Life in the Spirit

Life in the Spirit

The Mass celebrated at Pentecost both brings Easter to completion and launches the Church into the world, as Jeremy Driscoll explains in this week’s revelatory cover article; in the fifth in our series in which priests have talked frankly to Blanche Girouard about their hopes and fears a young Pole who is priest-in-charge of a parish in the Scottish Highlands reflects on the joy of serving in a Church that is being stripped of its wealth and prestige; Sarah Mac Donald tells the story of the brave and charismatic Vatican-based Kerry priest who helped save the lives of several thousand prisoners of war, partisans and Jews from under the noses of the Nazis; William Eichler weighs fears that allegations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia may be used to shut down free speech and debate; and Gerard Kilroy highlights the rarely noticed allegorical dimension to Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited.

There’s not much religion on show in the Royal Academy’s summer show but Melanie McDonagh spotted some extraordinary images by Paul Rego of the Virgin Mary and hefty, swarthy angels that I can’t wait to go to see; Joanna Moorhead – in Venice to check out the Sean Scully exhibition in San Giorgio Maggiore (her review will be in next week’s issue) – looked in at the Biennale but left exasperated by the art world’s failure to move beyond voyeurism to action.

Eight pages of news from Britain, Ireland and around the world this week includes Mark Bowling’s report from Melbourne on Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against his conviction for the sexual abuse of two choir boys and Ruth Gledhill and Liz Dodd’s summaries of two disturbing new reports into child sexual abuse in religious institutions. Christopher Lamb describes a memorable papal trip to Romania and reveals that Steve Bannon’s plan to use a converted Carthusian monastery as a “gladiator school” for defenders of Judaeo-Christian values has run into difficulties.

“It is the task of the dramatist to arm each side with equal power;” in our Arts pages, Anthony McCarten tells Mark Lawson about his delicately poised stage play – soon to be a movie – that imagines the meetings between Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict. Nature or nurture? Lucy Lethbridge thinks ITV’s 63 Up leaves them level pegging; D.J. Taylor is charmed by a radio documentary on Cumbrian dialect poetry; and in spite of a nuanced performance in the lead role by Julianne Moore, our film critic Anthony Quinn finds that Gloria Bell fails to ring true. In Books, Anne Chisholm is intrigued by a bizarre, true tale of a distinguished academic duped by an eccentric criminal; Jonathan Keates fails to find any redeeming feature in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s dismal study of twelve Victorians (“a massage parlour for the author’s hobby horses”); and Marcus Tanner salutes a scrupulously fair account of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy.

Our wine correspondent, a priest operating under the nom de guerre N. O’Phile, recommends an agile Madeira “perfect pre- and post-prandial and even with dinner, whatever’s on the menu”. And finally Word from the Cloisters reports that Chesterton’s hat, rosary and typewriter are moving from the Oxford Oratory to Trafalgar Square and reveals why Cardinal Muller and Pope Francis were left shaking their heads in bemusement at strange remarks by Australian theologian Tracey Rowland.

Enjoy!

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet