New ways of seeing

New ways of seeing

Chine McDonald wonders whether her great-grandfather – ordained a priest in the Church of England in Nigeria in 1940 – would have valued unity enough to remain an Anglican in spite of its deep differences over sexuality. The Lambeth Conference exposed raw cultural sensitivities and difficult dilemmas that will put an almost impossible strain on the unity of every global church and religious denomination. Patrick Hudson travelled between our office in west London and Canterbury to cover the Conference for us; among his regular online bulletins is his report of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle’s address to the 650 Anglican bishops gathered from around the world encouraging them to “dream together” at a time when “dreaming of a common human family is becoming difficult even for future generations.” Patrick also reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby admitted a fresh impetus is required to escape the present “ecumenical winter”, adding that most Anglicans in England now recognise the Pope as “the father of the Church in the West”.

“The Church is either synodal or it is not Church” Pope Francis told his Jesuit confrères in Canada last month. It seems, in spite of all the doubts, that we’re getting there. But how is the mountain of documents from parish listening groups around the world faithfully captured in short diocesan and then national reports? Austen Ivereigh – the “chief scribe” for the process in England and Wales – describes the art of the synthesis from the inside.  

The two candidates running for the Tory leadership – a prize that also includes being the UK’s next prime minister – have been swatting at shadows like “wokism” or “lefty lawyers” and arguing obsessively over income tax cuts. Yet cuts in income tax are irrelevant to those who do not earn enough to pay it. As we point out in our leader this week they – and most of all their children – are destined to become the frontline casualties in the forthcoming apocalypse of the low-paid. As Ellen Teague reports in the news pages, former prime minister Gordon Brown has joined more than 50 faith groups, charities and politicians to call on the government to take urgent action to bridge the cost of living gap faced by low income families. “This crisis goes far beyond politics”, he said. “This is a moral issue – our responsibilities to our neighbours and in particular to those who have the least and whose needs are the greatest.” 

Our second leader acknowledges the complexities in the case of Archie Battersbee, whose parents found themselves powerless to prevent doctors and judges deciding to withdraw life-support. In a short poem in this week’s paper Antonia Fraser finds the words to catch the sadness many of us feel. 

A firebrand from the streets of Istanbul dreaming of reuniting the Turks with Islam, a business-friendly conservative city mayor, a populist voice of the nativist right: which is the real Recep Tayyip Erdogan? William Eichler says the clues to understanding Turkey’s enigmatic president lie in the country’s tangled past. Bonnie Lander Johnson opens up Caryll Houselander’s only novel, which thrillingly combines traditional Catholic characters and themes with a boldly modernist technique. 

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 several times a day. With geopolitics in disarray, our foreign editor James Roberts ruminates on where Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan leaves the Holy See’s diplomacy; its controversial deal with Beijing is due for renewal later this year. Ships carrying grain have been allowed to leave Ukrainian ports, a sign of hope, Pope Francis believes, that a just and lasting peace might be found to the conflict in Ukraine. James Roberts reports. 

German Catholics have submitted their findings to the global synodal process; as expected, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, they have urged the bishops at next year’s general synod to take radical steps to be less clerical and more inclusive if the Church is to have any chance of restoring its credibility. Filipe Avillez reports that Pope Francis met Patriarch Manuel Clemente of Lisbon on 5 August to discuss his handling of cases of sexual abuse. Liam Coolican looks at the work of the Fuggerei, who have been providing homes for the needy in Augsburg, Germany since 1521. And Fredrick Nzwili has the latest on the Kenya elections.

Christopher Lamb is on holiday, and this week Gerry Lynch gives us a View from Yerevan, Armenia’s winsome capital, “gorgeous, welcoming, deeply conservative yet curiously liberal”. 

Elena Curti reports that there is renewed pressure on Salford Diocese to protect a rare mural “of dazzling beauty” in a redundant church in Greater Manchester. Yesterday, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport listed both the work and the Church of the Holy Rosary, Oldham, where it resides. The Hungarian artist George Mayer-Marton completed the mural in 1955 using a rare combination of mosaic and fresco. Five hundred young people have written to the Irish synodal steering committee insisting they do not want Church teaching to change. Fr Brendan Hoban tells Sarah Mac Donald that their view “is not generally representative of young people”. Ellen Teague records the vigils and other events that took place around the UK on Hiroshima Day and Nagasaki Day. 

In this week's Books pages Brian Morton asks if migration, a common survival strategy in nature, might present humanity with a way to endure incipient climate chaos: Gaia Vince’s Nomad Century is impressively utopian but not “sufficiently Marxist” for his liking. Michael Glover leafs through three new books of poetry, which wander from the strange to the spirited. Karin Altenberg, reviewing a new book on the /Xam, a South African tribe on the verge of annihilation, finds startling resonances with our own experience: “Dreaming the Karoo is at once a mesmerising meandering into the near-extinct language and sensibility of the /Xam, and a diary of that intangible sense of loss and loneliness that so many of us felt during lockdown.” Lucy Beckett sizes up Shakespeare’s approach to the working classes through a new book by veteran director Stephen Unwin. And Markie Robson-Scott picks Ross Raisin’s “dense and discomfiting” A Hunger as our Novel of the Week. 

In the Arts section, Mark Lawson picks out his nine favourite shows at the Edinburgh festival – from the slapstick to the (reputedly) sacrilegious. Joanna Moorhead visits an innovative new exhibition that puts Dalí and El Greco in the same room in Bishop Auckland, and finds that “what unites these two paintings of Christ on the Cross is far stronger than what separates them”. A second helping of Brian Morton has him listening to a new album of psalms by the “chastened” Nick Cave and a “remarkable” album by avant-garde Belgian Dominique Van Cappellen-Waldock. And D.J. Taylor tries to unpick gender bias in the contemporary art trade with the help of a new BBC Radio 4 documentary. 

In a moving blog, Fr Vitaliy Novak of Depaul, writes about his fears for the suffering people of Ukraine; he worries that their situation is going to get much worse as winter approaches, as temperatures can plummet to minus 20 degrees.

In the dog days of summer, that seems barely imaginable. "Dog days"? Like me, he thought the etymology was modern, but in another blog, Michael Carter reveals that during research on medieval monasteries, he was surprised to discover that the dog days have been a recognised phenomena since the dawn of European recorded history, often mentioned by medieval monks and scribes. 

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.

Thomas Jackson’s plea in last week’s Letters pages that the Church should sell the Vatican and use the proceeds for something more useful has provoked a lively response. If you’re one of those who find it hard to fight off depression during the summer holidays, Rachel Kelly has some practical tips. Melanie McDonagh has another go at the fabulously wealthy German Church, which withdraws its services from Catholics who have not coughed up their “church tax”. Even if it’s said that few priests refuse non-payers communion or confession, the link between receipt of the sacraments and payment of a fee doesn’t smell right. Finally, our nature writer Jonathan Tulloch is surprised to come across a fox patrolling the edge of his local wood; here in west London, they are a common sight.  And N. O’Phile, our wine guru, defends the heresy of putting red wine in the fridge: “In extreme heat practically all reds will drink better after chilling for half an hour.” 

Enjoy your cooled Beaujolais. And this week’s Tablet. 

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet