Hot Holy Ladies

Hot Holy Ladies

There are some shocking figures released today by Caritas Salford, which show that almost a quarter of a million children in the diocese are living in poverty. Meanwhile Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are tearing lumps out of each other over how tough they intend to be in putting down strikes in public services and preventing refugees settling in Britain. As we say in our leader this week, they have imagined the lowest common denominator  of the self-interest of Tory party members – the only people who have a say in who will be the UK’s next prime minister – and pitched their sales talk accordingly. Edifying and enlightening leadership it is not. 

Pope Francis is coming to the end of his extraordinary “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada. James Roberts reports that he has expressed “sorrow, indignation and shame” for the actions of many members of the Catholic Church who operated most of the residential schools in the country. Shortly before the Pope left for Canada, the Vatican published a terse, unsigned warning that the German Synodal Path did not have the power to change church teaching or to introduce new church structures, and that it was a threat to church unity. Christa Pongratz-Lippitt reports on the deep divisions emerging in the German Church. In View from Rome Christopher Lamb suggests that the Pope’s problem with the Germans is more about process than content. In our second leader, we point out that the Vatican has form when it comes to interfering in synodal processes. It’s in the nature of Catholicism that there is a sometimes awkward tension between the hierarchy and the sensus fidelium: but each needs the other. The Anglican Communion, of course, has its own difficulties with managing internal differences and tensions. Patrick Hudson, whose Lambeth Conference preview is now online, is making regular hops to Canterbury for The Tablet over the next couple of weeks. 

There are seven pages of news stories from our correspondents in Britain, Ireland and across the world in the print edition this week as usual, and updates and new stories are added to our website every day. James Roberts reports that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, has condemned the “thuggery” unleashed by Sri Lanka’s new president. Ruth Gledhill writes that the Abbot President, Christopher Jamison, has welcomed three communities of nuns from Ireland, Sweden and Australia into the English Benedictine Congregation. Madoc Cairns heard talks from former diplomats, politicians, environmental activists, peace-builders and prison reformers at the National Justice and Peace Network’s annual conference in Swanwick last weekend. And from Ireland, Sarah Mac Donald reports that Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin has been trying to calm the waters amid fears that the synodal process will expose a sharp polarisation of views. 

I’ve learnt from Chris Maunder this week that Pope Pius X – the scourge of the Modernists – commissioned a prayer to the Virgin Priest and attached indulgences to it. But just over a hundred years ago, senior figures in Rome decided a traditional devotion promoted for centuries by saints, popes and theologians that portrays Mary as a priest might be “misunderstood”. And so it had to go. Maggie Fergusson met the presiding genius of Alpha, Nicky Gumbel, a few days before he stepped down as Vicar of HTB last Sunday. He has a surprising response to the familiar Catholic concerns that his hugely successful beginners’ course in Christianity is weak in ecclesiology and sacramental theology: he agrees with them. Although post-independence India outlawed “untouchability” its manifestations are still noticeable in many subtle ways – including inside the Church. Stanislaus Alla looks at the significance of Pope Francis’ decision to include Anthony Poola of Hyderabad among the men due to be made cardinals next month. Ruth Hunt, the former head of Stonewall, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans equality charity in Europe, tells Peter Stanford that her values are shaped by her Catholic faith. And Catherine Pepinster asks if the synodal listening process is failing the survivors of abuse. 

Melanie McDonagh lambasts the Church in Germany for linking its pastoral care to the payment of the hefty “church tax”. If you don’t cough up, no church funeral. “By comparison with the sheer rottenness of a Church that denies the sacraments to a baptised Christian because of his or her tax contributions, the fuss about blessings for gay couples pales into insignificance.” In his column, Madoc Cairns admits to sympathy with Savonarola and his “Bonfire of the Vanities”: nice things were destroyed, but it was a jolting reminder that it is people that matter, not beautiful stuff. 

In Letters, there are lively responses to Timothy Radcliffe’s articles on hope and forgiveness (one reader is horrified that “Fr Radcliffe admits to avoiding the use of the word ‘sin’”),  an appalled reaction from a leading abuse lawyer to the report revealing that the Archdiocese of Birmingham withheld what it knew about an abusive priest from the statutory authorities “for many years”, and a senior priest shares his incredulity at the synodal response of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh. 

In Books this week, Morag MacInnes reflects on an iconoclastic new book on sex, feminism and consent: The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry, who persuasively suggests we ought to take a collective cold shower and look again at old-fashioned virtue and restraint: “As [Perry] points out in the most direct and cogent way, we were sold down the river.” Our own Patrick Hudson looks back to the extraordinary deeds of one (unexpectedly ordinary) man, Cathal Brugha, the violent Irish rebel who maintained his directorship in a firm of church candle manufacturers. Bernard Porter’s new book on Britishness draws Christopher Bray’s eye, though it leads him to some doleful conclusions about the state of our politics: “Even if Brexit should come up trumps economically, [Porter] worries that the incompetence and immorality of the government it licensed will end up having convinced its own supporters that politicians are all the same.” And Carina Murphy enjoys our much-loved nature writer Jonathan Tulloch’s “wartime romp aimed at 10-to-12-year-olds”, Cuckoo Summer.

In Arts, Joanna Moorhead celebrates the work of Helena Wintour, a seventeenth century English recusant who, amid terrible persecution, created magnificent vestments. Her story is finally being told as part of a new Stonyhurst exhibition, “Hot Holy Ladies” – with thanks to a Jesuit community cat, who “chose a trunk of rags in the attic as a birthing space. When she and the kittens vacated it the fabric on which they were sleeping turned out not to be rags at all … they were Wintour’s chasubles.” Mark Lawson assays a new stage drama on the topical theme of Russian politics – although he worries that Peter Morgan’s Patriots may (like his The Crown) be presenting guesswork as history. Madoc Cairns climbs down from his column to peer at an exhibition of early Pre-Raphaelite drawings and watercolours at the Ashmolean – more a mood than a movement, he concludes. And Alexandra Coghlan sees us off with her thoughts on the UK premiere of Mark Adamo’s operatic adaptation of Little Women: “A bit Bernstein and a bit Strauss, with a smattering of Charles Wesley.”

Our online World Cup of Catholic spiritualities is reaching its closing stages: after popular online introductions to the distinct ways of holiness in the Dominican, Jesuit, Franciscan and Benedictine traditions, on 17 August we have Sr Susan Rose Francois of the Sisters of St Joseph of Peace and on Wednesday 24 August we end the series with a webinar on spirituality in the tradition of Mary Ward with Sr Imelda Poole, based in Tirana, Albania and active in the prevention of trafficking and modern slavery. Tickets are available on The Tablet website events page.

This heat-polluted summer will pass; but Guy Consolmagno reflects that the galaxies that the Webb space telescope is showing us will always be there to entice us with their beauty. And Jonathan Tulloch goes for an early morning walk. “The corn glimmered, owls called, the air was scented with honeysuckle and the moon seemed to stand on the hills and look out for me like an old friend.”  How beautiful this world is too.

I hope you enjoy this week’s Tablet.

Brendan Walsh 

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet