Easter 2024

Easter 2024

“It’s been a long Lent,” writes Liz Dodd, a sister of Saint Joseph of Peace who has been sharing her gaff in Nottingham with young refugees who have been made homeless because they are fleeing domestic abuse. They can’t claim universal credit because they have no independent immigration status away from the family member – and of course they are unable to work. The bankrupt city council has announced cuts that will annihilate what few lifelines remain for vulnerable women, young people, refugees and unhoused people. And yet, as Liz writes, “God keeps showing up – in the garden on Easter morning, on the shores of Lake Galilee, in my kitchen, asleep in our prayer room, in the porch of the church – asking only for love, and giving only love in return.

Every Holy Thursday kings and queens emerge from their palaces to distribute largess to the poor: the duty to the poor has always been regarded as central to the Easter story.  In our leader we consider what the Catholic Church in Britain might do to show it has heeded the voice of the prophets – and a church-led attack on child poverty, with the outrageous cap on child benefit for families who have more than two children as its leading edge, would make a brilliant contribution to the debate ahead of this year’s general election.

Ten years ago, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, made his first visit to Gaza, and he writes with evident feeling about the war there. He fears it will leave a trail of utter devastation and deep rivers of bitterness that will irrigate future violence. “Gaza cannot be rebuilt without a turn towards mutual tolerance and acceptance from those who today are implacable enemies.” On the news pages, Ellen Teague reports that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, presiding over subdued celebrations in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, said that “the loneliness of Jesus in Gethsemane is now shared by all of us”. Bess Twiston Davies writes that the British-based electro-pop duo, Ooberfuse, have partnered with Palestinian Christian musicians to produce an Easter song to help struggling families in Gaza. Bess also speaks to the Namibian-born actress playing Mary in the Oxford Passion Play this year.  Through Lent, the priest and art historian Patrick van der Vorst has been using images to help us deepen our understanding of the seven last words that Jesus spoke on the Cross; his final meditation picks out the ambivalences in Philippe de Champaigne’s Dead Christ on the Cross, the glimpses of the glory to come as well as the wounds and the dark, foreboding clouds. Joanna Moorhead takes a tour of the Vatican Museums with fellow Lancastrian Sr Emanuela Edwards, ending in front of the vast sixteenth-century tapestry on our cover this week: a depiction of the supreme moment of the Christian story. Gerald O’Collins SJ reflects on the dramatic significance of the moment when the risen Jesus encounters Mary Magdalene and the other Mary: it’s the only time in the entire New Testament that Jesus is literally said to “come to meet” a group or individual. The verb suggests how highly Jesus values the two women and their mission and how much he desires to be with them and to encourage them.

The sacrament of the Eucharist was instituted on Holy Thursday, when Jesus commanded his disciples to “Do this in memory of me”. Neil Xavier O’Donoghue reminds us that the way forward for the Church is always to be discovered not around a conference table but in the fruitful celebration of the Eucharist. As Pope Francis has written, “Christian faith is either an encounter with Jesus or it does not exist”: and it is in the liturgy that this encounter takes place. In the seventh of our series exploring the sacraments, Philip Parham remembers the baptism of a daughter with Down’s syndrome, far from home. Linda Pressly meets the women in their 50s and 60s who have left their often comfortable and privileged lives behind to minister in a prison in Tijuana, Mexico. In her early twenties, the Swedish archaeologist and writer Karin Altenberg met Nobel Prize-winning poet Tomas Tranströmer. Her greatest literary hero became her friend. And prize-winning novelist Michèle Roberts reflects on the fruitful clashes between her French Catholic mother and her easygoing Anglican father. 

“Unlike everyone else, he starts from the suffering,” a cardinal close to Pope Francis tells Austen Ivereigh. “For him, it’s never a game of chess.” In View from Rome, Austen explains the thinking behind the Pope’s call for Ukraine to have “the courage of the white flag”. There are seven pages of news stories from our correspondents in Britain, Ireland and across the world as usual, and updates and new stories are added to our website several times a day, giving readers an unrivalled overview of what is happening in the Church in Britain, Ireland and across the world. Tom Heneghan reports that Pope Francis has laicised the former bishop of Ghent, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned his see in 2010 after admitting to sexually abusing his two nephews. The Brussels nunciature said that “grave, new elements” had prompted a reassessment of the case. It gave no explanation as to why it had taken more than a decade to laicise Vangheluwe. Alexander Faludy reports that a court in Hungary has cleared a branch of the Order of Malta of complicity in abuse at a care home, but campaigners claim it obstructed victims’ pursuit of recompense. Bess Twiston Davies reports that Argentina’s new president, the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei, has been accused by the bishops of Argentina of hurting the poor. Queues at soup kitchens are growing “while the tax benefits of large companies remain intact”, they say. Catherine Pepinster reports that the financial management of the Catholic diocese of Portsmouth is under investigation by the charity commission. Sarah Mac Donald writes that in an address to senior Religious in the Irish Church, Sr Bonnie MacLellan, General Superior of the Sisters of St Joseph of San Marie, said the traditional model for religious life worldwide will need to change fundamentally if congregations are to survive.

In Books, Paul Vallely finds muddles, confusions and self-justifications in Pope Francis’ reflections on his life through the defining moments that shaped it in Life: My Story Through History. Brian Morton applauds Rachel Cockerell’s “virtuosic” performance in Melting Point, the story of her great-grandfather’s migration alongside 10,000 other Russian Jews in search of the Promised Land. James Moran draws timely parallels between the feelings of displacement of those caught in the Gaza and Israel conflict and the experiences of Palestinian refugees in Huzama Habayeb’s novel Before the Queen Falls Asleep. Catherine Pepinster is fascinated by Judith Flanders’ exploration of Victorian mourning traditions. Nicholas Tucker is moved by the memoir of a survivor of clerical abuse. And Lavinia Byrne praises the addresses and meditations Timothy Radcliffe gave to the delegates to last October’s Synod, which “restore a sense of humanity to this idea of being a new kind of church”.

Seán Williams recognises Angelica Kauffman’s “eye for pop culture” and suggests we consider their context before dismissing her paintings as kitsch. Elsewhere in Arts, Lucy Lethbridge admits to loving the cheesy three-part Netflix series about Moses narrated by Charles Dance, reminiscent of the biblical epics of 1950s Hollywood. Fátima Nollén is delighted to see the return of Liam Scarlett’s sumptuous reimagining of Swan Lake to the Royal Opera House, which had the audience roaring with approval. Mark Lawson salutes nuns on parade for Easter: a revival of the stage musical version of Sister Act, relying on the idea that nuns are essentially funny, coincides with the release of The New Boy, a new Australian film starring Cate Blanchett which dramatises the belief that nuns are essentially tragic. And Benjamin Poore examines the key musical masterpiece for Lent and Easter 300 years after its first performance, Bach’s St John Passion. 

In our podcast series “The Wise and the Wherefores” Ruth Gledhill asks Franciscan priest and writer Alban McCoy about truth. What is truth? Does it still matter? Is it even out there? Two events are being live-streamed from Stonyhurst College in Lancashire this week: on the morning of Good Friday, a talk by Timothy Radcliffe OP; on the following morning a talk by Nicholas King SJ. Next month we have three webinars on how Catholicism has influenced music, literature and art, beginning with Patrick van der Vorst on 10 April discussing how artists and the Church have interacted through the ages. Full details of timings, speakers and tickets for all these events and webinars are available here. 

In “welcome to inspire”, our free quarterly for young Catholics – distributed with this week’s Tablet – Patrick Hudson highlights the paradox that we assert both that young Catholics are all desperately conservative, and that young Catholics are all desperately alienated by the Church’s conservatism. The mistake is to treat them as a special annexe, rather than fully a part of the Church. “It is refreshing to know that Pope Francis has his ears open to the voices and changing ideas of young people,” writes Sophia Rayzan, also in inspire. In Christus Vivit, the Pope declared to young people, “The Church needs your momentum, intuition, your intuitions, your faith.”

Christopher Howse has lunch at the Garrick, which has been in the headlines recently. In the coffee room a very nice woman – stylish, Catholic and married to a pillar of the establishment – appeared to be sitting on the lap of a gent. “The club seemed less hostile to half the human race than it is cracked up to be.” In Letters, Harold Mozley is persuaded by Margaret Hebblethwaite’s argument in last week’s issue that women were at the Last Supper, whatever the iconography suggests; Martin Warner, the Bishop of Chichester, writes to defend the theological acumen of artists. David Crystal considers the company kept by words like “Mass” and “Easter”. And finally Jonathan Tulloch looks forward to his rowan tree, close to death in the sweltering summer of 2022, resurrected and blooming this Easter. 

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Brendan Walsh

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet