derision and loathing before
overwhelmed with sadness when the boot the clocks went forward. Success in
came. Better that, much better, than the entity we adore, warts football is astoundingly elusive, and those
more common pattern of exuberantly
high expectations at the start of a
and all; no individual who achieve it sometimes resemble a dog
that, after years of chasing cars, has
manager’s reign, followed by failure, within it can ever finally caught one. And then doesn’t
followed by sighs of relief, if not
jubilation, when the chop comes.
elicit as much love really know what to do next.
Leicester’s new manager is Ranieri’s
Careers in football management, as in former assistant, Craig Shakespeare, to
politics, always end in failure. All that player and fan, whether they know it or the quiet delight of headline-writers who
matters is how you get there. And as not, has many hands of history on their will, if and when it goes wrong for him,
everyone on Planet Football knows, shoulders. No club, no match even, is describe his “tragedy” as “Shakespearean”.
between his hotly disputed appointment anything without its historical context. He’s started well, and no one’s happier
and his controversial dismissal, Ranieri And yet, it is also true that football has about that than me. Back in the last
presided over a footballing miracle. no memory at all. And why should it? century, he was the first footballer I ever
Leicester City won the Premier League. Let’s say Ranieri was my window cleaner. interviewed. He was plainly made of
So surely, the argument goes, Ranieri I appointed him the summer before last something special. He was the penalty-
should have been given more time to save and for a year or more he played a taker for my team, West Brom. Slack-
the club from the relegation from the blinder. My windows sparkled! So jawed with admiration, struggling with
Premier League for which they seemed to brilliant was his work that, whatever my shorthand, I listened as he told me
be heading. His brutal sacking has been angle the sun was at, you could barely tell how he’d stand over the ball on the
held up as the exemplar of all that is there was glass there! But this year, there penalty spot and watch the goal get
wrong with the modern game, bereft of were smears. And despite my entreaties smaller and smaller and smaller. Doesn’t
loyalty, decency, class. Football creaks to get his squeegee back in order, the it always?
under the weight of memories and smearing continued. In the end, I had to
tradition. Every owner, every coach, let him go. I’m sorry, but last summer’s Adrian Chiles is a radio and TV presenter.

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

I LOVE walking beneath the Scots pines trees. They’ve been here for as long as I can
where the rooks nest. A busy road runs remember, which is just as well, since long-
close by, but when you pass under the trees term rookeries are considered a sign of good
you’re lifted up and immersed in the sound- luck. In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens’
world of these glossy, purple-black novel about his own disastrous childhood,
members of the crow family. This morning, Dickens uses the desertion of the rookery as
before catching my train, I stood beneath a sign of impending disaster.
the pines for half an hour just listening. Other superstitions connected to the bird
Rooks are highly talkative, and I could hear are their nests. If they built them low in a
not only the famous, raucous “craaa”, one of almost like the kind of gurgling humans tree, it’s said that the summer will be cold
my favourite noises of early spring, but also, might make to a baby. and wet; if they build them high, then the
during gaps in the traffic, a far quieter, There’s more to rook music than all that year will be good. Thankfully, my rooks’
curiously gentle, click-clacking sound, deafening cawing! I counted 30 nests in the nests were right at the top of the pines.

Volume 271 // No. 9192 // ISSN: 0039 8837

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