THE

1 JUNE 2013 2.90

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The horror of the
bloodshed was being buried
under an endless stream
of petals and tears
James Roberts finds peace and unity in Woolwich
after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby
Francis the outsider
The Pope of the Americas is doing
things his way, says Robert Mickens
Sixty years on
Catherine Pepinster on Church and
State since Elizabeths Coronation
Tyndales revolution
Melvyn Bragg tells John Morrish
about his new documentary
01 Tablet 1 Jun 13 Cover_Cover 29/05/2013 19:43 Page 1
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1 June 2013
AN ANSWER TO TERRORISM
C
onfronted by a passer-by, one of the killers of the
British army soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich last week
is said to have told her, We want to start a war in
London tonight. The overwhelmingly important
objective since then has been to deny him his wish.
Far-right groups like the English Defence League are about
the only people to respond to this invitation to mayhem.
Seeking to capitalise on the opportunity, they have held
disruptive demonstrations, and there have been attacks on
mosques. The police report a rise in other reported incidents
of anti-Muslim harassment, and many Muslims have said they
feel fearful. But there is no war, nor any sign of one. The rest of
the community, including the vast majority of Muslims horrified
by the brutality against Drummer Rigby, have heeded the call
from the Prime Minister and faith leaders to remain united.
But it is not only in Woolwich that the rhetoric of warfare
has been heard with respect to terrorism. The British Government
has largely eschewed talk of a war on terror or of using it to
justify measures appropriate to a war situation. By contrast,
the American Government has been more belligerent, using
war not so much as a vague metaphor as in the war on drugs
but as an actual legal category. This is how indefinite detention
without trial was justified in Guantanamo Bay. It is how
President Barack Obama has defended using unmanned
aircraft to assassinate suspect individuals whom he deems are
terrorists, regardless of what country they are in. Under this
model, terrorists are like soldiers on a battlefield, albeit one
without legal or geographical boundaries.
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Founded in 1840
Uncertainty hung over the surviving Boston Marathon bomber
when he was first arrested, as to whether he would be read his
rights and treated as a criminal under arrest, or regarded as a
soldier on the enemy side in the ongoing war on terrorism. As
the putative other side in this war is only vaguely defined as
having some connection with the al-Qaeda jihadist network,
such an individual is not fighting for a recognised state and is not
protected by the Geneva Convention. He can easily find himself
in a similar condition to a lone medieval outlaw.
Britain has been firmly committed to the principle that acts
of terrorism are in essence no different from other criminal
acts. Though their motivation may partly be political, they
have been processed through the criminal justice system
where the case has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
This approach avoids branding the whole Muslim community
as being in any sense complicit in a terrorist conspiracy.
It has had the positive effect of encouraging law-abiding
Muslims who know of or suspect terrorist-like activity to report
it to the authorities. Hundreds of plots have been thwarted this
way. But it does involve a degree of scrutiny of private behaviour
by the security services, including behaviour online.
Given the role of the internet in spreading aggressive jihadist
ideas, neither a pure crime model nor the American war-on-
terror model does justice to the new circumstances. The law
may need amending to expand the category of incitement to
murder to anything that might provoke unstable personalities
to carry out uncoordinated attacks, even when the provocation
is only viewable on YouTube or Facebook, or sent by email.
FRANCIS VIEW OF HEAVEN
I
t is a traditional maxim that though Catholics are required
to believe in hell, they are not required to believe there is
anybody in it. They are not required to believe that despite
the doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Church,
atheists and people with other varieties of non-Catholic belief
will automatically be refused entry at the gates of Heaven. In
one sense, therefore, Pope Francis was not saying anything
new when he told Vatican employees at their morning Mass
that Christ had redeemed the whole of humankind.
He engaged in a conversation with himself, according to
Vatican Radio, in which in the guise of a questioner he
protested Father? Even the atheists? Even them, he said.
Everyone a word that appeared about 20 times in his
informal homily. The Lord has redeemed all of us, everyone,
with the blood of Christ: everyone, not just Catholics. Everyone!
In another sense, however, he was treading on controversial
ground, for it may seem to be a short step from that to saying
that being Catholic does not matter. He did not take that step,
of course, but therein lies the heart of an issue that preoccupied
his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Benedict repeatedly warned that one of the greatest dangers
facing the Church lay in the area of interfaith dialogue, where
it was easy to imply that other religions were somehow true
and capable of bringing salvation. That way led to relativism
the idea that all religions were of equal merit and syncretism,
the idea that all religions were really saying the same thing.
Both as Pope and as head of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict had reined in theologians who
he felt had gone too far towards relativism and syncretism,
including Jacques Dupuis, Tissa Balasuriya, Anthony de Mello,
Roger Haight, Jon Sobrino and Peter Phan.
In a previous generation, Karl Rahner had promoted the idea
that virtuous non-Catholics, whether of other faiths or of none,
could be regarded as anonymous Christians Christians, who
did not know they were. By virtue of that assumption, the doctrine
no salvation outside the Church could still be true. These
saved non-Catholics were implicitly inside the Church even
if they did not want to be. But his idea was widely criticised. The
Vatican tried to clarify the position with the document Dominus
Iesus signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, as Pope Emeritus Benedict
then was, in 2000. The document said that people outside
Christianity are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison
with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means
of salvation, and that non-Catholic Christian communities
he withheld from them the status of Churches had defects.
This dismissive tone was in contrast to the far warmer
language the Second Vatican Council had adopted in its 1965
declaration Nostra Aetate. This said that the Catholic Church
rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions, and
added: She regards with sincere reverence those ways of
conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which,
though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and
sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which
enlightens all men. All men everyone. That seems much
closer to the attitude of Pope Francis than of Benedict. Same
faith, but a very different tone.
02 Tablet 1 Jun Leaders_Leaders 29/05/2013 18:48 Page 2
4 London stands united James Roberts
A multicultural community responds to the horror in Woolwich
4 Literalist readings of the Quran that totally
ignore its historical context do much damage
Usama Hasan
A former Islamist on the need to offer alternatives to fundamentalism
6 Francis new world order Robert Mickens
The Pope is eschewing the traditional formalities of office
9 Faith: the heart of the matter Catherine Pepinster
The changing relationship between Church and State
11 Two lives are at stake Michael Sean Winters
As the opposing sides in the abortion debate battle, women suffer
8- PAGE PULL- OUT SUMMER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT
s1 Click and learn Olga Wojtas
Refugees and digital technology
s2 The teacher who inspired me Helen Ghosh
The director general of the National Trust on her English teacher
s3 It is our duty to help nurture talent Victoria Combe
The first Catholic secondary in the London Borough of Richmond
s4 Could do better Jeremy Sutcliffe
The UK needs to improve its standing on welfare and education
s6 What is the point of a Catholic school? James Arthur
A professor of education on the rise of secularism
s8 School report
Saint John Bosco College, Wimbledon, south-west London
1 June 2013
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CONTENTS
1 JUNE 2013
13 PUZZLES
14 PARISH PRACTICE
15 NOTEBOOK
16 LETTERS
17 THE LIVING SPIRIT
24 THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD
Francis condemns organised crime and the global rule of money
27 LETTER FROM ROME
28 NEWS FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND
Church rallies in response to soldiers death in Woolwich
30 ARCHIVE
COLUMNS
7 DAVID BLAIR
Should we simply watch as Syrias vortex
becomes more bloody by the week?
8 PETER HENNESSY S THE
LION AND THE UNICORN
A few thousand votes siphoned off to Ukip
may deny David Cameron a majority
12 LAURENCE FREEMAN
The Russian psyche is passionate about
ideas and living them incarnately
BOOKS
18 DAVID GOODALL
Six Moments of Crisis: inside British
foreign policy
Gill Bennett
TERESA MORGAN
The Myth of Persecution: how early
Christians invented a story of martyrdom
Candida Moss
PAUL SPRAY
Redeeming the Past
Michael Lapsley with Stephen Karakashian
ARTS
21 FEATURE
John Morrish
Melvyn Bragg and William Tyndale
OPERA
Robert Thicknesse
Tristan und Isolde
THEATRE
Mark Lawson
Chimerica
RECORD REVIEW
Brian Morton
The Philadelphia sound remixed
FEATURES
FLORAL TRIBUTES LEFT BY WELL-WISHERS AT THE SITE IN WOOLWICH OF THE MURDER OF DRUMMER LEE RIGBY.
PHOTO: AP/KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH
03 Tablet 1 Jun 13 Cont_P3 contents 29/05/2013 19:10 Page 3
JAMES ROBERTS
London stands united
Images showing a scene of unimaginable horror in Woolwich flashed around the world last week.
But the sacrilege so widely witnessed in the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby is being overcome by
gestures of respect, unity and love from the towns multicultural community
B
y the time the Thames gets to
Woolwich it has, in the words of
Joseph Conrad, writing at the end
of the nineteenth century, spread
out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway lead-
ing to the uttermost ends of the earth.
By the end of the narrative, Conrads hero
Marlow has found the phrase that gives the
book its title. That same tranquil waterway
now seemed to lead into the heart of an
immense darkness.
Last week on Wednesday afternoon, the
heart of darkness returned to Woolwich. Two
men, British-born and converts to Islam, drove
their car into Drummer Lee Rigby, 25, on the
corner of John Wilson Street and Artillery
Place, as he was returning to his barracks on
that same street. Having knocked him to the
ground, they got out of the car and hacked
him to death with meat cleavers and machetes.
Barbaric and incomprehensible as this act
was, there were many witnesses who very
soon gave their accounts and their photo-
records to the nation and the world. A camera
recorded one of the suspects, Michael
Adebolajo, as saying: We swear by almighty
Allah we will never stop fighting you until
you leave us alone. Your people will never
be safe. He went on to tell Ingrid Loyau-
Kennett, who had jumped off the passing
53 bus to see if she could attend to the victim:
I killed him because he killed Muslims, and
I am fed up with people killing Muslims in
Afghanistan.
On Saturday, on that same Woolwich cor-
ner, thousands of bouquets of flowers bore
testimony to the nations response. Drummer
Lee Rigby RIP, read a Union Flag tied to the
Barracks railings. Drummer Lee Rigby,
although we may not have known you, we
thank you for serving our country. God Bless.
RIP. X.
A Help for Heroes sweatshirt, of the kind
the soldier was wearing when he died, was
attached to the railings and a cross had been
hung around the neck. Divesh Karsan, 31,
was moving along the wall of flowers with
two friends. He came, he told me, because
Lee Rigby was a soldier. Mr Karsan is British,
Hindu, of Indian background. If it wasnt
for people like him, what would the world be
like today? he asked.
Sheila Carter had travelled from
Bexleyheath with her cousin Jim to pay her
respects, because there was nothing else she
could do. Jims father was a fireman in the
Blitz that destroyed most of Woolwich 70
years ago. His grandfather fought at the
Somme and survived. Sheila found it impos-
sible to hold back the tears. Why couldnt
they fight with their fists? she asked, referring
to the honour code of her childhood.
The next day, members of Drummer
Rigbys family also visited the spot where he
died. Among them was his mother, Lyn, bent
almost double in that agony of the heart that
The response to terrorism
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1 June 2013
I, along with thousands of young British
Muslims in the 1980s and 1990s, embraced
fundamentalism and Islamism (excessively
political Islam) for many reasons, writes Usama
Hasan. One was that Muslim discourse
worldwide has been dominated by these
themes for the past century, so such mindsets
are the default: many fundamentalists and
Islamists will have never been exposed to
deeper and mystical dimensions of Islam,
especially Sufsm.
Another cause was experiencing everyday
racism in UK society, as I did in London. My
colleague Maajid Nawaz, co-founder of
Quilliam, the worlds frst counter-extremism
think tank, experienced violent racism while
growing up in Essex, as described vividly in his
recent autobiography, Radical. The personal
sense of exclusion from white British society
meant that radical, charismatic Islamist
preachers were easily able to recruit us with
messages of reclaiming our Muslim identity
and reasserting Muslim power with a toxic
brand of Muslim supremacism, very similar to
the Black power and White power
movements of the twentieth century.
This narrative also resonated powerfully
with the resurgence of Islamism worldwide:
for example, the Islamist revolution in Iran,
the Afghan jihad against the USSR, General
Zia-ul-Haqs Islamisation programme in
Pakistan, the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas,
and increasing Islamisation of the
populations of Algeria, Sudan and Saudi
Arabia. Literature, mosques and madrasas,
teachers and preachers funded worldwide by
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Libya, were
hugely infuential.
It was noticeable that fundamentalism was
especially popular among scientists and
engineers at university: a binary,
black-or-white, right-or-wrong mindset is
found in both religious literalism and
scientism. The politicisation of Islam, especially
its anti-Western rhetoric, may also explain the
rise in conversion of British African Christians,
who also experience racism and discrimination,
to radical Islam.
My journey out of Islamist fundamentalism
was gradual, infuenced by experience of life
graduation, working in industry, becoming a
father and regular travel abroad. The most
signifcant factor was deepening my own faith
and study of the Islamic scriptures and
tradition, an ecumenical and mystical
approach, combined with more than a decade
of interfaith discussion and activity.
UK universities were a hotbed of Islamist
activity, where radical groups openly recruited
and sent thousands of jihadist fghters to fght
in Afghanistan and Bosnia. Our universities
have produced dozens of convicted terrorists,
including several presidents of student Islamic
societies that often operate undemocratically
and are liable to be taken over by extremist
groups that deny any space to moderate, liberal
or progressive Muslims.
University authorities are now beginning to
work with their student societies to address
this problem, but more urgency and focus is
needed. While Queen Ethelburgas College
near York cancelled a booking last year by
Islamist extremists, several universities have
hosted gatherings of thousands addressed by
known extremist and radical preachers.
Fundamentalism must be challenged
theologically: literalist readings of the Quran
that totally ignore its historical context do
much damage. Verses relating to jihad
against non-believers and to slavery and the
rights of women and non-believers, are
especially problematic. Reformers argue
convincingly that all these verses were
specifc stages in a process of liberation of
slaves, women and persecuted Muslims who
were originally told to turn the other cheek
or withhold your hands (4:77). The universal
and timeless verses (such as 49:13 and 33:35)
are the overriding teachings of justice, mercy
Literalist readings of the Quran that totally
ignore its historical context do much damage
only mothers can know. The horror of the
bloodshed was being buried, inexorably,
under an endless stream of petals and tears.
Two hundred yards away in the main square,
a colourful procession was walking behind a
statue of the Virgin Mary, singing Ave Maria,
gratia plena, dominus tecum, benedicta tu.
The local Filipino community was celebrating
its annual parade, the Flores de Mayo. At the
time of Major-General Gordon of Khartoum
(1833-1885), after whom the square is named,
such a sight would have been unlikely.
Today, in multicultural Woolwich, it is less
surprising. Fr Michael Branch, the parish
priest of St Peters Catholic Church, half way
between the square and John Wilson Street,
detached himself from the procession and
proceeded to address the gathering. I want
you all to shout Woolwich! he shouted, and
the townsfolk responded. We are missionaries
of peace! he announced. One of the beauties
of living in this great town of Woolwich is that
it is home to very many nations, and many
faiths. We are many faiths but we are not trying
to compete. We are here to teach about God
who is love, but we learn and listen from every
culture, every faith.
After the procession I sat down with Fr
Branch on a low wall in the square to eat fried
chicken and rice, Filipino-style. Here one week
ago that man [one of the suspects] was handing
out leaflets, he said. Look at it now. What
matters is the human family, he went on. Im
not being syncretist, saying all religions are
equal, but in a sense the human family is more
important than the faith. God doesnt do labels.
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As the Filipino band got into its stride with
the Bob Dylan song, To Make You Feel My
Love, I left the square on the 380 bus, heading
for the Greenwich Islamic Centre in
Plumstead, a mile to the east. The imam
Sheikh Saleh tall, relaxed, perhaps in his
forties welcomed me. We removed our shoes
at the door of his office, and sat together,
across from his desk. The murder, he assured
me, was condemned by everyone at the
mosque as an inhuman act. Islam does not
support anything violent, he said. We stand
together with the family of the deceased.
The two supects were apparently converts
and I asked whether the mosque seeks con-
verts. We have no training for converts, he
said. If someone were to come to the mosque,
there is nothing of the sort. We only have visits
from schools. And the preaching? Over
6,000 people come here to pray every week;
2,500 to 3,000 on Fridays. The preaching is
about serving the community and how to be
a good citizen. We are in a good relationship
with our neighbours. They are good to us and
we are good to them. We are also in a good
relationship with other faiths, they come here
and we visit them.
He was not aware of the jihadist leaflets
reportedly being handed out in Gordon Square
by one of the suspects the previous week. A
Muslim who is violent is not a friend of Islam,
he said. If there was any teaching of violence
we would be the first to oppose it.
Back on the corner of Artillery Place and
John Wilson Street, the endless stream of
flowers are piled against the barracks railings.
Across the road is a former pub, the Queen
Victoria. It still has a sign showing the queen,
but it is now the Victoria supermarket with
its windows covered with pictures of fruit and
vegetables. Not dead but changed that is
Woolwich too, its Victorian origins not dead
but living in a new way. The international
community represented here would never
have existed without the Empire.
And changed, too, is the horror of the attack
that took place on this corner. It has been
buried under all the decency that remains in
this culture, and in the cultures that have
made a home here.
and equality inspired by a deep faith in the
One God.
Ancient and medieval punishments, such
as foggings, amputations, beheading and
stoning to death, are another example of
erroneous literalism. Although these were
often suspended in Islamic history or
replaced by imprisonment and fnes,
Islamists regard it as their sacred duty to
reintroduce such punishments to modern
societies. Fundamentalism fails to accept
historical, process-driven readings, since it
superfcially elevates all verses to the same
level of sacredness, without regard to any
hierarchy of sacred or spiritual principles.
Like the Christological controversies about
the nature of Jesus in early Christianity,
Muslims have much to rediscover and learn
from our early, parallel Quranological
controversies, an intense debate about the
nature of Gods Word in the Quran.
The ninth-century inquisition launched by
the otherwise enlightened, rationalist
caliphs in Baghdad against traditionalist
theologians hinged on the nature of the
Quran: the traditionalists maintained that
the Arabic Quran was the literal, uncreated
word of God, while the rationalists argued
that it was created, fearing that a divine,
timeless Quran could be seen as
polytheistic an Islamic equivalent of the
divine Jesus of the Trinity. The later Ashari
school compromised by saying that Gods
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Word was manifested at diferent levels,
including those of the created human
language of Arabic as well as its uncreated,
meta-lingual meanings that reside within
the Self of God.
A distinctively British Islam has been
developing for the past two decades, a
process that must be encouraged. The late
Sheikh Zaki Badawi, former imam of the
Regents Park Mosque, in central London,
set up the Muslim College to train imams
and intellectuals in a way that resonated
with Britain. I am honoured to teach science,
astronomy and ethics at the recently
established Cambridge Muslim College,
founded by Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad (also
known as Tim Winter), a leading academic
and theologian. I have also been honoured to
work with organisations such as the Islamic
Society of Britain, JIMAS (the Association to
Revive the Way of the Messenger) and City
Circle, all of which are evolving progressively,
albeit in the face of constant resistance from
social conservatism and fundamentalism. My
current work at Quilliam focuses on
reconciling Islam with modernity at a
theological level. All these eforts deserve to
be supported and strengthened, for the
good health of both Islam and Britain.
Dr Usama Hasan is senior researcher at
Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank.
[email protected]
Fr Michael Branch with Woolwichs
Filipino community. Photo: James Roberts
ROBERT MICKENS
Francis new
world order
The first Pope from outside Europe for 13 centuries eschews
traditional formality and the ancient protocols of his office.
His background provides vital clues as to the ways in which he
seems likely to reform the Roman Curia
I
n little less than the three months since
his election to the papacy, Pope Francis
has brought a breath of fresh air to the
Roman Church. And he has rekindled
the hopes of millions of so-called Vatican II
Catholics, who had felt increasingly discour-
aged and alienated over the past several years.
The first Pope ever to come from the New
World is now enjoying a honeymoon with the
vast majority of his flock. Just look at the
record numbers of people that converge on
and around St Peters Square each time he
holds a weekday audience or presides at a
Sunday liturgy. Note, also, the surge of visitors
to the Vaticans various information sites and
the Popes Twitter account.
No doubt, the 76-year-old Francis has cap-
tivated them with his direct and effusive way
of speaking, his willingness to spend endless
hours greeting people and his eschewing of
elaborate attire and protocols. But the real
reason behind his remarkable popularity is
probably due to his being so unremarkably
normal.
As Professor Hans Kng recently pointed
out, the early weeks of the new pontificate
have produced a sense of ecclesial rejuvenation
not felt since the time of John XXIII. But he
also warned that this hint of a fresh springtime
for the Church could quickly turn to a new
Ice Age if Francis is unable or unwilling to
reform the Roman Curia system. The fact
that he comes from the Americas rather than
Europe could emerge as a key factor in how
Mere style or real substance? Photo:
CNS/LOsservatore Romano via Reuters
Renewal in Rome
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1 June 2013
he approaches the challenges before him. As
someone from almost the ends of the earth,
he surely knows that he will have to do more
than merely reorganise the Vaticans offices,
streamline its bureaucracy and appoint new
personnel to run the Curia.
A large part of the Catholic Churchs crisis
is to be found in structures that have become
anachronistic and are no longer adequate for
life in the modern world. They are simply no
longer responsive to the developments of the
Churchs own ecclesiology and self-under-
standing. The Second Vatican Council
reaffirmed the ancient doctrine of collegiality,
yet the Bishop of Rome continues to hold
absolute power in a governing system akin
to that of an old European-style, absolute
and male-only monarchy.
The only way Pope Francis can help save
the Church from its ongoing implosion is by
making structural changes that will foster
this doctrine of shared governance between
him and all the bishops, as well as heighten
the awareness of the
Church as a communio
of all the baptised, and
ensure their full partic-
ipation in the liturgy
and the Churchs mis-
sion. This means he
will have to help liber-
ate the papacy from its
monarchical forms and
trappings, and the Universal Church from
being exclusively Eurocentric.
Because he is the first pope to hail from
outside Europe for thirteen centuries, he
seems poised to set this radical and necessary
reform in motion. Everything he has done up
to now suggests that this is one of his objec-
tives. For instance, he has continually
identified himself as Bishop of Rome rather
than as Pope or Supreme Pontiff; he has cho-
sen to live in a priests residence rather than
the apostolic palace; he has shunned use of
the papal coat of arms, which has still not
appeared on any of his garments; he routinely
stands to shake hands with people rather than
sit to have them kiss his ring; and he has largely
rejected the use of gold, jewellery, thrones
and costumes that would emphasise that he
occupies an exulted, imperial position.
Some argue that these things are more a
matter of style than substance. Others have
begun to voice scepticism about the Popes
ability to do little more than cast himself as
some sort of pauper king while allowing the
basic structures to remain the same. And
there are others still who rightly wonder
whether he will have the courage to make
major decisions regarding church practice
(for example communion for the divorced
and remarried, marriage for the clergy, a
greater role for women, and so on).
What is more likely
is that Pope Francis
does not believe that
one man in a coun-
try the size of a
postage stamp in the
middle of Rome
should be making
those decisions at
least not alone. His
novel intuition to choose eight cardinals from
the various continents to help him govern
the universal Church suggests a commitment
to collegiality.
As a Pope who comes from a country far
from the Churchs bureaucratic centre, he is
acutely aware of the need to correct the cen-
tralisation of power. One can understand
reality better not from the centre but from
the peripheries, he said last weekend while
visiting a parish on the far outskirts of Rome.
His eight advisers are almost all from the
peripheries, too, and they could become the
cornerstones of a new structure of collegial
governance.
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Pope Francis, apparently,
does not seem the
least bit interested in the
rituals of the old
papal court
DAVID BLAIR
Should we simply
watch as Syrias vortex
becomes more bloody
by the week?
Foreign ministers are not given to
bold gestures, so when they decide
that the answer to a civil war is to
open the floodgates for more
weapons to enter a country stricken
by violence, you know they have
adopted a policy of despair.
So it is with the European Unions
(EU) decision to lift the arms
embargo on Syria. At the insistence
of Britain and France, all member
states are now free to export
weapons to Syria, which in reality
means they have the option of
arming the rebels fighting President
Bashar al-Assad.
Ever since Syrias uprising
escalated from street protests to
insurgency in late 2011, ministers
have debated the merits of the arms
embargo. Until now, the case for
keeping this restriction based on
the argument that any arms could
end up in the hands of violent
Islamists or be used to carry out
atrocities always carried the day.
The loss of any consensus is
another sign that Syrias tragedy has
created the most wrenching
dilemmas for Western policy-makers
since Bosnias civil war in the 1990s.
In essence, the quandary has been
created by a decision that has
already been taken, or more
accurately, an option that has never
seriously been on the table. No
Western power, least of all America,
is going to intervene directly in
Syrias conflict by sending thousands
of troops to overthrow Mr Assad.
In the absence of that option
ruled out for very good reasons the
West faces an agonising dilemma:
should we simply watch as Syrias
vortex becomes more bloody,
intractable and dangerous by the
week, or should we try at least to
hasten the end of the crisis? The big
Western powers want to do the latter,
but that is where any unity ends.
Accelerating the end of the war
means, in reality, speeding up Mr
Assads downfall. But the harsh
truth is that in the last few months,
Syrias leader has actually
strengthened his position. His
forces have retaken strategically
important territory, tightening
their grip on a corridor running
from Damascus to Homs to Latakia
on the Mediterranean coast.
He will never admit it, but Mr
Assad has given up trying to be
president of all Syria. Instead, his
essential goal is to keep control of the
capital and the heartland of his
minority Alawite sect along the coast.
That may seem like a limited aim,
but compared to Mr Assads
predicament last summer when
rebels were contesting his grip on
Damascus and his sole objective
seemed to be to hang on as de facto
mayor of the capital this new
strategy is significantly more
ambitious.
The key has been far greater
military support from Iran and
Hezbollah, the radical Shia
movement based in south Lebanon.
Both have a crucial interest in
preserving Mr Assads regime; Iran
because he serves as the Islamic
Republics only true ally in the Arab
world; Hezbollah because Syria
under his rule is the vital supply link
through which the movement
receives weapons from Tehran.
In the last few months, Iran and
Hezbollah have helped Mr Assad to
arm and train about 50,000 new
militia fighters, recruited largely
from the Alawite minority.
The regime has always been
unwilling to trust the regular army,
whose rank and file are mainly
Sunni, reflecting the population at
large. The burden of the fighting has
fallen on a handful of dependable
units, making them exhausted and
weakened. Now, just when his army
could be reaching the end of its
tether, Mr Assad may have another
50,000 men at his command.
That lies behind the decision to
scrap the EU arms embargo. Unless
something is done, the balance may
now tip against the rebels, not
decisively in the sense that Mr Assad
will crush the uprising and
recapture all of Syria, but in a way
that prolongs the conflict by creating
a deadly stalemate.
So Britain and France want to tip
the scales in favour of the
insurgents. That has become still
more urgent since the regimes
forces began to gas their enemies,
creating the disastrous possibility
that chemical weapons may now be
on the loose inside Syria.
But even if a way is found to give
arms to dependable rebels as
opposed to anti-Western radicals
will that be enough to get rid of Mr
Assad, or will a terrible stalemate
result anyway? And even if the
policy succeeds, how many will die
along the way?
David Blair is chief foreign
correspondent of The Daily Telegraph.
1 June 2013
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7
Perhaps we will see fortified continental
synods made up of the presidents of national
bishops conferences and some other dele-
gates, perhaps even from among the lower
clergy and laity (including Religious women).
Representatives from these continental bod-
ies (patriarchates?) could then form a
permanent central synod for universal gov-
ernance cum Petro et sub Petro that is, for
issues that have a universal scope, such as
most doctrinal questions. The continental
bodies would deal with those matters that
are more properly regional, such as episcopal
appointments, liturgical translations and so
on. This would effectively begin to restore
the original collegial character of the epis-
copate and reinsert the Bishop of Rome more
clearly into the college of bishops, rather
than function as a monarch that exclusively
rules over it.
Why should Pope Francis understand this
urgency better than any of his post-Vatican
II predecessors? For one thing, because he is
the only pope ever to have been the president
of a national bishops conference. So if nothing
else, one might expect that these national
conferences would be allowed greater auton-
omy over their own Churches in this
pontificate.
As a man born and raised in the New
World, this Argentinian Pope also appears
to be largely immune to the mentality of the
ancien rgime, which still inhabits the minds
of many conservative European churchmen
of his generation. In this regard, he stands
in stark contrast to his immediate prede-
cessor. Benedict XVI surely understood the
need for reforming the papacy and freeing
it from at least some of its monarchical
forms, but it was impossible for him to even
know how to do so. As a quintessential
European ecclesiastic of a certain age, he
lamented the loss of the old world order
where the noble classes (bishops among
them) brought stability to society and age-
old protocols helped preserve an eroding
Euro-Catholic ethos and culture.
Pope Francis apparently does not share
this mentality, nor does he seem the least bit
interested in the rituals of the old papal court,
many which still remain and are obstinately
defended by influential figures in Rome.
Indeed, he would be a strange American if
he were to embrace them. That is not to say
that there are no monarchists among people
in the New World, but Francis does not
appear to be one of them. It is more likely
that the idea of monarchy and certainly the
monarchical developments (deformations)
of the papacy holds little or no value for
him. Thus it would not only be quite easy
and natural for him to dispense with its trap-
pings, but an essential duty to the demands
of the Gospel and fidelity to the true message
of Christianity.
The Brazilian Cardinal Joo Brz de Aviz
recently said it was frightening how much
Pope Francis really trusts people and their
decision-making ability. If this is true, then
we should rightly expect the Latin American
Pope to offer more signs and substantial devel-
opments of collegiality and subsidiarity.
8
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1 June 2013
PETER HENNESSYS
THE LION AND THE UNICORN
A few thousand votes
siphoned off to Ukip
may deny David
Cameron a majority
Among the virtues of most open
societies is that the range of their
political parties facilitates
passionate, sometimes
intemperate venting by parts of the
electorate within overall
conditions of democratic stability.
And given the inability of the
mainstream British parties to cope
with the European virus within our
body politic during outbursts of
serious inflammation, the United
Kingdom Independence Party
(Ukip) proved an impressive vehicle
for such venting in last months local
elections. It will once more during
next years elections to the
European Parliament.
Given that the presence of the
Liberal Democrats in the Coalition
Government has shorn their
capacity to serve as a temporary
holding camp for those out of sorts
with the two main parties, the Ukip
surge was bound to be boosted still
further, for all its lack of
thought-through policies beyond the
European question and, to put it
delicately, the less-than-mainstream
views and lack of charm of some of
its individual candidates.
Labour has had plenty of
Europe-induced trouble over the
years from its leader Hugh
Gaitskells anti-Common Market
Thousand Years of History speech
in 1962 through to its left-right civil
war of the 1980s. But over the past
20 years, and since the Black
Wednesday currency crisis of
September 1992 holed the Major
Government below the waterline,
the Conservative Party has rarely
been more than a few yards away
from a nervous breakdown over the
European Union.
The possible political
permutations between now and the
May 2015 general election are so
plentiful and multi-causal that an
over-concentration on Ukip as the
great destabiliser may be
misleading. Nigel Farage and his
membership will be subject to ever
greater scrutiny between now and
then. His gifts for man-in-the-pub
affability will have lost their novelty.
The more fundamental concerns of
the electorate growth, jobs and
health in particular will, I suspect,
be evermore the political
weathermakers.
Yet a few thousand votes siphoned
off to Ukip from the Conservatives
across the English constituencies
may well deny David Cameron a
Conservative majority in two years
time or even hand Ed Miliband and
Labour largest-single-party status in
a hung Parliament and primary
position to try to strike a deal with
what remains of the Liberal
Democrats in the House of
Commons. Ukip may not be the
most potent weathermaker in the
run-up to May 2015 but it could be
the wreck-maker of a second
Cameron term in which his party
governs solo.
Even if Mr Cameron were to
achieve this considerable feat, the
in-out referendum on the European
Union he has promised before the
end of 2017 will guarantee a
sustained and high level of economic,
political and geopolitical uncertainty
for two-and-a-half years of a kind we
have not seen in peacetime.
Add in the possibility of Scotland
separating after the 2014
independence referendum (which,
however, looks unlikely unless
opinion in Scotland shifts
significantly) and the UK will find
itself coping with multilayer
uncertainties quite apart from
whatever the unexpected hurls at us.
All this makes the designing of a
grand strategy in Whitehall very
difficult as the Cabinet Office begins
to commission papers in
preparation for the 2015 strategic
defence and security review and the
national security strategy. The best
we can hope for is what the analysts
Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman
call smart muddling through.
Only one smaller party in the post-
war years can claim to have seriously
shifted the fulcrum of British
politics the Social Democrats, in
alliance with the Liberals, in the
1980s. They failed in their aim of
breaking the mould of the two main
parties but they shifted the Labour
Party back towards the centre and
made Tony Blair and his three
election victories possible. If the
Conservatives win outright in 2015
and a second Cameron Government
presides over a vote to leave the EU
in 2017, Ukip will, no doubt, claim
enduring historical importance. But
there is an abundance of ifs on the
road from 2013 to 2017.
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor
of Contemporary British History at
Queen Mary, University of London,
and an independent cross-benchpeer.
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(Continued on page 10.)
CATHERINE PEPINSTER
Faith: the heart
of the matter
Tomorrow is the sixtieth anniversary of Elizabeth IIs Coronation
and a potent reminder of how Church and State
were once intertwined. Here, The Tablets editor looks at how
the relationship has changed
T
he Coronation was an event of regal
pomp but essentially a religious
ceremony. The location at
Westminster Abbey, the music, the
carrying of religious objects, including a Bible,
paten and chalice, the placing of coronation
regalia on the altar, the swearing of the
coronation oath on the Bible, the readings
from the Old and New Testaments all these
enforced the religious nature of the Coronation.
But it was also a sacramental moment, includ-
ing the distribution of Communion, and when
the young Queen was anointed with holy oils
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, this was
considered so sacred a moment that it was
hidden from view beneath a canopy.
Faith was then an integral building block
of society, providing common values. To a
certain extent, that faith still lingers in Britain
as it did in the 1950s. At its best, it is a
challenge to be a better society, to be better
individuals. Yet Christianity can no longer be
taken for granted. Being British today does
not automatically mean being Anglican.
The latest census figures show that the
number of people calling themselves Christian
in this country has fallen in the past decade
from 71.7 to 59.3 per cent of the population.
Atheists have jumped from 14.3 to 25.1 per
cent. Muslims have risen from 3 to 4.8 per
cent. Churchgoing is in decline too: 10 per
cent of the population went to church in 1985;
its just 5 per cent now.
A fall-off in the practice of worship is the
usual way of assessing religious life and its
decline, but the values that people continue
to have suggests that they still have powerful
connections to Christianity today. Research
by the sociologist Abby Day, for example, in
a study of religious identity and belief in north-
ern towns, found a strong connection between
these and their family, class, history, values,
ethnicity and nation even amongst those
with no overt religious practice to their name.
Running in parallel with the decline in reli-
gion is the fear that it is being forced out,
particularly by government policy. This is a
view often expressed by senior clergy, and par-
ticularly powerfully by a former Archbishop
of Canterbury, Lord Carey, who has complained
1 June 2013
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9
Religion and government
that Christians are being made to feel part of
a persecuted minority by the Government. As
evidence he cited the case of the right of
Christians to wear a cross, highlighted by the
case of Nadia Eweida, a British Airways check-
in worker who was ordered to stop wearing
the cross because it breached the companys
uniform code. Mrs Eweida took her case to
the European Court of Human Rights which
ruled against the United Kingdom, saying it
had breached her right to express her religion.
Lord Careys remarks were also directed at
same-sex marriage legislation which will have
its second reading in the House of Lords next
week (3 June). The drive by the Prime
Minister to press ahead with marriage reform,
said Lord Carey, made him suspicious and
that behind it there lurks an aggressive secu -
larist and relativist approach towards an
institution that has glued society together.
Given the experience of Christians abroad,
particularly in the Middle East, persecution
seems a far-fetched description for what is
happening in Britain. But there is no doubt
that there is a certain aggression, even dislike
of religion, in this country today, at least
among people with power and influence.
Among the causes of this antipathy are con-
certed attempts by secularists such as Richard
Dawkins to oppose religion, alienation from
religion caused by militant Islamists particu -
larly after 9/11, clerical sex-abuse scandals,
the promotion of individualism and also the
materially rich, time-poor culture which leaves
many people with little appetite for regular
attendance at worship.
For many years there was a general assump-
tion held by many people, including those
holding high office in both Church and State,
that a background Christian colouring of
life in Britain was desirable. But in the post-
war decades the state started taking over many
of the functions and resources of the Churches
and religious voluntary bodies. And since the
1980s, religions relationship with the state
has been tested by consultations, policy and
legal regulation.
Religion is now high on the public agenda
and the relationship, alongside all those policy
proposals and legislation, has to be re -
negotiated. Much of the working out is evident
in a recent document from the Equality and
Human Rights Commission as a response to
European directives.
In Religion or Belief in the Workplace,
the commission talks of promoting a modern
Britain where everyone is treated with dignity
and respect. Crucially, however, beliefs should
not conflict with the fundamental rights of
others. These, according to the document,
include adherents to all the generally recog-
nised religions, as well as Druids, pagans,
humanists and atheists.
The document advocates a certain tolerant
response to manifestations of religion, at least
through its outward signs and symbols and
rituals and traditional practices. This might
mean that somebody, for example, might wish
to avoid working on Sundays or Fridays, avoid
contact with meat or alcohol, or wish to wear
a turban or a cross. Arguably, things that were
once automatically accepted the Sabbath
as a day of rest or Christian symbols such as
a cross around the neck are now viewed as
controversial. In a society shifting away from
an assumption that it is Christian, the first
port of call has been intolerance. But a desire
to accept the consequences of multiculturalism
means that there is at least some acknowl-
edgement now that professing Christianity,
like professing other faiths, should not lead
to discrimination.
However, an example given by the commis-
sion in its document, draws the line at
conscientious objection: A newly-appointed
magistrate has a philosophical belief that pro-
tecting the welfare of children means that they
should not be brought up by parents in same-
sex relationships. She asks her employer to
exempt her from dealing with family law work
involving same-sex couples. The employer
rejects this request and requires her to carry
out her work duties on the basis that the belief
is incompatible with upholding the dignity
and fundamental rights of same-sex couples
under its equal opportunities policy.
So it seems that if there is any suggestion
of religious views restricting other peoples
rights, then they lose out.
The
Coronation
of Queen
Elizabeth II.
Photo: PA
(Continued from page 9.)
10
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1 June 2013
With the row over same-sex marriage con-
tinuing to make the relationship between
Church and State so tense, both the Church
of England and the Catholic Church are having
to do some tough thinking, for all the politi-
cians assurances about not imposing gay
weddings on the Churches.
In other areas, the reworking of the rela-
tionship between the Church and the State
is causing, in many ways, a reversal of the
relationship that grew up in the years of post-
war consensus. Significant architects of the
welfare state and those whose ideas had shaped
it, such as William Temple, R. H. Tawney and
William Beveridge, were inspired by their
Christian beliefs. And without the surrendering
of many institutions belonging to Christian
organisations, such as hospitals and schools,
the welfare state would not have had the
resources and infrastructure it needed.
The relationship between religion and the
state over welfare began to change as
Thatcherism sought to roll back the state,
and neo-liberal ideas about the market devel-
oped, leaving needs exposed and gaps in
provision. Today, the Churches and other faith
organisations are needed more than ever;
economic expediency means that politicians
are turning to them to provide where austerity
has scythed through welfare.
The effectiveness of Churches and other reli-
gious bodies is something that David Cameron,
influenced by conservative thinkers such as
Jesse Norman and Phillip Blond, recognised,
with their advocacy of the big society. So the
very same ministers who clash with people of
faith over personal, sexual morality, turn to
them when it comes to religious responses to
the poor, the elderly and the disabled.
Two examples give some idea of the extent
to which people of faith not only are called
upon to fill the gaps by providing services that
state agencies used to provide, but also mop
up where government policy has led people
into difficult circumstances.
The first is the series of food banks which
have grown up around the country. According
to the Trussell Trust, which coordinates the
work of many of them, frequently run by
churches, nearly 350,000 people were helped
by food banks in 2012-2013, of whom nearly
127,000 were children. Rising food and fuel
prices combined with high unemployment
and changes to benefits led the number of
people approaching the food banks for help
to triple in just a year. Now the charity says
that it will need to open hundreds more to
cope with the demand.
Another example is the work of Scott and
Maria Albrecht, who run a farm in
Hertfordshire which is home to homeless
women and their children. The state has a
statutory right to house homeless children
but not necessarily with their mothers. For
some women, they are faced with either losing
their children or the family staying together
but having nowhere to go. Inspired by Dorothy
Day, who founded the Catholic Worker move-
ment, the Albrechts live alongside the people
that find no help anywhere else.
Through the internet and social media, reli-
gion reaches out beyond Britains boundaries.
This can also lead to marked tensions between
people of faith, be they evangelical Christians
or Muslims. If the state in which such believers
live seeks to limit the impact of religion and
does not honour their beliefs, those believers
could well look for their affiliation beyond
the nation state that is their home.
Certainly the drivers of secularism are insist -
ent that the provision of organisations with
their roots in religion must offer their services
in a neutral way. And yet, this is not always
what the clients of those services want.
Research conducted recently by the consult -
ancy Lemos & Crane into provision of services
to the homeless found that even organisations
founded by Churches no longer make the
spiritual needs of the homeless a priority.
When asked, the charities clients felt this was
an omission. This then gives us a clue to what
is a central challenge to religious organisa-
tions: that they have all kinds of ways in
which they can serve people and serve society,
but are they in some ways doing the worlds
bidding rather than providing something
that nobody else is offering?
Religion can also be the conscience of the
nation and lead to a turnaround in thinking.
The jubilee debt campaign and the advocacy
of fair trade are prime examples of this. In
the recent years since the financial crisis, there
have been many encounters between business
and Christianity, with theologians speaking
of virtue as a philosophy that would guide a
better way to conduct business.
Politicians know that believers have a par-
ticular role to play, and indeed are so engaged
in society that they can be relied on to vote
far more than non-believers. I have seen this
keenness to engage with the different faiths
in Britain close at hand, with the leading polit-
ical parties hosting many events at
10 Downing Street specifically geared to faith
groups. This never happened when religion
was a given in Britain and nor did politicians
appoint faith advisers.
Looking back now 60 years to the time of
the Coronation we can see that Christianity
then seemed to offer a sort of cuddly feel-
good factor as well as was the embodiment
of the Establishment. This kind of faith now,
not just comforting but making people
uncomfortable, is much truer to its roots.
Jesus was born in a stable and Christianity is
from the moment of its foundation an earthy,
physical religion. It is about blood, toil, tears
and sweat, as much as any war, as well as the
most sublime moments in our lives, in a build-
ing like [York Minster]. Or, as Pope Francis
put it: Smell the sheep.
This article is adapted from Catherine
Pepinsters Ebor Lecture entitled On special
ofer at your supermarket now: the tolerance
and intolerance of public manifestations of
religion delivered at York Minster on 22 May.
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(Continued on page 12.)
MICHAEL SEAN WINTERS
Two lives are at stake
Abortion is again to the fore in American politics with newly elected Republicans introducing
restrictions which are then challenged in the courts. But with the debate polarised between
hardcore campaigners on each side, the plight of poor and desperate women is being ignored
D
r Kermit Gosnells trial was filled
with grisly details of the kind that
usually makes headlines. Gosnell
was an abortion doctor who ran
his own clinic and who severed the spinal
chords of babies born alive while he was
attempting to perform late-term abortions.
On 13 May, a Philadelphia jury found him
guilty on three counts of first-degree murder.
He was also convicted of one count of
manslaughter concerning the death of a
woman who died while he performed an abor-
tion on her, and more than 200 counts of
lesser, but related, offences, such as failure to
obtain informed consent from women before
operating on them.
But, media coverage of the trial was muted
at best. It was as if the stories of Gosnells
unclean clinic, women being treated in unsan-
itary conditions, untrained staff, and, finally,
the murder of children, was simply too grue-
some to look at, although celebrity trials, like
the contemporaneous trial of Jodie Arias who
killed her boyfriend, had plenty of gruesome
details and led the news night after night.
Melinda Henneberger wrote a column enti-
tled Why Kermit Gosnell Hasnt Been On
Page One for The Washington Post. I say we
didnt write more because the only abortion
story most outlets ever cover in the news pages
is every single threat or perceived threat to
abortion rights, Henneberger wrote. In fact,
that is so fixed a view of what constitutes cov-
erage of that issue that its genuinely hard, I
think, for many journalists to see a story out-
side that paradigm as news. Thats not so
much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the
effect is one-sided coverage. Sadly, proving
Hennebergers point, her column did not
appear in its usual position on page two of
the morning newspaper it was only pub-
lished online.
The Gosnell case was uniquely horrific, but
his attitude towards killing a child born alive
was not unique. Alisa LaPolt Snow, an official
of Planned Parenthood the largest abortion
provider in the United States was asked at
a legislative hearing in Florida while the
Gosnell trial was going on what view her
organisation would take if a baby was born
alive as a result of a botched abortion. She
replied, We believe that any decision thats
made should be left up to the woman, her
family and the physician. LaPolt Snow
repeated this sentiment like the mantra it is.
Planned Parenthood has been at the forefront
Pro-life campaigners in St Louis,
Missouri. Photo: CNS
1 June 2013
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THE TABLET
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11
Trials and terminations
of the fight to keep late-term abortions legal,
so it is not entirely surprising that something
they view as a constitutional right five minutes
earlier, provided the child is still in the birth
canal, would engender a reassessment of
moral and legal calculi just because the child
happened to have been born.
Even without the horrors of Gosnells clinic,
abortion has become newly contentious in
American politics. In 2008, then-Senator
Barack Obama ran for the presidency prom-
ising he would seek common ground on the
abortion issue, focusing on lowering the abor-
tion rate. But, after his fight with the Catholic
bishops over a controversial contraception
mandate, in 2012, President Obama played
the pro-abortion card openly and frequently.
Almost every speaker at last years Democratic
National Convention spoke about a womans
right to choose. His campaign charged
Republicans with conducting a war on
women. In April, Obama became the first
president to address a Planned Parenthood
convention. It is a measure of the Orwellian
quality of language surrounding abortion that
the President did not specify what it was a
woman had a right to choose. Not once in a
20-minute address did he mention the word
abortion.
Most politics surrounding abortion in the
US occurs at the state level. In the 2010 mid-
term elections, Democrats did badly and in
several states, Republicans gained control of
both houses of the state legislature and the
governors mansion. The newly elected
Republicans introduced a series of laws aimed
at restricting abortion, only to
see these laws challenged in
the courts. The Mississippi leg-
islature in 2012 enacted a law
requiring any doctor at an
abortion clinic to be on the
staff at a local hospital. In
April, a judge blocked the state
of Mississippi from revoking
the license of that states only
abortion clinic on the grounds
of the new law. (The doctor
who worked at the clinic came
from out of state weekly to
work there.) On 21 May, the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
struck down an Arizona law that banned abor-
tions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Nine other
states have adopted similar laws, all of which
face legal challenge in their circuits. Arkansas
legislature adopted a ban on abortion after
12 weeks of pregnancy over Governor Mike
Beebes veto in March, but a federal judge
overturned that law last week. Kansas,
Nebraska and North Dakota have all enacted
laws requiring a woman to obtain an ultra-
sound before getting an abortion.
Virginia is one of only two states that have
a governors race this year and it is shaping
up to be a fight between pro-life Republican
candidate Ken Cuccinelli and pro-choice
Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The pro-life polit-
ical advocacy organisation the Susan B.
Anthony List announced it would be spending
US$1.5 million in television, radio and online
ads, as well as staffing phone banks and send-
ing direct mail, trying to elect Cuccinelli, who
is currently Virginias attorney general. In
that role, he pushed hard for an ultrasound
requirement as well as new building code
requirements that could shut down many of
the states abortion clinics. Planned
Parenthood has begun its own campaign to
defeat Cuccinelli.
Public polling on the issue of abortion has
been consistent for nearly 40 years. Depending
on how the questions are phrased, about one-
third of Americans oppose abortion in all, or
almost all, circumstances. Another third think
abortion should be legal in all, or almost all,
cases. The last third is deeply ambivalent,
uncomfortable with restricting a womans
right to make her own health decisions, but
also convinced that abortion is gravely wrong
and should be discouraged.
(Continued from page 11.) LAURENCE FREEMAN
The Russian psyche is
passionate about ideas
and living them
incarnately
Tolstoy, who was rather
short-sighted, cut the legs of the
chair at his desk so that he could sit
closer to the page he was writing.
Looking at the chair is enough to
visualise his large, bearded bulk
hunched in passionate
concentration over his words. His
writing room in his Moscow house is
on the top floor, at the end of a short
narrow corridor, lined with wood,
off which are the rooms once
occupied by his valet, his sister and
other members of his teeming
household. The office is well lit and
is surprisingly, for a writers solitude,
crammed with leather sofas and
chairs. Nothing illustrates more
vividly Tolstoys gregarious and
intense aloneness. The bicycle
leaning on the wall outside his room,
testifying to one of his favourite
hobbies, is evidence of the powerful
physicality of this man, even in old
age, tirelessly seeking truth. In the
old daguerreotypes around the walls
of the house he sits surrounded by
wife, children, friends and disciples,
with a fierce and glowering look. But
the blissful expression on the face of
his companions suggest that he was,
in his immense vulnerability to life,
remarkably loveable.
To anyone who has read, and
therefore probably loved, Tolstoy,
these domestic details are not trivial.
Like religious relics in a former age,
they carry real presence in ordinary
solidity. That presence, in turn,
deepens the devotees reverence for
the kind of mastery in question.
Perhaps it is a sign of our weakness,
but we feel the need to come close to
such greatness. And better this way
than gossiping about the rich and
famous of Beverly Hills.
Feeling Tolstoys presence like this
awakens the longing to take time to
re-read him and know him better.
Similarly, a pilgrimage to saints
shrines is about mere spiritual
celebrity unless it nourishes a deeper
motivation in us for the work of our
inner journey. Knowing that we can
come close to the simple humanity
of the masters minds and hearts can
free us from the self-denigration of
false comparison. It awakens an
awareness of our unique potential.
As Simone Weil encouragingly
remarked, everyone has genius
though not all have talent.
Nevertheless touring the world of
relics and museums is playing with
fire. The great churches of Orthodox
Moscow and St Petersburg hit the
drab Western Christian visitor with
an unexpectedly intense, if not wild,
religious experience. They would
excommunicate me for saying so
as they excommunicated Tolstoy at
the end of his life but the sheer
religious power of these churches is
reminiscent of an Indian temple
operating in full force. Worshippers
in a Russian church are not neatly
and passively stacked in pews, to be
serviced, they stand and participate.
The icons, like the reserved
sacrament in the West, invest the
devotional experience with a
physical locality. Icons are, unlike
the tabernacle, physically
approachable. They demand to be
kissed.
The Russian psyche is hard to
capture in one image or a few
phrases. But it is passionate about
ideas and living them incarnately.
Moscow, despite decades of the
Communist religion, appears to
have re-emerged, at least in its own
imagination, as the other
Constantinople, a centre of
Orthodoxy, a city of glittering gold
onion domes. Better to leave the
politics of the Orthodox Church
under Tsar Putin to one side for the
moment. Many Russians are as
secularised as in the West, many are
spiritually hungry but feel
religiously alienated, a few would
have had me thrown out of the
churches that I prayed in until I had
been re-baptised.
The rationalist Tolstoy was
exasperated by this deep and slightly
dark mysticism. A church instructed
to pray for the death of Russias
enemies went too far for him. He
and the mystical Dostoevsky were at
opposite social and religious ends of
the Russian spectrum. They
admired each other but never met.
Dostoevsky, who was born in a
small, claustrophobic Moscow
apartment near the poor hospital
where his father served, was aghast
at Tolstoys denial of the divinity of
Christ. These two mighty minds are
equally Russian, forever
irreconcilable and inseparable. This
is not a culture that could have come
up with Anglo-Catholicism.
How you deal with this aversion to
compromise is, no doubt, a matter of
temperament.
Laurence Freeman OSB is the
director of the World Community for
Christian Meditation
(www.wccm.org).
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In only one circumstance since the 1973
Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade estab-
lished a largely unfettered constitutional right
to abortion has ambivalence found its voice.
In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde
Amendment barring the use of federal funds
for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest
or to save a mothers life. Mixed federal-state
programs like Medicaid are permitted to use
state funds for the procedure. The Hyde
Amendment has been re-attached to every
spending bill for the Department of Health
and Human Services since.
Politically, however, the issue of abortion
has mostly been driven not by the centre of
the electorate that might be persuaded, but
by the most vociferous campaigners on either
side. John Carr, who was the United States
Bishops Conferences lead member on Justice
and Peace issues for more than two decades
and is now starting the Initiative on Catholic
Social Thought in Public Life at Georgetown
University, faults the singularity of vision in
both pro-life and pro-choice advocates. When
it comes to abortion, too many see only one
of the lives at stake, Carr told me. For some,
it is all about the woman, her rights, her future
and her fears. For others it is all about the
babies, their lives, rights and promise. Two
lives are at stake in different ways. Our society
sees both unwanted children and poor
women as disposable as things, not people,
as issues and political talking points, not vul-
nerable human beings, sisters and brothers.
I
ndeed, both sides of the debate have dif-
ferent sets of talking points, different
sets of fundraising tools, different sets
of advertising techniques, all of which
are designed to appeal to the hardcore grass-
roots. Consequently, the language and the
framing of the abortion issue is never designed
to persuade but to motivate the base. A sym-
biotic relationship develops between the two
sides. In the 1980s, pro-choice groups
launched a fundraising drive the focus of
which was the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill
designed to expand abortion rights. The pro-
posed legislation was never formally discussed,
even by a committee, because it had no chance
of passing. It was designed to raise money
from strong supporters of abortion rights. In
2008, pro-life groups used fear of the same
proposal to raise money from their members.
Indeed, as a general rule, pro-life groups high-
light not their own work but the work of
Planned Parenthood in their fundraising lit-
erature, and vice versa.
Carr hopes the Gosnell trial might cause
some people to reconsider their views. We
need to condemn the crimes of Dr Gosnell
and attack the hopelessness that led desperate
women to turn to him, he says. The Gosnell
trial makes it harder to turn away from the
brutal violence of abortion or the desperation
of mothers who go to a horrible place for a
horrible thing because they have no hope, for
themselves or their child.
Michael Sean Winters reports for
The Tablet from Washington DC.
PUZZLES
Across:
7 Abigails husband emerges when Rebekahs brother returns (5)
8 Pre-Reformation first fruits for the papal Curia Nana set out (7)
10 & 22 Down: Improvising with sheet and chalk I show what
Jesus would often do when asked (4,3,4)
11 Author with cloister association concerning short promotion
out east (5)
12 Saint and pope embracing much changed twentieth-century
political economist (10)
16 See 1 Down
20 Schuberts favourite fish? (5)
21 Deploy angling rod to get rid of devils? (4,3)
23 One seen to applaud the sound contributor in the bell
ringing (7)
24 Father follows restriction for mantle (5)
Down
1 & 16 Across: Achieving dominant influence during Christs return
to Heaven? (2,3,10)
2 Spoil degree returned for son of Terah (5)
3 Conspiratorial bit of land? (4)
4 In the opera me, auxiliaries, a French music theorist and
Baroque composer (6)
5 Of disorder in system through unavailable energy once trip
reset (8)
6 Fresh air has saints forward and back in difficulty (7)
9 Saint that is turning a classic car range (6)
13 Fresh hope cant be an empty tomb (8)
14 Sea where turned tail in Old Testament times (6)
15 Small choir with monarchs backing for learned academic (7)
17 Agreement when notes of different pitch played
simultaneously we hear (6)
18 A variant form detectable in theism or philosophy (5)
19 Heavenly supporter preferred to satnav? (5)
22 See 10 Across
Solution to the 11 May crossword No. 359:
Across: 1 Eparch; 5 Crete; 8 Evans; 9 Cradled; 10 Abel; 11 Honduras;
13 Boste; 14 Dulia; 19 Montfort; 21 Honi; 23 Cartoon; 24 Avila;
25 Sheed; 26 Kadesh. Down: 2 Placebo; 3 Rose (or Rosa);
4 Hector; 5 Claudius; 6 Euler; 7 Eudist; 8 Esau; 12 Stafford;
15 Ivories; 16 Amices; 17 Franck; 18 Lima; 20 Norse; 22 Laud.
Winner: Stephen Morgan, of Oakham, Rutland.
Please send your answers to: Crossword Competition
1 June, The Tablet, 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk,
London W6 0GY. Please include your full name, telephone
number and email address, and a mailing address.
A bottle of wine courtesy of J. Chandler & Co. Ltd will go to the
sender of the first correct entry drawn at random
on Friday 14 June.
The answers to this weeks puzzles and the crossword
winners name will appear in the 22 June issue.
A long-established Catholic family firm
of wine merchants specialising in the
supply of Altar Wines to the
Clergy and Convents
SANCTANA & SANCTIFEX Brands
J. CHANDLER & CO. LTD
New Abbey House
Fyfield Road, Weyhill
Andover, Hants, SP11 8DN
Tel: 01264 774700
Fax: 01264 774747
Crossword No. 362 | Alanus
Sudoku | Challenging
Each 3 x 3 box, each row and each column
must contain all the numbers 1 to 9.
Solution to the 11 May puzzle
1 June 2013
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13
1
7
10
12
14
16
20
23
2
6
2
15
1
12
3
13
2
16
4
8
17
21
3
13
5
11
21
22
24
4 6
18
7 6
9
19

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Pastoral Centre
apostolic Church chose three quite unre-
markable words for ordained ministers:
servant, elder and overseer (deacon, presbyter
and bishop). In their day these really were
completely ordinary words you could have
a bishop of a building site as much as of a
church or kitchen. Presbyter really does just
mean old man. And servants were almost
literally two a penny. Gloriously as Ignatius
of Antioch notes the deacon is the one who
represents Christ, precisely because ministry
is all about service, all about love in action
for a world in need.
From the fourth century onwards, Christians
have found it extremely easy to forget all
this. Words for the consecration of these
ministries swiftly shifted ground from the
simple, fairly colourless New Testament
laying on of hands (see Acts 6:6 and 8:18;
2 Timothy 1:6) to the secular
Latin word ordinatio, the word
for installing a magistrate. The
liturgical ironies walk hand in
hand with this. Every time I
put on the traditional
vestments for the Eucharist I
am profoundly conscious that
these are not the distinctive
robes of a Christian priest, but
precisely the borrowed robes
of a Roman official. That does
not mean they should not be
worn. Rather, that the wearer
should understand the irony.
It is not so among you!
But it is in inward rather than outward
ways that the Christian community needs to
rediscover or reconfigure its ordained elders
as servant leaders. This is precisely what
Christians of all traditions have begun to see
in Pope Francis not in externals but in the
manner in which he inhabits his office and
the emblematic choices he makes. Bishop
John Rawsthornes Anglican opposite number
in Sheffield, Steven Croft, has grappled long
and hard with this theme of servant leadership.
I have learnt two big things from him.
First, he says that Christian leadership at
whatever level is difficult. We may be able to
learn or borrow a few lessons from other
patterns of leadership and certainly we want
to be taken seriously as credible partners.
But precisely because of the nature of the
enterprise, Christian leadership is difficult.
M
y mother was on Leeds Station
with a crowd of Catholic and
Anglican bishops. It was the
end of a great ecumenical gath-
ering with a buzz of conversation and multiple
farewells. She noticed a wayfarer approach.
He began begging for food, money, whatever
he could get. Mum was fascinated and maybe
appalled that no one seemed to notice.
Eventually one of the clerics detached himself
from the group, bought the wayfarer a sand-
wich, and sat down to talk with him as he
ate. She recognised it was John Rawsthorne,
Catholic Bishop of Hallam, whom she knew
from Liverpool days. The story passed into
family folklore as mum used it again and
again to invite church leaders to think
seriously about the kind of example they
need to give, the kind of Christ they seek to
follow and the kind of servant
leaders they should be.
I am keenly aware of this
personally because a few
months ago I was promoted.
It is all very temporary a
period on the bishops senior
staff team as acting
archdeacon; temporarily
venerable through a time of
major pastoral reorganisation.
I am sufficiently self-aware to
know that promotion in the
Church is an upside-down
affair. A member of our
congregation is currently working in Uganda
where the local bishop says often every step
up is always a step down! That captures
well what leadership might be like in response
to Jesus comment, It is not so among you!
But as my diary has filled up with important
meetings, strategic engagements and new
responsibilities for parish appointments and
the pastoral care of some 70 clergy and 180
congregations, I am shocked by how impressed
I am with myself. In subtle ways I realise
that people behave slightly differently towards
me. One of my assistant priests greeted the
news with the words you will need to dress
better! And I actually bought a new jacket.
It is extraordinary that we should have
constructed Christian ministry in this way.
Our foundation documents tell a different
story. It is hugely significant that in place of
a welter of possible grand alternatives, the
PARISH PRACTICE
Servant leaders
NICHOLAS HENSHALL
The added responsibilities that come with a promotion can mean forgetting where
one began. Leadership is a privilege that must be earned from those being led
How would you measure success? Its hardly
in the share price, or even a simple tally like
the growth of congregations. That is not
surprising, given the Lord we follow and the
pattern of leadership he gives us.
Secondly, he says that we have real wisdom
about leadership. And we should be proud
of it. A leadership manual based on the
deceptions of Jacob, the poor public speaking
of Moses and the infidelities of David might
not sell, and these people would not pass any
selection programme for ordained elders
today. But the Scriptures are unequivocal
that these people warts and all are Gods
anointed instruments.
Jesus himself could not be clearer: he
gives Simon the intentionally ironic name
rock, because he is constantly getting things
wrong from the Transfiguration to
Gethsemane to the Cross. Jesus teaches us
that in his new Israel there are no hierarchies
except those upside-down beatitude
hierarchies of holiness where the first are
last and the greatest is a servant (or sitting
with a beggar on Leeds Station).
How can Christian communities today
begin to respond? There are some clear
invitations. Once again we are a minority
across Europe. Old alliances with power are
either broken or seriously creaking. Those
who have shared the extraordinary privilege
of long years in inner-city communities know
very well that no one pays us any attention
at all, unless we earn our right to be there.
And that is earned not through assuming
that our traditional privileges are still in
place, or even through acts of solo heroism,
but by lives of servant leadership. And in my
experience that is easily as true in leafy
suburbia, just less obvious.
There is a glorious freedom here. Maybe I
can dare to live up to the challenge of our
foundation documents an ordained elder
recognised not by the clothes he wears or the
letters before and after his name. But because
in all sorts of broken and messed up ways
he is just a little bit like the Lord he claims to
follow. And that is made visible not in cloth
of gold vestments or even a lovely new jacket,
but in mostly hidden acts of costly service.
The Revd Nicholas Henshall is acting
Archdeacon of Richmond and vicar of
Christ Church, Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
TO DO
Learn or borrow a few
lessons from other patterns
of leadership
Notice that the leaders in the
Scriptures warts and all
are Gods anointed
instruments
Take heed of Jesus teaching
that the first are last and the
greatest is a servant
14
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14 Tablet 1 Jun 13 PP_P27 parish practice 29/05/2013 13:38 Page 14
NOTEBOOK
Blueprint for the taxman
THERE WAS another barrage of criticism
this week for the former chief of HM Revenue
& Customs (HMRC), Dave Hartnett, after it
was revealed he is to work one day a week at
accountancy firm Deloitte.
The former permanent secretary of the
UK Governments tax body was accused of
doing sweetheart deals with corporations
Goldman Sachs and Vodafone over their tax
bills and described as dishonest by Margaret
Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts
Committee, when he gave evidence to MPs.
But a group looking at ways for businesses
to become more ethical, set up by the
Archbishop of Westminster, has nevertheless
shown faith in Mr Hartnett. The former tax
official is listed as a member of the working
group leading Archbishop Vincent Nichols
initiative A Blueprint for Better Business
launched last September.
Mr Hartnetts consultant role at Deloitte
will not include work with UK firms and
HMRC and was approved by the Prime
Minister and a committee which examines
appointments of former civil servants to new
jobs. Mr Hartnett is a former chairman of
governors at St Dominic Catholic Primary
School in Harpenden, Hertfordshire.
Turning a page
AMONG THOSE with first-hand memories
of the Queens Coronation, which took place
60 years ago tomorrow, is Sir Henry Keswick.
He witnessed proceedings as a page to
Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, holder
of the office of Lord High Constable of
England during the ceremony. Sir Henry, a
Tablet trustee, was given the role because
his father was a friend of the viscount who
was in charge of the British army during
the Second World War.
Aged 12 at the time, he told us he was not
nervous during the ceremony and said he
enjoyed all the days off school he was allowed
for the rehearsals. It was very enjoyable,
he said, adding, some of the pages are still
my friends now. These include Duncan
Davidson who was page to the Earl Marshal
the 16th Duke of Norfolk. Davidson is a
grandson of the 15th duke and was educated
at Ampleforth; he later founded Persimmon,
one of the countrys largest house-building
firms. Sir Henry is chairman of Jardine
Matheson, the British conglomerate with
roots in Hong Kong.
Pleasure of normality
POPE FRANCIS surprised some when he
decided not to live in the spacious papal
apartments, choosing instead the Domus
Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican residence
where the cardinals stayed during the conclave.
Now he has written to a friend explaining
that he likes this set-up as it prevents him
from becoming isolated.
In a letter to a priest in Argentina, Enrique
Quique Rodriguez, Francis says: Im fine
and am staying calm in the face of an event
that was a total surprise to me. I consider
this a gift from God. Im now in the public
eye but Im carrying on a normal life: public
Mass in the morning, eating in the dining
room with everyone else. This suits me well
and avoids me becoming isolated.
Fr Rodriguez, a priest in La Rioja, had
written to the Pope, whom he had known for
a long time, to tell him about the fiesta for
the patron saint in the barrio where he
works. According to the Buenos Aires daily
Clarn, the Pope responded: Your letter
made me very happy and the description of
the fiesta was a breath of fresh air.
(See Robert Mickens, page 6.)
Dialogue of the deaf
IT IS ONE of the hazards of being an octo-
genarian campaigner: losing your hearing.
Bruce Kent, the celebrated peace activist
and vice chairman of Pax Christi, has
explained he is becoming rather deaf.
A woman approached me and said, Youre
getting so obese, he told a packed audience
at the Fr Storey Memorial Lecture at Hull
University last month. What a cheek, I
thought. But what shed actually said was,
Are you still interested in peace?
In a wide-ranging talk entitled Lessons
from 1914: Looking forward with optimism,
Mr Kent urged the honouring of conscientious
objectors as real heroes and advised
listening to the Pope occasionally (Benedict
XV had striven to bring an end to the First
World War).
Despite his 83 years, the former general
secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, who retired from priestly
ministry in 1987, showed he had lost none
of his campaigning verve.
Brandishing a copy of the UN Charter of
1945, he said: Its unknown. If implemented
properly, we could have, and I quote, save[d]
succeeding generations from the scourge of
war. Weve betrayed that vision. Every child
in secondary school should learn about the
UN Charter and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
Ronnies girls
HE TRANSLATED the Bible, wrote detective
fiction and was a regular broadcaster for
BBC radio. Yet there are those who feel that
the life of Ronald Knox, one of the most
prominent converts to Catholicism in the
twentieth century, should be better known.
To remedy this, a colloquium on the life
and work of the priest and theologian, who
died in 1957, has been held at Heythrop
College. Among the speakers were two of
Knoxs former students, Sr John Mary
Northcote, a Religious of the Assumption
based in Kensington Square, London, next
to Heythrop, and Claudia Joly de Lotbinire.
They were pupils at the Assumptionists
school that was evacuated to Aldenham Park,
Shropshire, during the war. Knox, the son of
an Anglican bishop, was staying there as
chaplain to the then owners, Lord and Lady
Acton, and would hear girls confessions and
give them talks.
Sr John Mary, 82, recalled that Knox
would hug the walls of the corridor as pupils
went by, and she told us of a poignant
moment in Aldenhams chapel late one
evening. I remember hearing a heartfelt
Lord, have mercy on us from him as I sat in
the chapel. It was at the height of the war
and there was awful news coming through.
That made such an impression on me. The
colloquium was sponsored by The Tablet
trust.
(Read excerpts from speeches given at the
colloquium at www.thetablet.co.uk/texts)
When I was in prison
FOR ONE HUNDRED and forty-eight years,
Religious sisters in Paris have quietly minis-
tered to women remanded in custody in a
cell block under the citys Palais de Justice.
Sadly, due to a shortage of vocations, the
Sisters of Mary Joseph and the Misericorde
are giving up their round-the-clock presence
in the nineteenth-century court complex on
the Ile de la Cit.
The nuns lived in spartan cells and provided
food, clean bed linen and comfort to women
waiting to be presented to a magistrate. In
late April, Cardinal Andr Vingt-Trois,
Archbishop of Paris, celebrated Mass in
their small chapel to thank them for their
devotion to the orders mission of aiding
prisoners.
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Contentious invitation
The interest shown in the decision by St Marys
School in Wimbledon to ask advisers from
Stonewall to provide training to staff about
homophobic bullying (Unlikely partner-
ship, 25 May) is significant.
The reaction to this issue from the Diocesan
Schools Commission involved and from the
Catholic Education Service (CES) is also
instructive. If admissions policies imposed by
dioceses on schools have the effect of min-
imising any consideration of the strength of
Catholic practice (as opposed to simply ask-
ing a priest to tick boxes, or simply asking
whether a child has been baptised), then
presumably for an organisation like Stonewall
to come into our schools to train teachers really
will not be seen as a problem. The Catholic
ethos of a school, and the authenticity of
religious and moral teaching in a school, will
not matter. Eventually, if hardly any pupils or
staff are committed members of the Church,
or live the Christian life, then why worry about
what it taught about gay relationships? As the
level of practice declines in our schools,
incidents like this will multiply.
If, however, these developments are of con-
cern to parents and teachers, then the schools
commission involved and the CES should be
asked to give an account of their policies and
the way in which they have reacted to this case.
People are entitled to ask why schools com-
missions and the CES have not offered this
training in-house so that schools do not feel
obliged to look for it elsewhere. There needs
to be a proper debate about the place of
Catholic schools in the life of the Church in
this country and the accountability of those
who represent the Catholic community.
(Fr) Ashley Beck
Beckenham, Kent
Treading warily for self-preservation
According to Mark Lawson (Take the knocks
they do the Church good, 25 May), the
reason that television and radio operate what
some perceive as a double standard by being
offensive about Christianity but stepping
lightly when it comes to Islam is because
Muslims are simply more likely to suffer racial
discrimination, social ostracism and potential
violence than Christians.
The latter statement is true but the rea-
soning is false. Unlike Christians (or Jews),
a tiny but very dangerous minority of Muslims
are likely to take their sense of grievance to
extreme lengths. The publication of books and
cartoons which this minority perceive as blas-
phemous has seen publishers murdered,
authors in hiding and buildings firebombed.
In some places, educating girls is likely to cause
acid to be thrown in ones face. Television and
radio writers and producers are more likely
acting from a sense of self-preservation
rather than seeking to balance the inequal-
Obviously, some fear that ordaining women
deacons would prove the thin end of the wedge
and would open the way to women priests,
writes Gerald OCollins. Forgive me, but
could someone explain why a fear of women
priests is obvious? We have always been told
that the objections to the ordination of
women are theological and scriptural, but I
must admit to a suspicion that it is more truth-
fully explained by a visceral fear in some of
adult female presence on the altar.
OCollins is calling for the ordination of
women as deacons, and that is to be wel-
comed perhaps the present pontificate will
offer a more promising climate for this devel-
opment and he also seems anxious to reassure
these fearful souls that it will not lead to the
ordination of women as priests. Apart from
the fact that his argument seems to be based
on the shaky notion of a distinction between
different types of ordination, it is highly
likely that it would indeed be the thin end of
the wedge. Once most reasonable people have
experience of women on the altar and in min-
istry, they are likely to discover there really is
nothing of which to be afraid.
Vicky Cosstick
London SW17
Extravagance? The Venice Biennale
I agree with Sr Jane Liveseys instinct (Being
Christs hands and feet, 18 May), that the Pope
has a very strong sense that what he says will
be transmitted widely. If there is one thing
he wishes to be heard and followed by pas-
toral action, it is his preferential choice for the
poor. This is no mere catchword but his life-
long belief and mission.
This he is showing us by example. There
were two recent instances: his very private visit
to the Casa Dono di Maria, run for the last
25 years by the nuns of Mother Teresa, and
his first pastoral visit to a poor parish in Rome.
However, it seems that his message is not reach-
ing the ears and hearts of some Curia prelates.
A case in point is the pavilion of the Holy
See in the contemporary art exhibition, the
Venice Biennale, which will apparently cost
635,000 (albeit paid for by sponsors). I am
sure that Cardinal Ravasi, the man behind the
project, means well. However, I think it is at
odds with the spirit of Pope Francis.
As a lover of art, I appreciate the need for
dialogue between art and religion, but at a time
of acute economic crisis, should the Vatican
spend so much money at the Biennale?
(Mgr) Charles G. Vella
Milan, Italy
Inappropriate boycott
With regard to the academic boycott of Israel
(Letters, 25 May), an essential point is that
the changes in policy concerning the West Bank
settlements that a boycott supposedly would
encourage have already taken place. No
ities that Muslims do undoubtedly suffer.
Terry Philpot
Limpsfield Chart, Surrey
Women deacons
I warmly welcome Gerald OCollins support
for women deacons (Unlock the door, 25
May). What is not widely known is that the
ordination rite for women deacons in the Early
Church is in the Apostolic Constitutions
Book VIII (c. AD 380). The ordination of
women took place at the same time as the
ordin ation of the men. The rubrics lay down
that the bishop lay his hands upon the head
of the woman and invoking the Holy Spirit
pray that God now also look down upon
this thy servant, who is to be ordained to the
office of deacon, and grant her thy Holy Spirit.
In excluding women from a sacramental
ministry accessible to women in the Church
for 900 years after Christ, the Church has sys-
tematically demonstrated that the excuses for
their exclusion (always disguised as theology)
have their roots in naked misogyny.
Moya St Leger
St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex
Gerald OCollins writes that the office of
women deacons died out in the Middle Ages,
but was revived in the nineteenth century by
Anglicans and Protestants.
Technically it might have died out but in
practice it was subsumed into the office of
abbess, especially that of an abbess of the old
foundations of canonesses regular. Their
ordination service was almost identical as that
used for a deacon at that time.
The -ess suffix in most cases is a diminu-
tive. The exceptions are in portatissa (the
icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary over a door-
way) and abbess, who in medieval times, like
an abbot, had many episcopal powers, includ-
ing assigning to benefices and, in the case of
Thorn, ruling a whole village!
(The Revd Dr Sr) Joan White CSA
London W11
LETTERS
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17
further land has been taken for settlements
since the Oslo agreement (the increase in
numbers of settlers does not affect the general
situation), while the settlements in Gaza
have been vacated; and, more importantly, the
two sides have in effect agreed as to what should
be done if there were a peace agreement
namely, that the outlying settlements would
be vacated and there would be compensation,
probably in the form of land, for those that
remained.
What is needed is not pressure on Israel to
change policy (and an academic boycott
would be a remarkably inappropriate way of
trying to do this); but pressure on both sides,
and especially the Palestinian leadership, to
negotiate a peace treaty and make it possible
to put the changed policy into practice.
Harry Lesser
Bowdon, Cheshire
Teaching faith to the young
In a broad GCSE curriculum where children
are being taught to become analytical, criti-
cal and evaluative, it is tragic that their
response to religious issues becomes formu-
laic, whether they believe it or not (Peter
Stanford, 25 May). Stanfords parental
dilemma over GCSE revision rings painfully
true but so does the hollowness of a tick list
to answer potential questions on the Churchs
teaching on morality, sexual or otherwise.
Genuinely Catholic schools should encour-
age the more open-ended discussion about
where the ideals of the Church meet the
realities of everyday life which Peter Stanford
proposes, without fear from reactionary
clerical or parental criticism. If Catholic
religious education were to be characterised
by the same degree of intellectual honesty,
integrity and challenge as the other humanities
subjects, it would feel much less of a charade,
more relevant and would remain, as you report
in Spain (The Church in the World, 25 May),
examinable in mainstream education. Even Mr
Gove might regard it as equivalent.
(Dr) John Guy
Camberley, Surrey
I agree with Peter Stanford that GCSEs are
about jumping though hoops guided by your
teachers but he underestimates the sheer hard
work and commitment of pupils in this sea-
sonal assessment obstacle course.
I have taught GCSE religious studies for 20
years and it is an exciting and challenging sub-
ject. The OCR religious studies course is
rigorous and academically challenging. Our
pupils have to consider and evaluate many chal-
lenging and emotive issues such as the status
of the embryo and the relevance of the Bible
in todays society. They are encouraged to think
for themselves and to challenge preconceived
ideas and opinions.
I disagree with Stanford about the wisdom
of trying to examine RE in the same way as
other subjects. In my experience, by doing so
we give the subject academic credibility
which puts it on a level playing field with all
other subjects. Pupils respond to the challenges.
They are intrigued in this increasingly secular
world by a counter-cultural alternative to the
popular and media-generated view that
religious ideas are old hat. Where I have taught
non-examined RE courses, the pupils regard
it as of less importance, merely a talking shop
or an opportunity for teachers to peddle their
own views. The pupils soon switch off.
Daniel Kearney
Headmaster, St Bedes College, Manchester
Irrelevant? Surely not
What extraordinary comments from the
Bishop of Shrewsbury about Pope Francis
(News from Britain and Ireland, 18 May). He
appears to have suggested that the Popes deci-
sions to wear his usual black footwear, to spurn
the ermine cloak prepared for him, and to travel
with others in a coach, and of course in the
lift, are irrelevant. Is not this the whole point?
Our Pope leads by example. Does the bishop
think that Christ would have dressed in fine
and expensive garments while others starved?
Would he have avoided contact with others?
Was he constrained by the bureaucratic rules
and regulations that the scribes and the
pharisees wished to impose on him? Let us
thank God for Pope Francis and rejoice. It is
ironic that the bishop concludes that some
observers did not understand Pope Francis
Christ-centred example.
William P. Walker
Stockport, Cheshire
Unacceptable voices?
The letter from Gabe Huck (Each in his own
language, 25 May) about celebrating the great
feast of Pentecost was spot on. The proclam -
ation of the first reading from Acts in several
languages as described would no doubt be
power ful and moving. What a pity, then, that
the revised General Instruction of the Roman
Missal does not permit such a practice
because of its puzzling judgement that it is
not at all appropriate that the same reading
be proclaimed by two readers, one after the
other, with the exception of the Passion of the
Lord. One wonders about the reason for this
ruling which also eliminates effective
proclamation of some of the longer Easter Vigil
readings by more than one reader.
Elizabeth Harrington
Milton, Queensland, Australia
At this time in our history, how many peo-
ple are filled with hatred! How many
people are the cause of calumny! How
many times have we ourselves sinned! Yes,
we are all sinners. Look! My face, the face
of every one of us, the faces of our per-
secutors, the faces of those who slander
us, are passing before the divine face of
Christ who is in agony, who dies, and who
speaks to us: Here, my blood awaits you;
it is shed for the forgiveness of all those
sins. As we receive the sacred host, we
receive all of Jesus suffering, all his love
for sinners, all his feelings which are quite
distinct from those who have offended him.
Father, forgive them for they know not
what they do; and the Father looks at the
anxiety of his Son in his agony, the dep-
rivation of all sinners, those who trampled
on his hosts, who communicate sacri -
legiously, all of us who offend the Lord.
We all feel sinners this afternoon and con-
fess to the Lord, calling on the power of
the Eucharist for reparation: Lord, we are
now going to honour you in a beautiful
process at the end of Mass.
Archbishop Oscar Romero
Homily on the Feast of the Body and
Blood of Christ, 12 June 1977
Humility is the guardian and embellish-
ment of all virtues. Any spiritual building
without this foundation may appear to rise
higher but is headed for ruin. So that this
man, adorned with so many gifts, should
lack nothing, this gift filled him more abun-
dantly. In his own opinion he was nothing
but a sinner, though he was the beauty
and splendour of every kind of holiness.
It was on this that he strove to build him-
self, to lay the foundation he had learned
from Christ. Forgetting what he had
gained, he kept before his eyes only what
he lacked, considering that more was lack-
ing in him than present. Not satisfied with
his first virtues, his only ambition was to
become better and to add new ones.
Humble in manner, he was more hum-
ble in opinion, and most humble in his
own estimation.
Thomas of Celano
The Remembrance of the Desire of a
Soul, Second Book, C11, 140; The
Founder, 337-338 in Day by Day with
St Francis edited by Gianluigi Pasquale
OFM Cap. (New City, 2012)
Tomorrow is the Solemnity
of Corpus Christi
For more of your correspondence,
go to the Letters Extra section on
www.thetablet.co.uk
The living Spirit
18
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1 June 2013
BOOKS
n the evening of 2 April 1983,
returning to the British Embassy
at Bonn after a day away, I found
the defence attach standing at the
front door. Theres bad news, he said. The
Argentines have invaded and occupied the
Falkland Islands. I was taken aback. Well,
what are we going to do about it? was all I
could find to say. What can we do about it?
he replied. We cant send a fleet 8,000 miles
across the Atlantic to recapture them.
Next morning, however, as we listened to
the BBC news, we learned that that was pre-
cisely what the British Government had
decided to do. Six weeks later, having been
seconded from the foreign service to the
Cabinet Office, I found myself taking the notes
at the daily meetings of Mrs Thatchers war
Cabinet and beginning two years experience
of Cabinet government in action.
The Argentine seizure of the Falklands is
the last of the six moments of crisis
moments of critical decision for the British
Government of the day examined in this
concisely written, authoritative and gripping
book by Gill Bennett, former chief historian
at the Foreign Office. All the episodes she
deals with sending a British contingent to
Korea in July 1950; Suez (27 July 1956); apply-
ing to join the EEC (July 1961); withdrawing
from East of Suez (January 1968), expelling
O
105 Soviet spies (September 1971) and the
decision to send the fleet to recover the
Falklands (April 1982) have by now been
covered by contemporary historians as well
as in memoirs and published diaries. Gill
Bennett draws on all of these; but her purpose
is to explain how foreign policy is made;
and for this her focus is on the minutes of the
Cabinet meetings at which the decisions were
reached. For these, as she says, were all deci-
sions which only the Cabinet could take.
Cabinet minutes are an interesting art form.
Lord Armstrong (Cabinet Secretary from 1979
to 1997) is quoted by Bennett as saying that
he tried to write them in sonata form, with
an exposition, development section, recapit-
ulation and coda. More prosaically, my
recollection is that they normally began with
an introduction to the subject for discussion
(The Prime Minister, introducing the dis-
cussion, said ), followed by the points made
in the discussion and ending with a summing
up by the Prime Minister embodying the deci-
sion reached. (Margaret Thatcher, in my
experience, sometimes handled the discussion
accordingly, but at other times opened with
a resounding statement of her own view, so
that I thought the minutes ought to read:
The Prime Minister, pre-empting the dis-
cussion, said ) As Robert Armstrong once
observed rather quellingly, when I complained
that this austere format failed to give historians
the full flavour of the discussion, Were not
writing for the benefit of historians. Were
writing to record what has been decided
and, he might have added, to record the (often
conflicting) policy considerations advanced
in the course of reaching that decision.
Briefly setting each crisis in its context,
Bennett gives in a few strokes some sharply
drawn character sketches of the main partici -
pants, among them Stafford Cripps, an
intellectual giant with a strong sympathy
for the Soviet Union; Macmillan, tending to
think in grandiose historical terms; Alec
Douglas-Home, without vanity, a man of
iron painted to look like wood; Wilson, prone
to believe himself the victim of hostile plotting;
Mrs Thatcher, intelligent, exceptionally
driven, and determined who inspired both
intense dislike and passionate loyalty; and
Heath, who alone of those party to the decision
to apply for membership of the EEC actually
believed in the European idea which moti-
vated the Communitys founders, but which
no subsequent British Government has ever
really shared.
From her narrative, Bennett draws some
simple, but illuminating, conclusions. Firstly,
two golden rules: that, however much con-
sultation there may be beforehand with
colleagues, officials or others and advisers
both official and unofficial clearly have a great
influence on the final outcome policy is
made by the Ministers who collectively agree
the critical decision; and that those Ministers
always think about more than one thing at a
time in other words, all foreign policy deci-
sions have implications (often negative) for
policies in other areas, for which individual
Ministers are responsible. The Prime Ministers
role is crucial, because he or she alone has
oversight of all the departments of government.
(In the case of the expulsion of Russian spies
in September 1971, the so-called Operation
FOOT, for example, the need for action had
been endorsed with varying degrees of reluc-
tance by Ministers, when the Foreign
Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, called a
meeting of all the officials concerned, including
the heads of MI5 and MI6, at which I remem-
ber some last-minute doubts being aired.
Halfway through the meeting, before express-
ing his own view, Douglas-Home was called
away to see the Prime Minister; and we learned
later that day that the Prime Minister had
given the operation the go-ahead.)
All the decisions Bennett examines took
place against the backdrop of the Cold War,
a major factor in every foreign-policy decision
until 1989; Britains relationship with the
United States was always a paramount con-
sideration, even when British and American
interests differed; and the British commitment
to European union was half-hearted from the
start, driven mainly by economic considera-
tions rather than political or idealistic ones.
Above all, Bennett reminds us that Ministers
almost always have to take their decisions
under time pressure, on the basis of imperfect
knowledge, and without being able to know
in advance the consequences of what they
decide. On the evidence presented in this fas-
cinating book, and with the important
exception of the Suez debacle, post-war British
Governments up to the end of the twentieth
century did not manage it too badly.
DAVID GOODALL
HISTORY
MADE ROUND
A TABLE
Six Moments of Crisis: inside British
foreign policy
Gill Bennett
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 240PP, 20
Tablet bookshop price 18 Tel 01420 592974
Harold Macmillan in the Cabinet Room
at 10 Downing Street: he tended to think
in grandiose terms. Photo: Bridgeman
OUR REVIEWERS
David Goodall was High Commissioner to India
from 1987 to 1991.
Teresa Morgan is a fellow of Oriel College,
Oxford, where she teaches ancient history.
Paul Spray is Traidcrafts policy director. He
worked on the Southern Africa desk of the
Catholic Institute for International Relations
(Progressio).
Laura Keynes is a freelance writer.
1 June 2013
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19
As he peels away the wrapping, the parcel
bomb explodes. He is in excruciating pain.
Alone in that emptiness, I felt the presence
of God surrounding me. PAGE 20
Dont mention it
The Myth of Persecution: how early
Christians invented a story of
martyrdom
Candida Moss
HARPER ONE, 308PP, 14.99
Tablet bookshop price 13.50 Tel 01420 592974
I
remember once sitting in an Oxford
common room, listening to a retired
Bishop of Jerusalem argue that if only
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims would
accept the doctrine of the Incarnation and
address their differences along lines of
Christian theology, all their problems would
be solved. I doubted he was right, and I also
wondered what he hoped to achieve by
saying it. There were no Palestinians or
Israelis present. If there had been, did the
bishop think they would have struck their
foreheads and said, Of course! If only wed
thought of it before!?
I got something of the same feeling reading
The Myth of Persecution, though not because
of any basic flaw in Candida Moss account
of the early Church. On the contrary, the
claim at the heart of this book has been
carefully researched by several generations
of scholars and is orthodox in academic
circles, if not beyond. Christians under the
Roman Empire were neither constantly
persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers
for their faith. They were prosecuted from
time to time for alleged sedition, holding
illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to
the emperor. They were, like other convicts,
sometimes tortured and executed in
horrible ways. They seem to have been
regarded by many Romans with distaste as
a particularly silly superstition. But
Christian stories of thousands of individual
and mass martyrdoms over centuries have
at best a limited basis in historical fact, and
in many cases are sheer fiction.
Moss investigates martyrdom as a
recurrent concept in the ancient world,
identifying Homeric heroes, Greek and
Roman philosophers and Jewish freedom
fighters as among those who died for what
they believed in. She explores the way
Christian martyrologies borrow motifs from
older stories, and highlights how different
these stories often are from what can be
recovered historically. She does not gloss
over the negative aspects of martyrdom,
showing that some Christian martyrs look,
in our terms, very like terrorists, attacking
and killing other Christians who disagreed
with their views; others look frankly
suicidal, while a few went to their deaths
prophesying eschatological torments for
their persecutors with disturbing relish.
The myth of persecution, Moss argues,
really established itself in the fourth
century, mainly because it was good
business. To be associated with a martyr
gave status to a city, church or bishopric.
Tombs and shrines attracted pilgrims, who
needed places to stay, food, drink and
souvenirs, all of which helped to boost local
economies. In addition, as Moss suggests,
stories of martyrdom were, and remain,
popular because they are exciting, providing
the faithful with strong, colourful narratives
of good and evil in which good always wins
in the end. Moss does not claim that any of
this will come as a surprise to specialists.
Her aim, as an expert in the field, is to make
scholarly research accessible to a wider
audience, and she does so with clarity, spirit
and style. One might quibble with some of
her readings and interpretations, but that
would be to miss the point of the book.
What disappoints me is not so much
what Moss says as what she does not. She
misses the opportunity to discuss in depth
why martyrologies were written in such
numbers or why they took such a powerful
hold on the Christian imagination. These
are complex questions, and the crude social
functionalism and psychological
sensationalism that Moss offers are poor
forms of historical explanation. The
concept of martyrdom in which she frames
Christian martyrologies is too broad to have
much explanatory value (Achilles, Lucretia
and the Maccabees really do not form a
single useful category). She has nothing to
say about the important and intriguing
question of how the authority of the Church
as an institution dominated as it was by
men, bishops, the educated and the elite
interacted with that of martyrs, who were
often marginal figures, poor, uneducated
and female.
Most of all, though, I was haunted
throughout the book by the memory of the
retired bishop in the common room. Moss
begins and ends by describing occasions in
recent history when individuals have been
hailed in the media as Christian martyrs, or
when the claim that Christians were being
persecuted has been used to sharpen public
debate. She proposes that Christian
martyrdom should cease to be invoked in
public discourse, and concludes that if we
refrain from mentioning it, political and
religious conflicts over everything from
terrorism to abortion will be neutralised.
People will learn to discuss their
differences calmly and reasonably, discover
common ground and solve their problems
in peace. The idea that those who find the
rhetoric of persecution useful might read
this book, be converted and forswear all
future reference to persecution in public
discourse, seems to me oddly naive. It is
equally naive to assume that if we did
somehow divest public debate of this
discourse, peoples views or manner of
promoting them would ipso facto be
transformed. (It is worth remembering
what Moss overlooks, that the discourse of
persecution need not be linked with that of
martyrdom and is not confined to
Christians.) Moss argument throughout the
book is that a little martyrdomcan go,
rhetorically and politically, a very long way.
She is right, but the point largely
undermines her concluding exhortations.
Academics are fond of telling anyone who
will listen that if everyone knew what they
knew about their subject, the world would
be a different place. Its a harmless enough
conviction but shows little grasp of practical
politics. As an account of early Christian
martyrdom, this book is readable,
historiographically limited but backed by
sound scholarship. As a contribution to
public debate, I fear it is unlikely to inspire
the turning of many swords into
ploughshares.
Teresa Morgan
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Candida Moss:
a little
martyrdom
can go,
rhetorically
and politically,
a long way
20
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1 June 2013
The listener
Redeeming the Past: my journey
from freedom fghter to healer
Michael Lapsley
with Stephen Karakashian
ORBIS/WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES, 270PP,
16.99
Tablet bookshop price 15.30 Tel 01420 592974
T
his autobiography comes larded with
commendations by Nelson Mandela,
Rowan Williams and Nadine Gordimer.
Desmond Tutu has written the foreword.
Yet Michael Lapsley is a priest who fell out
with bishops in three countries; a pacifist
who became a supporter of armed struggle;
a vocal prophet who has committed himself
to listening. What is it about the man?
The story begins in 1990 with Lapsley at
home in Harare, opening an envelope
containing two religious magazines
wrapped in plastic sent from South Africa.
As he peels away the wrapping, the parcel
bomb explodes. He is in excruciating pain,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing. There are
huge holes in the floor and the ceiling.
Alone in that emptiness, he writes, I felt
the presence of God surrounding me
In a terrible way, the bomb validated
Lapsleys life to that point he had been
doing something that the apartheid regime
badly wanted to stop. He had grown up in
New Zealand, a pious boy who at the age of
17 had joined an Anglican religious order,
the Society of the Sacred Mission. It had
sent him to South Africa, where he became
both a university student and a university
chaplain. He threw himself into opposition
to apartheid, antagonising his own religious
community. The Government expelled him,
but he only went only as far as Lesotho,
entirely enclosed within South Africa, again
as student and chaplain. There he joined
the African National Congress, reluctantly
accepting the need for armed struggle. After
the South African army raided Lesotho, the
Church decided his presence was a threat to
others, and ordered him to leave. He retreated
to newly independent Zimbabwe, where
after satisfying parish work but further
disputes with a bishop the bomb arrived.
Most of Redeeming the Past is taken up
with Lapsleys ministry after the bombing.
As apartheid ended, he returned to South
Africa. Here was a damaged nation; people
needing to deal with what they had inside
them if they were to create a good society. It
struck Lapsley that I was now equipped in
new ways, however costly, for this new
battle I identify with other peoples
brokenness in a way I could not possibly
have done if I had not been broken myself.
He established the Institute for the Healing
of Memories, which devised an
extraordinary three-day workshop that
provided a safe space for people to tell their
stories, an extended liturgy, as Lapsley
came to think of it, open to all faiths. It was
offered to victims and perpetrators of
apartheid in South Africa, and eventually it
spread overseas, where it became a lifeline
for women in Zimbabwe, Evangelical
church leaders in Rwanda, Australian
Aborigines, and clergy and prisoners in the
United States.
It is a compelling narrative. It helps that
Lapsley has a psychotherapist rather than a
ghostwriter as co-author. Theres no heavy
theorising, but careful listening and a nice
turn of humour. Its tempting to see
Lapsleys life in two parts, separated by the
bomb: before, a wholehearted commitment
to taking sides in the liberation struggle;
after, an equally wholehearted commitment
to healing by listening to the stories of
people on all sides. But that would be
wrong. First, it wasnt just Lapsleys life that
was suddenly changed in the early 1990s
South Africa itself was torn apart. It
became a time when everyone needed
healing. And, second, there is an underlying
continuity in Lapsleys life, not a break.
The coherence comes from his utter
commitment to his understanding of
Christ. Fr Michael has always been willing
to put his body where his heart is. One
night in the 1970s, he stayed at my home in
Botswana. He was to return to Lesotho the
next day which meant changing planes in
Johannesburg, where there was a real fear
that the security police might detain him.
He was justifiably frightened. Yet after his
breakfast he put on his full religious habit,
bid me farewell, and boarded the plane.
Paul Spray
NOVEL OF THE WEEK
Sacred conversation
Frances and Bernard
Carlene Bauer
CHATTO & WINDUS, 224PP, 12.99
Tablet bookshop price 11.70 Tel 01420 592974
T
his bittersweet epistolary novel tracking
the relationship between two writers,
Frances Reardon and Bernard Eliot, is
inspired by the real-life friendship between
the mordant Southern gothic novelist
Flannery OConnor and the charismatic
poet Robert Lowell. Frances and Bernard
meet at a writers retreat in the summer of
1957: he is gregarious, passionate, ready to
plunge in wherever his passion takes him;
she looks untouched but is dry, quick,
and quick to skewer. Something about her
combination of religiosity and wry humour
captures his imagination, and she likewise
recognises a rarity of mind and spirit in
him. Its a mutual, but chaste, interest.
They begin a correspondence based on
their shared Catholicism: Frances is a
cradle Catholic from a large Irish American
family, and Bernard a recent convert from
East Coast Puritanism. If he had hopes of a
high-minded spiritual dialogue Frances
quickly bats him down. Their letters cover
everything from literature to family and
jazz music, delicately dancing around the
serious questions that single Catholic men
and women often find to ask each other,
such as What is your confirmation name,
and why? The gospels or Paul? Or is that
the wrong question entirely?
When Frances moves to New York they
start to see more of one another, the city
forming a backdrop to this new stage in
their relationship; but Bernard is prone to
episodes of mania, and ultimately his
spiralling mental health tests their faith,
creativity and burgeoning love. In its early
stages this is a novel about graced
friendship between men and women; about
relationship between the sexes based on
clarity and honesty. Frances and Bernard
find the space in their letters to see each
other clearly and appreciate each other for
who they are. In its later stages its about
discernment and vocation: how Frances
discerns her dual vocation as a writer and a
woman.
Frances and Bernard is Carlene Bauers
fiction debut after Not That Kind of Girl, a
memoir about converting to Catholicism
from an Evangelical background. It
announces Bauer as a serious talent. Her
skill in capturing the delicate negotiations
of a relationship in all its stages, from
tentative flirtatious beginning to car-crash
ending, and in ventriloquising Flannery
OConnor and Robert Lowell, is quite
breathtaking. Sentences sparkle on the
page, and there are some brilliantly wry
and witty lines that the reader will want to
hold and keep. The great themes are all
here: love and redemption, faith and
forgiveness. Great writers are here too, as
the letter writers argue over Milton,
Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and E.M.
Forster, to name a few. As a work of fiction
its both intellectual and down to earth,
serious and funny, reflecting just what it is
to live faith in relationship with others.
Laura Keynes
Michael
Lapsley
with
Nelson
Mandela
on
Robben
Island,
five years
after
Mandelas
release
1 June 2013
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21
ARTS
JOHN MORRISH
illiam Tyndale is a towering figure
in the history of religion in
England and in the development
of the English language and its
literature. And yet, argues Melvyn Bragg in
The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor Britain
(BBC2, 6 June), he is unappreciated.
Tyndales translation of the New Testament
into English was the first complete version,
the first to be based directly on the Greek,
and the first to be printed. Subsequent trans-
lations, including the King James Version
(KJV), were overwhelmingly based on his
work. As a creator of strong, memorable
idioms, he ranks with Shakespeare as an
influence on the language. He opened the
door to the Protestant Reformation in
England, and, ultimately, to democracy itself.
When I interviewed Bragg he told me the
conventional history of the English Bible has
ignored Tyndale because it has concentrated
on the idea of this committee of learned men
gathering together to create the KJV. But that
committee acknowledged in its preface that
it was not making a new Bible, but a good
one better. That good one was substantially
Tyndales: 84 per cent of the language of the
KJVs New Testament is said to come from
him, directly or indirectly. These honourable
men and good scholars probably did not
know that, says Bragg. They worked from
intermediary texts like the Great Bible.
Tyndale never put his name on his own Bible,
a dangerous enterprise that led to his execu-
tion in a prison in Belgium in 1536.
This excellent programme sees Bragg
covering a lot of miles around Britain and the
Continent, looking for key locations in the
scholars life, starting on a modern farm in
Gloucestershire, once owned by Tyndales
brother. Born nearby in 1494, Tyndale went
Magdalen Hall (later Hertford College), Oxford,
where he acquired a passion for languages.
From childhood, says Bragg, Tyndale har-
boured an ambition to translate the Bible into
the vernacular. It had been illegal, since 1408,
to translate the Scriptures into English, on
pain of death. But things had been changing
on the Continent. First came Erasmus Greek
New Testament, which made modern
scholarship possible. Then came Luthers
writings and his first German Bible, in 1517.
All this was greeted with horror by Henry
VIII. The Bible was the states book, said
Bragg. It was a book of power, the power of
the State and the power of the Church. They
didnt want it disturbed. Tyndale was unde-
terred. In 1522, after being ordained, he
became chaplain to a family in Little Sodbury,
near his childhood home. He soon fell to
heated discussions with a local cleric. I defy
the Pope and all his laws, he said. If God
spares me I will cause the boy that drives the
plough to know more of the Scriptures than
thou dost. It was a bold vision. As Bragg says
in the film, this wouldnt just be a Bible for
people who could read; it would be read aloud
to everyone.
The quote, from John Foxes Book of
Martyrs, casts Tyndale as a Protestant almost
before Protestantism was invented. Bragg,
though, says that Tyndale never saw himself
in that light. He considered himself sufficiently
orthodox to risk approaching Cuthbert
Tunstall, Bishop of London, for help with the
translation. Bishop Tunstall sent him away,
and Tyndale went into exile.
In Cologne, and then in Worms, he trans-
lated and printed his New Testament, a small
volume designed to be smuggled and hidden,
and costing two-and-a-half weeks of a servants
wages. Its language was clear, demotic, Anglo-
Saxon, a key influence on the central tradition
of English prose. It included phrases that res-
onate to this day In the beginning was the
Word and Our Father, which art in Heaven
as well as hundreds of idioms: fall flat on
his face, rise and shine, from time to time,
sign of the times. It also favoured a distinctly
Protestant lexicon. Ekklesia became not
church but congregation; presbyteros
became not priest but elder.
In England, the arrival of the Bibles was
met with equal enthusiasm and fury. Tunstall
burnt them on the steps of St Pauls, a symbolic
act that unsettled believers of all stripes.
Nonetheless, the Bible continued to flow into
England in numbers. Tyndales prospects,
though, were not enhanced when he pointed
out a verse in Deuteronomy that contradicted
the passage in Leviticus that Henry had been
relying on to annul his marriage to Catherine
of Aragon.
Thomas Cromwell, sympathetic to the
reformers, attempted to broker some sort of
peace with Tyndale. He offered safe passage
back to England and a post in Henrys court.
Tyndale said he would come if Henry author -
ised an English Bible. But Henry wanted an
English Catholic Church with himself as Pope
and feared such a Bible would lead to heresy.
He authorised an all-out pamphlet assault
by More, whose style tended to the scat -
ological: You kissed the arse of Luther, the
s***-devil. Look, my fingers are smeared with
s*** when I try to clean your filthy mouth.
In an amusing bit of trick photography, Bragg
plays both parts in the exchange of insults
after apologising for Mores language.
Tyndale had taught himself Hebrew while
on the Continent and now translated the first
five books of the Old Testament. His work,
though, came to an end when he was betrayed
by an Englishman and arrested by the Holy
Roman Emperor, Charles V. Imprisoned in
darkness for 14 months, he was then found
guilty of heresy. Lord, open the King of
Englands eyes, he is said to have cried out,
before being strangled and burnt.
In a way, Tyndale got his wish. Within a
year, Henry VIII, urged on by Thomas
Cromwell, authorised the publication of an
English Bible, using everything Tyndale had
completed at the time of his death. He was
not credited. Henry wanted him dead twice,
says Bragg. In any case, Henry then passed
a law restricting the reading of the Bible to
men and women of noble birth, fearful, he
said, of the Word being disputed, rhymed,
sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern.
Tyndales ploughboy would have to wait a
little longer.
POWER OF THE WORD
According to Melvyn Bragg, William Tyndales translation of
the Bible decisively influenced the English language and
radically threatened Church and State
W
Melvin Bragg, presenter of The Most
Dangerous Man in Tudor Britain
22
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1 June 2013
structure. And this is entirely the conductors
business: all the notes played perfectly in the
right order by the worlds best orchestra would
be a formless porridge. Jan Latham-Koenig,
Novaya Operas British chief conductor,
created something of enormous force, beauty
and dynamism with an orchestra that is pretty
useful but no world-beater. The music of
Tristan so completely beyond anything pro-
duced before it is at the same time wildly
passionate and fantastically controlled, an
immense deferred gratification that finally
resolves musically and emotionally in the last
seconds having already visited extremes of
rapture previously undreamed of. This sense
of boundless frenzy, produced via the utmost
discipline, is incredibly hard to achieve, but
was achieved here.
The Novaya (New) Opera, founded in
1991, shares premier-league ranking in
Moscow with the Bolshoi and Stanislavsky
Theatres. This Tristan is quite a coup, and it
did well to find two young singers capable of
tackling the roles here the theatre seats only
700, but the conductor didnt stint on volume,
and Claudia Iten in particular rode the waves
with passion and strength and lyricism, only
having trouble with some grabby high notes;
Michael Babas Tristan was very creditable
too, though more undermined by the
unimaginative mise en scne.
Raabs only real contribution was a
suggestion that the couples death-longing
the morbid way they propose to fuse their
beings is fulfilled early on, the rest being a
sort of dream of love and death. It was left
for the orchestra to transport us through the
ecstatic yearning of scales rushing ever faster,
ever further without quite attaining their
goal, the tender night of the lovers meeting,
the circling anguish of Tristans Act 3 wait
for Isolde, and her ultimate transfiguration
the most anticipated final cadence in all
music; all judged, paced, phrased and
executed with real physical and intellectual
grasp and conviction.
Tristanneeds be emotionally exhilarating
and draining to be of any use, and this
admirable performance reached that goal,
too.
Robert Thicknesse
Tristan und
Isolde:
emotionally
exhilarating and
draining
OPERA
Right to the core
Tristan und Isolde
NOVAYA OPERA, MOSCOW
W
agners work (completed in 1859) is a
good place to study fashions in opera-
staging, its minimal action giving stark choices
of approach: with the focus so utterly on the
pair at its centre, you really find out whether
a director is a mere literalist cooking up busi-
ness to muddle through a four-hour
conceptual void.
In England, we have been spoiled with two
exceptional stagings in recent years Nikolaus
Lehnhoff s hypnotic production at
Glyndebourne, and Christof Loys detailed,
forensic deconstruction at Covent Garden
(both vastly indebted to soprano Nina
Stemmes astonishing Isolde). Yoked to musi-
cal performances of vast power, these shows
laid out what staging is for.
Russias operatic culture tends to the literal,
and this production was in any case (rather
amazingly) Moscows first staging of Tristan,
so a conservative approach was to be expected.
And while German director Nicola Raab had
little to add, she told the surface story, left the
singers alone and didnt spoil anything too
much; still, a grown-up staging would have
turned a memorable performance into an
unforgettable one.
Tristanis overwhelmingly about the orches-
tra not simply the notes, but the shape and
intellectual coherence of the whole titanic
RADIO
The ebbing tide
Mastertapes
BBC RADIO 4
T
he first instalment of the new series of
Mastertapes (27 May) found John Wilson
side by side with the great, and alas soon to
be late, Wilko Johnson, original guitarist with
the legendary 1970s British rhythm and blues
band Dr Feelgood. These days, rhythm and
blues means black American dance music,
but 40 years ago it was a synonym for fast,
scratchy Thames Estuary rock and roll, of
which Down by the Jetty(1975), the Feelgoods
debut album, was an absolutely seminal
example. My original vinyl copy sits downstairs
in the record case to remind me as I write.
The band, who came from the Essex river-
side, were, as Wilson quickly reminded us,
lean and mean in both style and looks.
Thirty-eight years later, nasal east (of) London
tones registering constant delight at the enthu-
siasm of the studio audience (Fank you),
Wilko sounded positively avuncular, demon-
strated both his distinctive guitar style (eight
beats to the bar with overlaid stabs and licks)
and his relish of the sardonic remark. An
album, he informed his younger fans, was a
bunch of downloads glued on to a piece of
vinyl. Asked if he was his own archivist, he
replied: Well, Ive got a pile of old notebooks,
if thats what you mean.
A lightning tour of Down by the Jettys lyrics
soon established their connection to Johnsons
Canvey Island home, a world of wind-blown
shorelines and fugitive love affairs conducted
in the oil refineries ever-present shadow. As
barked out by the hard-living singer Lee
Brilleaux, who died in 1994, they retain an
air of desperate menace, the style borrowed
from American blues singers but the backdrop
taken from the world Johnson saw outside
his window. The location of the title features
on the albums cover, where four immensely
frazzled-looking men the photoshoot began
shortly after dawn stand staring out across
the Thames.
As for the recording process, Wilko waxed
highly satirical about the tyranny of multi-
track recording processes that were then de
rigueur for rock bands. Purists to a man, the
Feelgoods preferred to be recorded rather
than produced. When questioned about the
effects pedals favoured by many of the eras
finest, he would note only that Im a guitar
player, not a cyclist.
Bluff, hilarious, modest and occasionally
poignant, all this was given an extra dimen-
sion by the knowledge revealed to Wilson
in an earlier interview that Johnson has
cancer of the pancreas and will be dead
within months. Currently on a valedictory
tour, he announced that he still felt fit as a
fiddle, was in high spirits and regarded
the people he saw around him with the
curiosity of the psychologically detached.
They had still to deal with the problem of
mortality: Im sorted out. Asked if his
impending death had made him more aware
of what he had achieved in his 1970s heyday,
he declined to be drawn. I just like to look
back at all the good times we had.
D.J. Taylor
1 June 2013
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23
Chimerica: the play is visually
thrilling and narratively
captivating
THEATRE
Surface tensions
Chimerica
ALMEIDA THEATRE, LONDON
L
ucy Kirkwoods Chimerica will be
extremely vulnerable to the gibe that it
seems made for TV. At three hours and 20
minutes, it would, with the trimming of
around half an hour, fit neatly into three suc-
cessive weeks of 9 p.m. peak time and also
belongs to a genre that dominates those time
slots: the thriller in which the central character
is on a quest that involves personal investment
or jeopardy.
In this instance, American photojournalist
Joe Schofield (Stephen Campbell Moore),
who, as a young man, took an iconic shot of
a protester standing in the way of a tank dur-
ing the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989,
becomes obsessed, 24 years later, with chasing
down a rumour that tank man is still alive
in China or America.
Yet, on reflection, this piece would be almost
impossible to make for the small screen, not
least because there would be little hope of
either cooperation from China over location
filming or American co-production money,
as the script, while properly intolerant of the
Chinese Governments human-rights record,
also questions Americas tendency to ignore
these failures for reasons of trade. In common
with much of the production company
Headlongs previous work (Enron, Paradise
Lost, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), this
new play is visually thrilling and narratively
captivating. An astonishing, surely prize-
worthy design by Es Devlin uses a rotating
box on to which images from photographic
contact sheets are projected to allow director
Lyndsey Turner to move at tremendous pace
between apartments and police stations in
Beijing and a newspaper office, restaurants,
apartments, fish and flower shops and an art
gallery in New York. And Benedict Wong,
who was playing Ai Weiwei in Howard
Brentons play at Hampstead until 18 May,
started previews only two days later for his
role in Chimerica as Zhang Lin, who was in
Tiananmen Square on the day of the massacre
and becomes a vital source of information for
the investigating photographer.
However, for me, the play has a propensity
to thematic glibness and opportunistic plot-
ting. Joe, the snapper whose conscience is
less highly developed than his photographs,
is a standard very-post-Graham Greene anti-
hero and it seems hard to believe that, at what
is supposed to be a leading American news-
paper in 2013, a journo could get away with
spouting the old editorial justification If it
bleeds, it leads without being ribbed about
whether he has time-travelled from an episode
of a 1970s drama set in a newsroom.
The dialogue and characterisation of Tessa
Kendrick (Claudie Blakley), an English mar-
keting expert whom Joe first meets on a flight
to China, are much more credible and original
theres a tremendous scene in which she
uses one of Joes Tiananmen snaps at a sales
conference but even she ultimately comes
to seem a puppet of the playwrights nervous
need to justify the productions length with
frequent plot twists and surprises.
This is one of several recent plays, films
and novels that depends on sophisticated pro-
fessional people apparently never having heard
of the idea of contraception, which might
delight Vatican traditionalists but stretches
dramatic credulity and is one of a number of
scenes another involves sudden violence
which encourage the suspicion that the plays
developments are sometimes being driven by
the desire to maintain tension rather than by
internal logic.
As the play proceeds, the title comes to
seem ever more clever for a piece that deals
not only with the relationship between China
and America but also the question of whether
people are really seeing what they think they
see. Ironically, though, there is finally rather
less to Chimerica than meets the eye. It is a
triumph of physical design and acting from
Wong and Blakley especially over a script
that frequently seems more concerned with
what and where than why. Mark Lawson
RECORD REVIEW
Philly grooves
The Tom Moulton Remixes
HARMLESS
S
omething odd and interesting happened
this week. A single post brought not just
the usual batch of CDs, but with them a tiny
matchbox from the Ilk label containing a few
handy lucifers and a tiny slip of paper with
an exclusive download key to a new EP record-
ing by alternative pop band Kostcirkeln. Very
good it is, too. So far, so modern. What made
that particular post unusual was that it also
brought a flat pack containing three old-
fashioned cassettes (demos and rehearsal
material from cult New York group Mars) and,
most delightfully, a boxed set of eight LPs
called Philadelphia International Classics:
The Tom Moulton Remixes (Harmless). Theyre
also available as a four-CD box, but whos going
to settle for anything less than the full nostalgic
experience, for this is the core work of a label
(and producer) that throughout the 1970s
defined what became known as Philly, a
branch of musicianly soul music that had ele-
ments of both jazz and classical orchestration
and that paved the way for disco and late-
night genres like Quiet Storm.
The two main songwriters were Kenny
Gamble and Leon Huff, who together and
severally created such classic songs as Back
Stabbers and Love Train by the OJays, The
Love I Lost by Harold Melvin and the Blue
Notes, and Dirty Ol Man by Prince Charles
one-time favourites the Three Degrees. Add
to that the era-defining T.S.O.P. (The Sound
of Philadelphia) by house orchestra MFSB
and youre transported back to a strangely
familiar but strangely distant era, not quite
post-Vietnam, but pre-Aids, pre-Star Wars,
but still under the Cold War cloud.
Philly has often been dismissed as a pro-
ducers genre, impersonal and unvirtuosic,
but to do so is to confuse description with
criticism for it was the genius of Tom Moulton,
inventor of the remix, to show that popular
music was not only artifice but an infinitely
malleable artifice. Beginning with his 18-and-
a-half-minute, floor-filling megamix on
Gloria Gaynors 1975 Never Can Say
Goodbye, Moulton, an apparently average,
even pedestrian record producer, deployed a
gift for improvisatory post-production, shifting
the internal balance and momentum of a song
so that it developed into something new and
compelling. Wonderful to hear these again,
and doubly so with the thunk-hssss of needle
in groove at the start of each side.
ECM gave up doing vinyl years ago and
now seems like a quintessential CD imprint
in every way except design, those lovely covers
thrown away when reduced to five meagre
inches square. Founder/producer Manfred
Eichers back catalogue may still be weighted
towards jazz, but with an increasingly catholic
(and sometimes Catholic) spin. Quercus is
the self-titled debut recording of a trio con-
sisting of saxophonist Iain Ballamy, pianist
Huw Warren and folk/jazz singer June Tabor.
The first Quercus record has songs by
Burns, Shakespeare, Anon. and A.E.
Housman/George Butterworth, whose The
Lads in their Hundreds is typical both of
Tabors instinctive pacifism but also her gift
for improvisation within song form. With
Ballamy as a second singing voice and long-
term musical director Warren providing
harmonically rich accompaniments, its one
record where one is grateful for the extra
duration offered by CD while still hankering
for the warmth of a vinyl version.
Brian Morton
24
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1 June 2013
THE CHURCH IN THE
WORLD
Francis condemns organised crime
and the global rule of money
POPE FRANCIS has strongly condemned
the exploitative activities of organised crime
as Catholics in Sicily celebrated the beatifi-
cation of Fr Giuseppe Puglisi, their most
famous anti-Mafia priest, writes
Robert Mickens. Fr Puglisi was gunned down
in September 1993 by mobsters.
I am thinking of the many sorrows of men
and women and even children that are
exploited by many mafias, which exploit them
by making them do work that renders them
slaves, with prostitution and many social pres-
sures, the Pope said during his Sunday
Angelus address in St Peters Square. Let us
pray that these men and women mafiosi con-
vert to God, and let us praise God for the
enlightening witness of Fr Giuseppe Puglisi
and follow his example, the Pope said.
Some 80,000 people had gathered for an
outdoor Mass a day earlier in the Sicilian cap-
ital of Palermo, where the crusading parish
priest was declared blessed and a martyr. Fr
Puglisi was an exemplary priest, dedicated
especially to the pastoral care of young people,
Pope Francis noted. By teaching teenagers
the ways of the Gospel, he rescued them from
the life of crime and for this reason they [mob-
sters] tried to defeat him by killing him. But,
in fact, it was he who won, with the Risen
Christ, the Pope added. The 76-year-old Pope,
whose parents emigrated to Argentina from
northern Italy, raised his voice in condem-
nation of the mafias that exploit people.
They cant do this. They cant make us
brothers and sisters slaves! he said.
A few days earlier, in a speech to the
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of
Migrants and Itinerants, he had similarly
harsh words for criminals involved in human
trafficking. I repeat that the trafficking of
persons is a despicable activity, a disgrace for
our societies that call themselves civilised,
Pope Francis said. Exploiters and clients at
all levels should make a serious examination
of conscience before themselves and before
God, he declared, implying that they were
violating the dignity and rights of human
beings for the love of money.
In a world in which we speak a lot about
rights, how many times is human dignity in
fact trampled? It seems the only one that has
[rights] is money! Pope Francis said in the
24 May address. Dear brothers and sisters,
we live in a world where money commands,
in a culture where the fetishism of money rules,
he said. The Pontifical Council was holding a
plenary session on caring for those forcibly
uprooted from their homelands, people whose
dignity the Pope said was often threatened
by modern forms of persecution, oppression
and slavery. And we, as Church, know that
by healing the wounds of refugees, the uprooted
and victims of trafficking we are putting into
practice the commandment of charity that
Jesus left us when he identified with the
stranger, those who suffer and with all innocent
victims of violence and exploitation, he said.
Furthering his thoughts on the trampling
of human dignity, Pope Francis on Saturday
told a Vatican-sponsored group of lay people
who promote Catholic social teaching that
the idols of power, profit and money were
now the fundamental norm for organising
society and its economy. We have forgotten
and still are forgetting that beyond business
and the logic and parameters of the market
there is the human being, he told members
of the Papal Foundation Centesimus Annus,
established in 1993 by Blessed John Paul II.
Francis said the world had to rethink its
entire financial system and revive the notion
of solidarity as something more than just
social assistance for the poor. To this word
solidarity, which is not seen kindly by the
economic world as if it were a bad word
we must again give its merited social citizen-
ship. Solidarity is not just a higher attitude
and its not social almsgiving, but a social
value. And it demands its citizenship, he said.
The Pope said solidarity must be recovered
in a world where unemployment is spreading
like an oil spill in vast areas of the West and
expanding the limits of poverty. He said it
was clear that something is not working in
the worlds economy, and it no longer affects
only the global South, but the entire planet.
ROME: The Vatican has invited Catholics
around the world to join Pope Francis tomor-
row for a global hour of prayer and adoration
before the Blessed Sacrament. The Pope will
lead the Holy Hour from St Peters Basilica
beginning at 5:00 p.m. (16:00 BST), the same
hour that Catholic parishes and cathedrals
around the globe are asked to have Eucharistic
Adoration. The initiative is part of Year of
Faith celebrations and comes on the day the
Church celebrates Corpus Christi. Pope Francis
has chosen a prayer intention for each half
hour of the service: the first for the Church
and its mission of mercy; the second for the
needs of those who suffer.
Pope to meet Welby and visit Assisi
ROME: The Vatican has confrmed
that Pope Francis plans to travel to
Assisi on 4 October, the liturgical feast
day of St Francis, writes Robert Mickens.
The visit is set to coincide with the
ffty-frst anniversary of Blessed John
XXIIIs historic train journey to the hill-
top town on 4 October 1962, just a
week before the opening session of
the Second Vatican Council.
Meanwhile, The Tablet has learned
that the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby, will be at the Vatican
on 14 June to meet and pray with
the Pope. The details of the
encounter are still being worked
out. It will be the frst meeting of the
new leaders of the Roman Church
and the Anglican Communion, who
took ofce on 19 and 21 March.
CATHOLICS have been reminded
that God sent his Son Jesus into
the world to save all people
including atheists, writes Robert
Mickens. The Lord has redeemed
all of us, everyone, with the blood
of Christ: not just Catholics.
Everyone! Pope Francis said
during spontaneous refections at
his 22 May morning Mass with
Vatican employees. Father, the
atheists? Even them. Everyone!
he said. The Pope repeated the
word everyone or all (tutti)
some 20 times. Some wondered if
Francis contradicted traditional
Catholic teaching that there is no
salvation outside the Church, but
he made it clear that salvation
comes from Christ alone.
Jesus has redeemed even atheists
Pope Francis blesses the faithful at the
end of Mass on 26 May. Photo: Reuters
Have your say on the weeks
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1 June 2013
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25
Jonathan Luxmoore
THE HEADof a church-backed organisation
monitoring religious discrimination has
warned that anti-Christian incidents are
growing in Europe, despite resolutions and
agreements to safeguard freedom of con-
science.
I am sometimes asked how its possible a
group which makes up the majority is dis-
criminated against, said Gudrun Kugler,
director of the Vienna-based Observatory on
Intolerance and Discrimination against
Christians, which is linked to the Council of
European Bishops Conferences (CCEE). Yet
this isnt an issue for nominal Christians, but
for those really trying to live according to the
high ethical norms established by Christianity.
They are not the majority and even if they
were, history knows many instances in which
an assertive minority has discriminated against
the majority, as happened with apartheid.
The analyst was presenting the
Observatorys report at a conference in Albania,
organised by the 54-country Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
She said her organisation had documented
169 instances of drastic intolerance against
Christians in the European Union (EU) dur-
ing 2012, as well as cases in 15 of the EUs 27
member countries in which national legislation
was detrimental to Christians. More than
800 cases of intolerance and discrimination
had been recorded in the past five years, Ms
Kugler added, including hate crimes, negative
stereotyping and exclusion, and legal hurdles,
as well as violations of conscience, free speech,
assembly and restrictions on parental rights.
Ms Kugler said that 74 per cent of British
Christians had believed themselves targets
of intolerance in a 2011 survey.
The OSCE meeting concluded just before
a new appeal on Monday by Archbishop
Silvano Tomasi, the Holy Sees permanent
observer at the UN in Geneva. Archbishop
Tomasi estimated that more than 100,000
Christians were killed for their faith each year.
He lamented a growing tendency in certain
Western countries to marginalise Christianity.
EUROPE
Anti-Christian discrimination still rising
TURKEY: Catholic and
Orthodox bishops have
pledged to defend religious
freedom against worldwide
threats at a seminar marking
the anniversary of the 313
Edict of Nantes, which ended
persecution in the Roman
Empire, writes Jonathan
Luxmoore.
Both the Catholic and the
Orthodox Churches hold
religious liberty as a precious
foundation and sacred
aspiration of their social
doctrine and canonical
discipline,the Church leaders
said. Mutual independence
and autonomy, as well as
co-operation between Church
and state, are fundamental
principles of Church-state
relations. The state must
respect religious freedom for
all believers and their
communities in promoting a
social order based on justice. In
contexts where one religion
enjoys favourable protection
from the state, the religious
freedom of minority
communities must also be
guaranteed. The statement
was issued at the close of the
seminar in Istanbul, co-hosted
by the Orthodox Ecumenical
Patriarchate and Council of
European Bishops
Conferences.
GERMANY
Priests ask bishops to
reject new Missal
THE MEMBERSof the German Priests
Initiative for church reform have written to
their respective bishops asking them not to
approve the new German translation of the
Missal, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.
We urgently appeal to you not to put the
new Missal into practice but to leave the
present translation in place for now, even if
a tremendous amount of time and effort
have been put into [the new translation].
We appeal to you to present the problem to
Pope Francis in the hope that he will grant
diocesan bishops the right to carry out their
tasks without Roman Curia paternalism,
the letter says. The reason for their appeal,
the priests say, is the linguistic register of
the new translation: We urgently need a
language that helps people to dialogue with
God and to take an active part in the
liturgy, they write in the letter signed by
Frs Karl Feser and Klaus Kempter for the
Priests Initiative, which has members in
more than 13 of Germanys 27 dioceses.
FRANCES anti-gay-marriage protesters held
what was probably their final big march in
Paris on Sunday 26 May against the same-
sex nuptials law passed last month, writes
Tom Heneghan. Several hundred thousand
demonstrated, unnerving the Socialist-led
Government and making some future political
role likely for the movement that is strongly
backed by the Catholic Church.
Chanting Were not giving up, marchers
denounced the same-sex marriage and adop-
tion law as well as the possibility of assisted
procreation and surrogate motherhood for
gay couples. Some MPs want those reforms
in a new law later this year, but the protest
movement may have made the political price
too high for President Franois Hollande.
While the movements future is unclear,
Opposition leader Jean-Franois Cop urged
young activists to join his conservative UMP.
Protest against gay marriage shifts focus
Freemason priest loses parish
Yves Boivineau of Annecy has suspended a
pastor from his ministry and ordered him out of
his chic ski resort parish because the priest is a
Freemason who refused to quit his lodge.
The bishop said he suspended Fr Pascal Vesin,
43, on the instructions of the Vaticans
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after
long discussions starting in 2010 prompted by
an anonymous letter. First denying the charge,
he later admitted to being a Freemason
belonging to the Grand Orient de France lodge,
90 kms from his Megve in Haute-Savoie parish.
Belgium: abuse raids illegal
The countrys highest appeals court ruled on
Tuesday that evidence seized in police searches
of church ofces, its sexual abuse commission
and the fat of Cardinal Godfried Danneels in
June 2010 could not be used to prosecute the
Church for covering up the abuse scandal, writes
Tom Heneghan. The Cour de Cassation ruling
came after contradictory decisions from lower
courts on the legality of the searches, which
included a bizarre visit to the crypt of Mechelen
cathedral to search the tomb of a cardinal for
documents wrongly said to be hidden there.
FRANCE
26
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1 June 2013
Abigail Frymann
AUSTRALIAS most senior cleric, Cardinal
George Pell, has admitted clergy covered up
claims of sexual abuse by priests but said he
personally never covered up offences.
Speaking yesterday at an inquiry by
Victorias parliament into the abuse of
children by religious and non-government
bodies in the state, he said he was
absolutely sorry for the abuse committed
by clerics against minors.
The cardinal said abuse had largely
escaped the view of church officials who
didnt know what a mess they were
presiding over. Under questioning he
agreed that the fear of damaging the
reputation of the Church led to a cover-up
that had enabled abusive priests to prey on
children. Many in the Church did not
understand just what damage was being
done to the victims. We understand that
better now, he added.
According to a church report at least 620
minors in Victoria suffered abuse from
members of the clergy in the past 80 years.
AUSTRALIA
Pell admits abuse
took place in Victoria
NIGERIA
Church warns of societal breakdown
Ellen Teague
NIGERIAS BISHOPShave warned in a dra-
matic statement, To Rescue Nigeria from
Collapse, that the worlds seventh most pop-
ulous nation is facing a security catastrophe.
Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos,
President of the Nigerian Bishops Conference,
reported in Abuja on 22 May that, what
started as a mere clash between law enforce-
ment agencies and members of the Islamic
sect Boko Haram has since spiralled into what
can be best described as a low-intensity war,
especially in some northern states. The state-
ment said that, taken together with a range
of other crises in other parts of the country
such as armed robbery, kidnapping, commu-
nal clashes, Nigeria now almost totters on the
brink. Communities were being destroyed
by violence and huge numbers of internally
displaced people were roaming the country.
Every day, we hear more and more ugly
stories of death and destruction in the land,
said the bishops, and sadly, the entire appa-
ratus of state security seems totally
overwhelmed by the agents of darkness.
HONDURAS: The bishop of
San Pedro Sula, Romulo
Emiliani, has brokered a truce
between two of Honduras
largest and most violent
warring gangs, write Jon Stibbs
and Isabel de Bertodano.
Leaders from the Mara
Salvatrucha and Mara 18
groups were expected to sign
a peace deal this week.
They want reconciliation
with society and to try to
change their way of life, the
bishop said at a press
conference held last week at
the Sampedrano Central
Prison in San Pedro Sula.
The Honduran President
Porfrio Lobo said on Monday
that he supported the eforts
of Bishop Emiliani and had
spoken to him on the
telephone this week. I told
him that I was at his disposal
to do whatever is necessary,
he said. Under the proposals,
Honduras prisons would
become places of
rehabilitation, and the state
will help ofenders build new
lives. Bishop Emiliani said the
gangs would ask for the
pardons for the things they
have done to try to bring an
end to the orgy of blood.
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt
In Vienna
MORE THAN330,000 people in Austria focked to
the 3,250 events in 739 churches nationwide
organised by the Austrian branch of the
Ecumenical Council of Churches on 24 May. The
branch has 16 member Churches.
The Long Night of the Churches was frst held
in Vienna in 2004. It was the brainchild of Prelate
Karl Rhringer, a former episcopal vicar in Vienna,
and spread from Vienna to other Austrian
dioceses and to neighbouring countries. It is now
celebrated in the Czech Republic, where 1,300
churches were involved this year, and in Slovakia,
Hungary, South Tyrol and Estonia.
The Long Night of the Churches was a
many-faceted door-opener to Christianity and
an encouraging preparation for the Christian
faith,Cardinal Christoph Schnborn said in his
welcome to the participants in the Czech
Republic this year. The Jesus trailwas a wide
path with room for many including those who
do not confess to any religious tradition but who
are intent on seeking what is true, good and
beautiful.In Austria the Long Night was rung in
at 6 p.m. with church bells all over the country
ringing for 10 minutes. The main opening service
was held in the Lutheran City Church in Vienna.
AUSTRIA
Long Night pulls in
huge numbers
1 June 2013
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27
I
t is said that comparisons are odious.
But it is also indisputable that one of the
things that clearly distinguishes Pope
Francis from his most recent predecessor is
his experience as a bishop in the midst of his
people. Before the papal election, Jorge
Mario Bergoglio honed his pastoral skills
during the two decades he served the people
of Buenos Aires, first as an auxiliary bishop
and then as their cardinal-archbishop.
