Mother Teresa’s lost childhood

Mother Teresa’s lost childhood

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, has written to Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Maronite Church, after the deadly explosion in Beirut. As Madoc Cairns reports on our website this morning, the Cardinal says, “I raise my prayers to your great saint, Saint Charbel, whose relic adorns my chapel, that he may win for you all the courage and perseverance to meet this awesome challenge.” We have regularly updated reports on the impact of the disaster and we list details of some of the Catholic agencies where you can donate to help the citizens of Lebanon, including Caritas and Aid to the Church in Need.

Wearing a face mask in church will be mandatory in England from Saturday. In our second leader we lament the chaotic mess the government is making of leading us out of lockdown; its efforts to reopen schools in particular have been a travesty of good administration. John Hume kept a copy of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech in his office. As Anne McHardy says in her obituary, Hume saw himself following King’s lead, opposed to violence and determined to end the segregation and poverty at the root of the civil unrest that led to the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The Scottish bishops have warned that it could become illegal to teach Catholic doctrine in Scotland under a proposed new hate crime bill; our first leader argues that the Church should have no issue with carefully drafted legislation that outlaws stirring up hatred against gay or trans people – indeed, it should welcome it. In seven pages of news from Britain, Ireland and around the world, Ellen Teague reports that reduced giving during the pandemic has caused a serious shortfall for Cafod and other Catholic charities, with many facing a difficult future. Catherine Pepinster reports that priests who rely on church collections for their livelihoods have had their applications for state benefits turned down. And in an investigative feature Catherine Pepinster explains that the lockdown is more than a passing financial crisis – it is challenging the way that parishes and dioceses are funded and managed.

In the latest webinar in our series to celebrate our 180th anniversary, the Vatican’s lead cardinal on migration Michael Czerny told Christopher Lamb that the UK government’s “no recourse to public funds” policy for migrants and asylum seekers is a “pompous formula” and neither right nor fair: Sarah Mac Donald reports. There is some confusion over quite how ill the Pope Emeritus is: all we know for sure is that he is increasingly frail. As James Roberts and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt report, the increasingly acrimonious dispute between the leadership of the Schönstatt movement and Alexandra von Teuffenbach over allegations that the movement’s founder, Fr Josef Kentenich, was an unrepentant abuser reached a critical point this week with the discovery of a 1982 letter relating to the case by the Prefect of the CDF at the time – Joseph Ratzinger. And in his View from New Hampshire (our Rome correspondent, Christopher Lamb, is on holiday) US correspondent Michael Sean Winters wonders why in election year so many of the US bishops continue to signal their approval of President Donald Trump. 

Mother Teresa was always clear about her identity as an Albanian-born Roman Catholic but her near silence about her family and ethnic heritage blocked a painful childhood memory, as Gëzim Alpion reveals. The founder of the global 24-7 prayer movement Pete Greig describes the terrifying moment that shook his faith in a loving God, and Frank Cottrell Boyce and four other writers reflect on the devastation they have felt when it seemed that God has forsaken them.  As soon as he discovered them, Nicholas Murray was gripped by James Hanley’s dark and austere novels of working-class life in early twentieth century Liverpool. He wonders why in spite of lavish critical praise and several reissues they have never really caught on with readers. And Nina Mattielli Azadeh finds the generational divide in the Church in how fear and forgiveness are understood is a more complex story then you might imagine.

In Books, Liz Dodd admires an exceptional biography of Dorothy Day that covers new ground in its treatment of her lively and scandalous twenties and the wanderlust of her seventies; Marcus Tanner salutes Anne Applebaum’s brilliant lament at the dramatic enfeeblement over the past twenty years of the political centre ground; Matthew Adams admires young naturalist Dara McAnulty's impressive and plangent diaries; Lucy Popescu briskly rounds up three novels in translation; and A.N. Wilson is intoxicated by Daisy Johnson’s latest novel. 

Live theatre performances are gingerly making their return, subject to the usual fortifications and elaborations, and in Arts Mark Lawson previews the pioneers. Laura Gascoigne has been enjoying the recently-reissued novels of Curzio Malaparte and admiring reproductions of some of the furniture he designed for his clifftop house in Capri; D.J.Taylor loved a radio documentary that followed a Cork-born New York undertaker coping with the sudden increase in demand for his services; and Lucy Lethbridge settled down to watch a new series for weight watchers with a packet of crisps in her lap. “We all need to wake up and smell the skinny latte”, she says, half-heartedly.

AD (Anno Domini)  or CE (Common Era)? Sara Maitland explains why she prefers the latter. Perhaps some future archaeologist will puzzle over the remains of an ancient Middle Eastern clay lamp in a landfill site on the Thames estuary: but only if she does not have access to this week’s column by Christopher Howse. August is the month of sweetcorn and on the back page Rose Prince has a recipe for chargrilled cornbread: good for you and a perfect mopper-upper of juices from a roast. 

The Tablet is the second-oldest weekly magazine in the world, and in next week’s summer double issue Mark Lawson and A.N. Wilson portray the bitterly divided, often hungry, increasingly smoky, disease-ridden and doubting England of 1840 in which the boisterous and opinionated Tablet made its debut. We will also have Evelyn Waugh’s youngest son Septimus remembering his father with wry affection; Christopher de Hamel handling Becket’s favourite prayer book; Maggie Fergusson discovering George Mackay Brown’s love for Gerard Manley Hopkins; and Billy O’Callaghan sharing a childhood memory of the rain-drenched evening when he joined the hundreds hoping to see the moving statue at Ballinspittle. 

So lots more good stuff coming.

Brendan Walsh

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet