La douce turns sour

La douce turns sour

Some time ago, in an article in The Tablet, Timothy Radcliffe wrote that each one of us is called to live the tension between the convictions of the Church and the questions of the world. That tension comes to mind reading Eamon Duffy’s beautiful account of the life of Fr David Standley, who has died aged 88. Standley never held high office in the Church, but was nevertheless “one of the finest and most inspiring priests of his generation”, with a particular devotion to prison ministry and to l’Arche. He lived out a painful tension between the Church’s teaching on celibacy and his own conviction that priests should be allowed to marry. At the consecration, the words “This is my body … given up for you” carried a very personal resonance for him.

Despite the Rwanda Bill, this month may be the busiest ever for cross-channel small-boat people trafficking. Our leader deplores the Bill, which will deport illegal immigrants to a country where the murder rate is three times that in Britain. As we come, almost certainly, to the end of 14 years of Tory rule, this is a “disgraceful epitaph”, and it is particularly shocking that Catholic MPs, whose thinking should be informed by the teaching of a succession of popes on human rights, are failing to oppose it.

For the next seven months, during the Venice Biennale, the Casa di Reclusione Femminile, the women’s prison on Giudecca, will be the Holy See’s “Pavilion”, with visitors shown around by inmates. Ahead of a visit from Pope Francis on 28 April, Joanna Moorhead looks round and is impressed: “No pavilion at this year’s Biennale is doing ‘real’ better than the Vatican.”

Our cover this week is a collage of pictures of down-at-heel shops and houses in rural France. As Patrick Marnham argues in the run up to June’s elections to the European Parliament, what we once knew as “Douce France” has been replaced by a “semi-wilderness of poverty and neglect”, with alarming crime rates. But what, if any, is the link between crime and immigration? And which political parties stand the best chance of winning the presidential election in 2027?

Christopher Howse is frustrated in his attempts to find shelter for a rough sleeper, but succeeds in buying a new overcoat.

The Dublin-born theologian and former provincial of the Irish Jesuits, Fr Gerry O’Hanlon, welcomes the “change of culture” fostered in the Church by Pope Francis – but, he tells Sarah Mac Donald, there’s a way to go when it comes to the Church’s use of power, and its attitude to safeguarding and to the role of women. The argument that the Church lacks the authority to ordain women as priests, O’Hanlon believes, needs careful examination. There are “lots of good reasons” to say that limiting the “representation of Christ to just the maleness of human beings doesn’t hold up”. The role of women will, he believes, be key to the success of the synodal process. His message to those attending the synod is, “Don’t be foolish or reckless – but don’t avoid taking decisions”.

As we nudge towards May, our gardens have moved out of the yellow period of early spring (primroses daffodils, cowslips) and are singing the blues (scillas, camassias, forget-me-nots, grape hyacinths). Isabel Lloyd tells us this is good news for bees of all species, who prefer visiting blue flowers.

Yazid Said, senior lecturer in Islam at Liverpool Hope University, a Palestinian-born Anglican priest and an Israeli citizen, looks at the three main reasons why working towards harmony in the Middle East is complex and difficult. The first is the establishment of the highly self-conscious ethno-nationalist State of Israel, which has played into the anxieties of the largely Muslim societies. Secondly, the events around the Arab Spring suggest that the traditional make-up of the nation states carved out by Britain and France after the First World War faces insurmountable political, financial and religious challenges. And thirdly, the leadership in several Arab countries in the region has become steadily more aligned with the strategic interests of the West. If the different faith communities are to get along, he argues, the current turbulence will have to force a change of thinking about the role religious law and identity should play in the public domain. If not, the common good “will continue to be defined by tyrants, religious or secular”.

Myroslav Marynovych is a Ukrainian human rights activist who spent seven years in a Siberian prison camp. He makes a compelling argument that the Churches of East and West need to come together to condemn Putin’s – and Kiril’s – line that defends Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war”.

In Arts, Isabelle Grey explores 84-year-old Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s latest film, Kidnapped, rooted in a well-documented and scandalous series of events in 1858, when papal soldiers seized a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his home in Bologna and took him to Rome to be brought up as a Catholic. Mark Lawson is impressed by a “witty and snappy” dark comedy, The Comeuppance, by US playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Anna Moore is moved by the work of photojournalist Tim Hetherington showing at the Imperial War Museum. And Brian Morton praises the “intelligent” songs of Fabiana Palladino, and Beyoncé’s album Act II: Cowboy Carter, which rips down the wall between “pop” and “r’n’b”.

In Books, Anne Chisholm feels that a new biography of Roger Casement by Roland Philipps “comes close to being definitive”. In Who Owns the Moon? philosopher A.C. Grayling grapples with the issues that face us as we move off-Earth and start to colonise, and exploit, the Moon, asteroids and Mars. Brian Morton finds it a “typically thoughtful account”. Lucy Popescu cheers for three debut novels. Bess Twiston Davies reveals the “smorgasbord of sources” informing Anne Somerset’s Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers. And Sophia Rayzan reflects on the ongoing loneliness epidemic explored in psychologist Sam Carr’s All the Lonely People.

In Letters, in response to Margaret Hebblethwaite’s article arguing that St Edmund would be a more suitable patron saint of England than St George, Hugh Somerville Knapman OSB invites readers to visit Douai Abbey and see Peter Eugene Ball’s statue of St Edmund in the abbey church. Dr Mary Mather takes issue with the homily preached by Vincent Nichols on Easter Sunday, in which he said that “it is Peter who is first to enter the empty tomb”. She points out that “all our gospels agree that women were the first witnesses of the resurrection”.

In View from Rome, Julian Paparella reports on celebrations in Rome to mark the fortieth anniversary of the first World Youth Day, convened by St John Paul II in 1984. Pilgrims from the first WYD rubbed shoulders a new generation of WYD-goers. Addressing them, Cardinal José Tolentino told them, “Christ counts on you to build a culture of life rather than death, towards a civilisation of love.” Paparella also reports that the most recent meetings of the C9 – Francis’ advisory council of nine cardinals – have focused on the role of women in the Church. In November, Francis told them that “one of the great sins is to ‘masculinise’ the Church”.

In international news:

• Minorities in India have billed the start of its eighteenth general election as a referendum on the state’s constitutional values. By Rita Joseph.
• Christians were victims of a new wave of attacks in West Africa in the weeks after Easter. By Ellen Teague and Bess Twiston Davies.
• Church committees in Germany have expelled members of populist parties, following the bishops’ emphatic rejection of far-right ideology, prompting calls for clear political guidelines for even voluntary posts in Catholic associations. By Tom Heneghan.
• Pope Francis again expressed his “concern and sorrow” over conflict in the Middle East in his Angelus address last Sunday. By Ellen Teague.
• The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has received five new abuse complaints against the former Jesuit Fr Marko Rupnik. By Patrick Hudson.
• The Vatican has ordered a monastery of Carmelite nuns in Texas that had been feuding with the local bishop to submit to the governance of a Carmelite association of monasteries. By Michael Sean Winters.
• The bishops of Portugal will provide financial compensation for victims of clerical sexual abuse. By Filipe Avillez.

In News from Britain and Ireland

• The Catholic Church needs “a new missionary movement” according to Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops. By Sarah Mac Donald.
• Cafod, Jesuit Refugee Service UK, the Prison Advice and Care Trust and HCPT are among Catholic charities who had teams running in last Sunday’s London Marathon. By Ellen Teague.
• A 1,700-year-old biblical manuscript used by the monks of Upper Egypt will be auctioned by Christie’s in London on 11 June. By Bess Twiston Davies.
• Catholic Church, refugee and human rights groups described the passing of the Government’s Rwanda Bill as a “dark day”. By Ellen Teague.
• A new report has found that most homeless agencies in Ireland believe they are coming into contact with people who have been trafficked, but have insufficient knowledge to identify victims. By Sarah Mac Donald.
• The Greyfriars have confirmed that they are giving up their stewardship of one of the finest Catholic Gothic Revival churches in Britain. By Elena Curti.

Adrian Chiles suggests that, for the next FA Cup final, the lower-ranked team should be given a goal advantage – “the bigger the gap, the bigger the start”. And, while pumping up his bike tyres, Jonathan Tulloch meets a 14-legged woodlouse. So what? Well, woodlice are among the oldest inhabitants on the globe.

We have been running a lively programme of webinars in conjunction with Notre Dame University. On 30 April, deputy editor Maggie Fergusson will host a webinar on Catholic universities, discussing Pope Francis’ view that they must be more than a business. For “Beyond business: Upholding dignity in Catholic universities”, Maggie will be joined by an expert panel comprising Dame Helen Ghosh, Dr Maureen Glackin, Professor Renee Kohler-Ryan and Professor Thomas O’Loughlin. Tickets available here.  And on 15 May, join Anne-Marie O’Riordan, research associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, as she looks at why the Catholic Church should have a serious conversation with a wide range of contemporary Catholic women and ask them who they understand themselves to be and what their baptismal callings are. Tickets here. All webinars are from 6–7 pm BST.

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet