Another spring?

Another spring?

In The Living Spirit last week – many readers’ favourite column in the paper, a little oasis of calm reflection after the turbulence of the Letters pages – we had an extract from the address Pope Francis gave at the general audience on the feast of the Ascension a few weeks after his election. He told us that having seen Jesus ascending into heaven, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem “with great joy”. Eleven years later, though his papacy has been a bit of a struggle in many ways, so often it’s the joy that pokes through, most strikingly in Francis’ exchanges with the people he meets: ordinary people. And there will be a surge of ordinary people visiting the Vatican next year. Pope Francis is due to announce the Bull of Convocation of the Jubilee of 2025 this evening,  during the celebration of the Second Vespers of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, which he will preside over in St Peter’s Basilica. 

Nobody knows how many children of Catholic parents have been deprived of a Catholic education because of the government rule introduced in 2010 that new state-funded faith schools can only reserve places for 50 per cent of their intake on the basis of faith. The Government announced last week that it will lift the cap. As we write in our leader this week, this is not because the government banned the building of new free faith schools. (The Church of England has opened more than 30 new free schools since the cap was introduced.) It was the Catholic bishops who did so, arguing that a cap on faith admissions could mean turning away Catholics once the 50 per cent limit had been reached. This would contradict their right and duty under canon law, they said at the time, to provide a place in a Catholic school for every Catholic child who applied. 

The bishops’ insistence that they had no choice in the matter puzzles many parents, not to mention many canon lawyers. The excellent new St John Henry Newman Catholic Primary School in Peterborough – formally blessed by Bishop Alan Hopes a few weeks after it opened in September 2022 – was 90 per cent funded by the Government, with the local council paying the rest. It is legally permitted to select 100 per cent of places on the basis of faith, but the diocese of East Anglia decided to put a cap of 80 per cent on places reserved for Catholics. If the school is oversubscribed, the remaining 20 per cent of places are allocated to children living nearest to the school, whatever their faith. This doesn’t seem to have troubled canonists. 

The Catholic education system, supported by lay people as parents and run by lay people as teachers and governors, is the jewel in the crown of the Catholic community in Britain. In the more synodal Church Pope Francis is leading us toward, the voices of Catholic teachers and parents would be listened to before a decision was taken whether or not to ban the building of any new Catholic free schools on contested grounds.   

More people were received into the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Southwark this Easter than for over a decade. There are signs of recovery and new growth across parishes in Britain. Yet there is no evidence that the steady fall in Mass attendance is being reversed. What’s really going on? In our features this week, Stephen Bullivant examines the apparent paradox. The crisis in young persons’ mental health has become a battleground between competing political and ideological camps; Nick Spencer urges more attentive listening to the voices of young people themselves. 

The poet Camille Ralphs celebrates the work of Yehuda Amichai, one of Israel’s greatest modern writers, who was born a hundred years ago this month. David Neuhaus, a Jewish Israeli adopted into a Muslim Palestinian family and later ordained as a Jesuit priest, argues that the struggle against antisemitism and the struggle against Islamophobia are part of one and the same struggle for a world free of injustice, racism and violence. 

The Conservative Party is paying a heavy price not only for its lack of economic competence but for not being straightforward with the electorate; Julia Langdon points out that if voters don’t get a more honest politics from Sir Keir Starmer his expected thumping majority in the coming general election might not materialise. When he went to Westminster Cathedral Hall to lodge his vote in the recent local elections, Christopher Howse was asked to produce photo ID; it crossed his mind to prove he was who he said he was by producing a copy of The Tablet. 

There are seven pages of news stories from our correspondents in Britain, Ireland and across the world as usual, and updates and new stories are added to our website several times a day. Drone and missile strikes hit Ukraine overnight and during the day on 5 May, the Orthodox Easter; as Patrick Hudson reports, the hoped-for ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia did not materialise. Rita Joseph writes from Kerala that church leaders in India face charges of politicisation amid prime minister Narendra Modi’s campaign to secure Christian votes for his Hindu nationalist party as it seeks a third general election victory. Patrick Hudson reports that senior prelates of the Anglican communion met in Rome last week and had an audience with Pope Francis, who told them he realised that his role was “controversial and divisive”. Opening a new Marian shrine in Magaliesburg, Archbishop Joseph Tlhagale of Johannesburg called for “reconciliation”, writes Marko Phiri. He was speaking a few weeks before national elections; a few days after a priest had been killed in Pretoria, and a month after another priest had been shot dead in a cathedral.

The Catholic homelessness charity The Passage is to have its work boosted by a £500,000 gift from Westminster Abbey; Catherine Pepinster explains how the gift can be linked to the King’s Coronation a year ago. Bess Twiston Davies reports that a bespoke catechetical programme in the Southwark archdiocese tailored to staff in its schools has inspired four teachers to join the Church. And Ellen Teague reports that Cafod has launched a Sudan Crisis appeal, warning that war has forced millions from their homes as fears of famine grow.

Neoliberalism’s “quiet flourishing” is sharply criticised by three new books; Christopher Bray finds George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison’s The Invisible Doctrine “pulls like a thriller and is much the best written”, while Will Hutton’s This Time No Mistakes and Joseph E. Stiglitz’s The Road to Freedom take more charitable approaches to capitalism’s excesses. Elsewhere on the Books pages, Sue Gaisford delights in Ariane Bankes’ evocative story of her mother and aunt, beautiful twins entangled in the lives of some of the last century’s leading writers and philosophers; Colm Tóibín’s “heart-wrenching shaggy-dog story” Long Island leaves Anthony Gardner with some nagging questions; and Marcus Tanner rounds up three nature books. 

In Arts, Mark Lawson reflects on the common themes in the two dozen BBC radio plays he has written over the years, and discusses his latest, In Good Faith, which tells the story of two estranged parents’ battle in court over the fate of their catastrophically-ill daughter. Fátima Nollén is enchanted by Christopher Wheeldon’s translation of The Winter’s Tale into movement at the Royal Opera House. Sophia Rayzan is enlightened by a new exhibition at the British Museum that focuses on the spiritual awakening experienced by Michelangelo in his final years, and a relationship with Vittoria Colonna which “fuelled each other’s spiritual fires”. And while Lucy Lethbridge can’t help but think that “lurid rich-people dramas” are overdone, she praises Netflix’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel A Man in Full. 

“To enable the flowering of the feminine is to make the Church whole.” Join us for a webinar on 15 May with Anne-Marie O’Riordan to explore whether women are discerning their baptismal calling. On 22 May Michael Carter will present a webinar on medieval history and monasticism and its impact on Catholic identity. On 11 June we have a live event at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. The first Hayes-Towey Pastoral Review Memorial Lecture will be given by the Archbishop of Southwark, John Wilson, who will speak on “Building relationships of communion – the synodal mission of the people of God”. A video of a recent webinar, “Beyond Business”, sponsored by Notre Dame Australia, is now available here. Full details of timings, speakers and tickets for all our events and webinars are available here. 

In Letters, a survivor of clerical abuse writes to welcome the Durham university report into the impact on the Church of the abuse crisis but agrees with Richard Scorer’s analysis that change is only likely to come from the outside. The Dean of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge suggests his own – unsurprising – alternative patron saint of England, and John Bulger wonders if Patrick Marnham’s article on the decline of France had been “written in a glasshouse”. And finally Jonathan Tulloch gives us his weekly Glimpse of Eden and Rose Prince says that instead of whining about soggy ground, Jeremy Clarkson should establish a market garden on his farm. 

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Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet