Bernini

Bernini

Since his election, Pope Francis has made noises about wanting to see a greater role for women in the Church. But Joanna Moorhead finds that many of those hoping for change have grown disillusioned. One historical figure Joanna says  “found a way round Rome’s rules” was the seventeenth-century Mexican nun and writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: in Word from the Cloisters we pass on the story that Laura Alvarez, wife of Jeremy Corbyn, slipped an anthology of Sor Juana’s poems to Meghan Markle when they were both attending a service in Westminster Abbey.   

In his obituary of the Catalonia-born Brazilian bishop, liberation theologian and poet Pedro Casaldáliga, who died on 8 August, Francis McDonagh recalls that Casaldáliga described his life as one of “rebellious faithfulness”.  How far can that idea be stretched? In our leader we look at Joe Biden’s position on abortion. Mr Biden, who would be only the second Catholic to be elected president of the United States if he wins the election in nine weeks’ time, says he opposes abortion but does not wish to impose his personal views on those who do not agree with him. It’s a very common position for Catholic legislators to take, but sits very awkwardly with Church teaching.  The underlying issue, to which the Church has given insufficient thought, is the tension between insisting that Catholics seeking election to public office must be committed to denying access to legal abortion in all circumstances, and the demands of the democratic system itself.

Totalitarian systems contemptuous of human rights are growing stronger just as the shaky foundations of natural law are being exposed, creating what John Bowker describes as a “a very dangerous crisis”. Pope Alexander VII brought a city-planner’s eye to the muddled layout of seventeenth-century Rome: Loyd Grossman describes how he enlisted Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the prickly genius of the Baroque, to complete his transformation of the Eternal City. And Mike Brearley talks to Peter Stanford about cricket, psychotherapy and his own youthful brush with faith. 

In View from Rome, Christopher Lamb looks at the case of Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. When he heard that Bannon had been arrested on a charge of skimming off $1 million from donations to a scheme to build a wall on the US-Mexico border Chris recalled a warning of Pope Francis: “Those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they have put up.” 

Liz Dodd reports that Fr Cuthbert Madden, who stepped aside as Abbot in 2016 after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him, won’t be returning to Ampleforth. The civil action brought by Fr Madden to be reinstated was struck out in the High Court in January. The Holy See has now concluded its own review and does not support Fr Madden’s request to return to the Abbey. The community is to elect a new Abbot next year. Elsewhere in seven pages of news from Britain, Ireland and around the world Ellen Teague and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt report that the Catholic Archbishop of Minsk led prayers outside the prison where protestors against the authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko were being held; and Andrew Mambondiyani tracks the furious response of the Zimbabwean  government to a fiercely critical pastoral letter from the country’s Catholic bishops. Madoc Cairns reports that new Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey affirmed that he “strongly believes” that abortion and euthanasia must remain “issues of conscience” on which Lib Dem MPs should be free to dissent from party policy. 

There is more free-to-access news and comment as well as features and reviews on our website, which is updated several times a day. Christopher Lamb analyses the blueprint that Pope Francis has been offering in recent general audiences for how governments, civil society and the Church can rebuild in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. And in recently-posted blogs, Frank Field argues that the new biography of Ernest Bevin by Andrew Adonis holds crucial lessons for a Labour revival under Keir Starmer, and regular blogger Michael Carter tells us that two books he picked up at provincial auctions turned out to be amongst the 5000 or so that survived the destruction of the monasteries. Subscribers can also access the entire 180-year archive of The Tablet via our website: every issue is there, in both pdf format and as a digitised text. Once you start browsing it becomes difficult to stop. 

Tom Holland, author of Dominion, which reveals just how deeply the Western imagination is still shaped by Christianity, looks at cancel culture’s historical precedents. Tom is joining us as a regular columnist. We also welcome a new film critic, Isabelle Grey, an arts journalist and television screenwriter before turning to successful crime novels, who this week has seen William Nicholson’s sensitive portrait of an imploding marriage. Elsewhere in the Arts pages, Mark Lawson was at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre to see live drama return to London with a socially distanced production of Jesus Christ Superstar. D.J. Taylor enjoys Robert Beckford’s tactful radio documentary exploring the idiosyncratic attitudes to disease entertained on the outer fringes of Pentecostalism; and as the shortened Proms season returns to the Royal Albert Hall, presenters Katie Derham, Petroc Trelawny, Josie d’Arby, Danielle de Niese and Andrew McGregor share the highlights they’re most looking forward to.

In Books, Hilmar M. Pabel salutes a magisterial collection of essays on the legacy of the Second Vatican Council assembled by Richard R. Gaillardetz; Jane Thynne is gripped by Svenja O'Donnell’s beautifully-written memoir of her grandmother, a German woman on the wrong side in the Second World War; and in the second selection of Summer Reading, regular reviewers including Chris Patten, Rachel Billington and Anne Chisholm recommend books that have amused and provoked, terrified and inspired them through this year of anguish and upheaval. 

There is only room for three of the many Letters we received from readers sharing Liz Dodd’s astonishment and alarm expressed in her recent column at the Scottish bishops joining those of England and Wales in choosing the prosaic, non-inclusive and sometimes inaccurate ESV for their new lectionary. Christopher Howse enjoyed Christopher de Hamel’s account in the 180th anniversary issue of The Tablet of how he tracked down Thomas Becket’s beloved Psalter – though he wonders if the great scholar of medieval manuscripts might have confused a cope for a chasuble. Austen Ivereigh’s latest adventure in eco-smugness has him junking his oil-guzzling Aga and re-charging his car from his new solar panels … but he is still lumbered with a fossil-fuelled boiler. Adrian Chiles wonders what the writer of a sports column in our launch issue in 1840 might have been able to write about: not West Brom (founded 1878), for a start. Finally, Jonathan Tulloch has some good news – at least for harebells. This year’s rainless spring and the recent heatwave have created the best conditions for years for the flowers Christina Rossetti compared to hope. 

I hope you enjoy this week’s Tablet.

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet