This week, at the start of the Jubilee Year, Holy Doors will open through which pilgrims will pass. Some find the concept outmoded, but it is part of Catholicism’s rich symbolism The catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has announced that each of our cathedrals is to have a designated “Holy Door” for the forthcoming Jubilee Year of Mercy. At least one Tablet reader has been unimpressed, seeing the decision as a deplorable “flight into piety”, avoiding “difficult questions about mercy” and likely to “bemuse” people with a symbol “that means little or nothing to them”. That judgement seems unduly severe. Of course the Holy Doors, which Pope Francis has asked every cathedral and great shrine to create, are