Those skills were sparkling this past
Sunday when he made his first visit to a
local parish since becoming Bishop of
Rome. He was flown by helicopter to one of
the far outposts of his diocese, the recently
constructed Parish of Sts Elizabeth and
Zacharias. Anyone who was still wondering
why this new Pope is so popular needed
only to watch him in action to discover the
answer. The rapport he created with the
people, especially the little children to
whom he gave First Communion, was a
marvellous example of good pastoral
practice. Following brief reflections after
the Gospel, Papa Francesco gently began a
dialogue homily with the youngsters.
Since it was Trinity Sunday, he quizzed
them about the mystery of the Triune God
and pulled together a simple teaching
based on their responses. The Father
creates us, Jesus saves us and the Holy
Spirit loves us, he said, having the kids
repeat it several times. It was reminiscent of
similar exchanges that Pope John Paul I
liked to have with youngsters during his
tragically brief pontificate. At the end of last
weeks Mass the parishioners sang,
Francesco, Go Repair My Church. Then
the children gathered around the Pope who
bowed his head as they sang a blessing over
him in Latin in a contemporary setting
accompanied by guitars.
A
lmost all the major newspapers in
Italy gave prominent coverage to
Pope Francis rebuke of the Mafia at
last Sundays Angelus. Most of them even
ran big headlines. But oddly enough, the
nations Catholic daily, Avvenire, did not.
Instead, it carefully folded the news into its
report on the Popes parish visit.
However, the paper did spill lots of ink on
Saturdays beatification of Fr Giuseppe
Pino Puglisi, the priest killed by the Mafia
in 1993; just not so much on the papal
rebuke of his killers.
Avvenire is a very fine and complete
paper, essential for following the Church in
Italy. But it normally toes the line set by its
owners the Italian Episcopal Conference
(CEI) and its president, Cardinal Angelo
Bagnasco of Genoa.
The cardinal was appointed head of the
CEI by Benedict XVI and is very much his
man in style as much as substance. People
are still watching to see when and how
much he and the other Italian bishops start
adopting the new way of pastoral
leadership that Pope Francis is trying to
stimulate by his own example.
The Pope met all the bishops on 23 May
and he publicly gave the CEI president his
vote of confidence to deal with the issues
facing the Italian Church and society. So
rather than address any particular
concerns, he offered some tips on the type
of attitude he believes bishops should have.
It was pretty much predictable. But this
line stuck out: Being shepherds also means
walking among and behind [my emphasis]
the flock, being able to listen to the silent
account of those who suffer and support the
steps of those who fear they will not make it.
Whens the last time a pope said bishops
should sometimes follow their people?
T
his coming Monday marks the fiftieth
anniversary of the death of Blessed
John XXIII, the Pope who set in
motion one of the most evangelical
transformations ever of the Roman Catholic
Church when he called the Second Vatican
Council. Good Pope Johns pontificate was
brief. It lasted only six years and seven
months. But in that short time he was able
to unleash a spirit of hope and enthusiasm,
a sense of freedom and new possibilities for
the Churchs mission and its people.
Papa Roncallis warm and jovial
personality delighted and heartened
Catholics everywhere. But it also captivated
people of other faiths and those of no faith
at all. In his final days as he lay dying of
stomach cancer inside the papal
apartments, thousands of people knelt on
the cobblestones in St Peters Square and
prayed round the clock for their beloved
Papa Giovanni. When he finally died on the
evening of 3 June 1963, many of them said
it was as if a light had gone out in the world.
He had brought such hope and such new
life to the Church.
Only one session of Vatican II had been
completed and therefore it was unclear if
his still-to-be-elected successor would
continue the council. Paul VI deserves so
much praise for his courage to do so.
But the old-timers have always called it
Johns Council. It is disappointing and
some would say a scandal that Pope
Francis and the Vatican have planned
nothing for Monday to formally celebrate
the half-century since John XXIIIs death.
That was not the case back in October
2008 when Benedict XVI presided over a
Mass with the Synod of Bishops in St Peters
Basilica to pay tribute to Pius XII on the
fiftieth anniversary of his death.
Robert Mickens
Letter from Rome
Romero soon to be Blessed
Pope Francis has indicated that the beati -
fication of Archbishop Oscar Romero of
El Salvador, who was murdered in 1980,
could soon take place. Salvadorean
President Mauricio Funes Cartagena said
the Pope told him during a meeting on
23 May that he needs to have faith that
Romero would soon be declared blessed.
Faithful back Metropolitan
Orthodox Christians in the Czech Republic
have boycotted a service at Mikulcice with
the visiting ecumenical patriarch in protest
against the resignation of their Churchs
leader Metropolitan Krystof after claims
he had fathered children. Orthodox sources
said only a fifth of the anticipated 10,000
people had turned up for the service.
Pentecostal challenge
Pope Francis would probably broaden ecu-
menical dialogue with the Pentecostal
Churches because he was well acquainted
with the Evangelical movements from his
work in Buenos Aires, the president of the
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian
Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, has said.
Nuns rev up
The Catholic social justice group Network
in the United States began its second
Nuns on the Bus tour this week. This
year, the sisters will focus on the need for
comprehensive immigration reform dur-
ing their 6,500 mile journey, that stops
in 40 cities in 15 different states.
Christian Brothers settle
The Christian Brothers in Ireland have
reached a C$16.5 million (10.5m) settle -
ment with nearly 422 victims of sexual
abuse in the orders facilities throughout
North America. In the Mount Cashel
orphanage in St Johns, Newfoundland,
Canada, 160 children were abused.
Chinese Catholics Prayer Day
More than 2,500 Catholic pilgrims
attended the Sheshan pilgrimage near
Shanghai, on 24 May, to observe the Feast
of Our Lady of Sheshan and the World
Prayer Day for the Church in China. Pope
Francis, in his first public message to the
Chinese Church, sent a tweet joining
Chinas Catholics in prayer.
Tributes to Liberian archbishop
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia
has signed a book of condolence at Sacred
Heart Cathedral in Monrovia for
Archbishop Emeritus Michael Francis of
Monrovia, who died on 19 May aged 77.
President Sirleaf described the archbishop
as the conscience of the nation.
IN BRIEF
For daily news updates visit
www.thetablet.co.uk
NEWS
FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND
28
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1 June 2013
Church rallies in response to
soldiers death in Woolwich
Sam Adams, Liz Dodd and
Christopher Lamb
THE CHURCH has called for
greater solidarity between reli-
gious faiths following the murder
of Drummer Lee Rigby in
Woolwich, south-east London,
last week.
The incident will also be refer-
enced during a major interfaith
gathering at Westminster Hall
later this month, attended by
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, pres-
ident of the Pontifical Council for
Inter-religious Dialogue.
The Archbishop Emeritus of
Southwark, Kevin McDonald,
Chairman of the Office for Inter-
religious Dialogue of the Bishops
Conference of England and Wales,
told The Tablet that the murder
would add poignancy to the
event, and that he will mention it
in his address.In a statement
released the day after the killing,
Archbishop Emeritus McDonald,
in whose former archdiocese
Woolwich is situated, said it was
vital for people of all faiths to
show real solidarity in their rejec-
tion of violence and their
commitment to peace.
Drummer Rigby, 25, was
hacked to death in the street in
broad daylight last Wednesday
afternoon after being run over by
a car. Both of his alleged killers,
Michael Adebolajo, 28, and
Michael Adebowale, 22, are
British-born Nigerians who are
believed to have converted to
Islam.
Following the incident, prayers
were said for the soldier and his
family the day after his murder,
during a special Mass at St Peter
the Apostle Church just yards
from the murder scene. It was led
by Bishop Patrick Lynch, an aux-
iliary in the Archdiocese of
Southwark, and attended by the
Anglican Bishop of Woolwich,
Michael Ipgrave.
A Mass for the off-duty soldier,
who was based at the nearby
Woolwich Barracks, was also said
at the church on Sunday, by parish
priest Fr Michael Branch. The
Archbishop of Southwark, Peter
Smith, said in a homily on the
same day that the murder had
touched me deeply. Bishop Lynch
said: Events like this, particularly
as this involved a young father,
touch a nerve and there is a great
outpouring of solidarity.
Louise Walton, the Catholic
chaplain at Greenwich University,
where Michael Adebolajo is
believed to have been a student,
said the college now plans to hold
an independent investigation into
any evidence of extremism on its
campuses and that this is very
welcome.
She added that the chaplaincy
had organised periods of silent
prayer for students following the
killing and offered support to those
who needed it.
Meanwhile, one of the women
who confronted the Woolwich
attackers moments after they
killed a soldier has revealed that
her Catholic faith drove her to act.
Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, 48, said
that she tried to reason with the
two men suspects as onlookers
waited for police to arrive.
The mother of two, whose bus
had been stopped because of the
attack, jumped off to try and help
the soldier and talked to the two
men. Ms Loyau-Kennett is a
parishioner at St Marys in
Falmouth, Cornwall and was born
in France. Fr John Gilbert, the
parish priest, described her as
quite fearless, but caring as well.
(See James Roberts and
Usama Hasan, pages 4-5.)
Glasman: Labour has forgotten its Christian roots
Christopher Lamb
AN INFLUENTIAL Labour
peer has described his party as
arrogant in its dealings with
faith and neglectful of its own
Christian inheritance.
The Labour movement in my
country has been arrogant in
relation to faith in general and
careless in its recognition of its
Christian inheritance. In order
to renew itself as a tradition, it
must recognise that no one is
innocent, Lord Glasman, a
former adviser to Labour leader
Ed Miliband, said in a paper
delivered on 23 May at a
conference in Rome organised
by the Papal Foundation
Centesimus Annus, established
by Pope John Paul II in 1993.
Lord Glasman explained that
the common good would be ill-
served by polarised opposition
between progressive and
religious forces but instead
should focus on human dignity
and the possibilities of the
person for love and grace that
relate to their working lives.
The conference was entitled
Rethinking Solidarity for
Employment: The Challenges of
the Twenty-First Century and
participants were addressed by
Pope Francis last Saturday.
In his paper, Lord Glasman
explained the Christian origins
of the Labour movement
founded after the Dockers
Strike in 1889 in which the
workers were supported by
Cardinal Henry Manning, then
Archbishop of Westminster and
William Booth, the founder of
the Salvation Army.
The Jewish academic paid
tribute to Catholic Social
Teaching (CST), which he said
was at the centre of his notion of
Blue Labour.
He added that CST provides
the basis for a humane and
competitive economic system.
(To read the paper in full, visit
www.thetablet.co.uk)
Catholic private
school to
sponsor
academy
Sam Adams
A LEADING Catholic private
school in Essex has become the
first in England and Wales to
sponsor the conversion of a
state primary into an academy.
New Hall School, near
Chelmsford, has been approved
as the official sponsor for the
rural Messing-cum-Inworth
Primary School, which has just
32 pupils and was placed in
special measures in 2011.
New Hall, which was founded
in 1642 by the Canonesses
Regular of the Holy Sepulchre
and is now a 1,150-pupil
co-educational boarding and
day school, was invited by the
primarys governing body to
sponsor its application in July
last year in a bid to raise
standards. Governors and
senior staff at New Hall, which
is rated highly by both Ofsted
and the Independent Schools
Inspectorate, voted
unanimously to accept the
request. The order to become
an academy has been signed
and issued with the process due
to be completed by September.
New Hall has established a
close partnership with the
primary school, which serves
the villages of Messing and
Inworth eight miles outside
Colchester, sending in staff who
specialise in music and physical
education. Pupils from the
primary use New Halls
swimming pool. Since the
partnership began, the primary
has been taken out of special
measures and has received
eight applications for places in
September.
In a statement, New Hall said
that sponsoring the academy
application was a way of
expressing its Christian ethos.
Our founding religious
community were pioneers in
education and we continue with
that spirit today, it said.
Have your say on the weeks
big issues onThe Tablet blog at
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1 June 2013
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29
Leadership for
Social Change
Residential Training
Workshop
1-10 October 2013, Birmingham
This ten day, residential Workshop
will enable participants to work more
thoughtfully and effectively in social
movements, especially those social
movements dened or inspired by
issues of Race, Caste, Religion or
Social Class.
Jointly sponsored by:
Catholic Association for Racial Justice
Voice of Dalit International
With support from:
Maryvale Institute, Birmingham
Further information and registration:
VODI, ICG House, 301 Station
Approach, Greenford, London UB6 OAL
T. 020 8813 2380 [email protected]
Sunday 2 June 2013
Mass Times:
Vigil: Saturday 6pm
Sunday: 8am, 9.30am (Family Mass),
11am (sung Latin),
Kodly, Mendelssohn, Mawby, Jongen
12.30pm, 4.15pm, 6.15pm
www.farmstreet.org.uk
JESUIT CHURCH
FARM STREET, MAYFAIR
Sam Adams
MIDDLE-CLASSfamilies are bringing up dys-
functional children unprepared for adult life
and lacking in moral values, according to a
new pamphlet from the Catholic Truth
Society.
The handbook, entitled Effective Parenting,
warns that they are pampered, have weak
parental role models and grow up in homes
where little or no religion is practised.
Written by a US educational consultant
and writer, James B. Stenson, the booklet
argues that these youngsters grow up to
become immature, irresolute, soft and irre-
sponsible in adulthood, living as heartless
or indifferent narcissists who care little about
their families.
Mr Stenson divides middle-class families
into two broad categories: self-absorbed,
consumerist or character-forming, sporting,
adventure. Those in the first category pur-
posefully fail to instil character in their
children, instead treating family life like a
picnic and a steady series of pleasant diver-
sions. The result is youngsters who feel
entitled to a lifetime of happy amusement
in which they treat people as objects, mere
tools and toys for their use.
They see sex as a toy, a high-powered form
of recreation, and so fall headlong into promis-
cuity, co-habitational relations, unwanted
pregnancies, abortions and disastrous
marriages.
According to Mr Stenson, parents in these
families are centred mainly on the present
and seldom think about their childrens
futures, expecting them to grow up okay
without the need to actively encourage or
develop conscience and sound judgement.
Fathers in these families are weak moral fig-
ures who do not teach right from wrong in
a confident, purposeful way.
Meanwhile, a new study has found that 93
per cent of couples with children aged 13 to
15 who are still together are married. The
study, entitled The myth of long-term stable
relationships outside of marriage, was under-
taken by the Marriage Foundation, whose
founder and chairman is the High Court
judge, Sir Paul Coleridge.
It concludes that only one in 10 of children
born to cohabiting parents will find those
parents still together when they reach 16.
Children without religion lack
moral values, study warns
Evangelisation project launched in former
Congregational chapel
AN EVANGELISATIONproject that seeks to
introduce people to the Catholic faith has
been launched in a former Congregational
chapel in the centre of Cardiff, writes
Christopher Lamb. The Ebenezer Chapel,
renamed Cornerstone at St Davids, was
bought last year by the Archdiocese of Cardiff
for 600,000. It will house a team of vol-
unteers who will welcome visitors interested
in learning about Christianity.
If youre searching in life, or are just inter-
ested to find out more about what Catholics
believe, the door is open. Do come and see,
said the Archbishop of Cardiff, George Stack,
in a statement launching the initiative. A
warm welcome will be offered to every visitor
even if you just want a quiet space and a cup
of tea.
Next Thursday will see the start of a series
of lunchtime talks with speakers describing
how faith has shaped their lives. The first
talk, focusing on faith and science, will be
given by Fr Gareth Leyshon, a Cardiff priest
who has a doctorate in astrophysics.
The distinguished
canon lawyer and theologian,
Ladislas Orsy, has called for
the creation of a specifc
forum for resolving
diferences within the Church,
writes Sarah Mac Donald.
After delivering a lecture in
Dublin on Vatican II, Professor
Orsy said that the Church
should have some
institutional instrument for
reconciliation.
He said: What we have now
is a Church which has no other
machinery other than punitive
structures and so they move
with big cannons against the
little birds. Asked about the
Churchs handling of dissident
theologians, the 91-year-old
Hungarian Jesuit said, I do not
see any other way of resolving
such cases other than by
handling each one separately
and handing them over to wise
persons who can search for a
favourable solution in a given
situation. He suggested it be
overseen by Baroness Nuala
OLoan, former police
ombudsman for Northern
Ireland.
Duchess of Cornwall praises priest
The Duchess of Cornwall has praised the
inspirational French priest who founded an
international homeless charity during a visit
to Paris. The duchess gave a brief speech in
French at a centre run by the Emmaus com-
munity in Bougival on Monday in which she
paid tribute to Abb Pierre. The duchess is
patron of the UK arm of the charity.
Bishop of Motherwell to retire
Pope Francis is to accept the resignation of the
Bishop of Motherwell. The diocese announced
on Wednesday that an administrator will take
over the burden of office from Bishop Joseph
Devine. The bishop had offered his resignation
in August last year on reaching 75, but was
told to continue. Five out of the eight dioceses
in Scotland are in need of new bishops.
IN BRIEF
50 YEARS AGO
Speaking in his florid Latin-American
manner, Dr Fidel Castro told the 125,000
Muscovites in the Lenin Stadium on
Thursday last week that he and his friends
had been buried under an avalanche of
love during their grand tour of Soviet
cities and construction sites. No doubt,
the sight of the ragged, bearded figures of
Cuban revolutionaries aroused feelings of
sentimental nostalgia among many old
and young Russians for the early pre-
bureaucratic days of their own revolution.
But the Stalin-conditioned middle-aged
generation who are in power now are
immune to such sentiments. They view
the improvement of Soviet-Cuban rela-
tions, which have been under a great strain
ever since the October crisis last year, from
a purely practical angle. By bolstering up
Castro, they hope to achieve at least four
important aims: first, to use Cuba as a
standing reminder to the United States of
their strategic vulnerability; secondly, to
ensure control over the wild disruptive
and missionary activities of Cuban
Communists in South and Central
America; thirdly, to prevent Castro from
yielding to Chinese blandishments; and
finally, to strike a major financial bargain.
The Tablet, 1 June 1963
100 YEARS AGO
The annual outdoor Procession of the
Blessed Sacrament took place on Sunday
evening last. The united congregations of
Cannock and Hednesford assisted at the
solemn function. When the preliminary
ceremonies had been completed in the
Church of the Sacred Heart, the procession
emerged from the sacred edifice, led by
cross-bearer, acolytes, 50 white-robed
choristers, band of the Catholic Boys
Brigade, schoolchildren, and Children of
Mary attired in white. The monstrance
carried by the Rev. Wm Rowley OKeeffe
was borne beneath a canopy supported by
four gentlemen of the congregation, who
were clad in the scarlet robes of the Blessed
Sacrament Archconfraternity Guild. The
Rev. P. J. Boyle (Hednesford) was also pres-
ent. The brigade supplied a Guard of
Honour. Sisters of the Christian Retreat
and Nursing Sisters of the Little Company
of Mary followed, succeeded by the long
line of members of the congregations dis-
playing religious emblems and holding
aloft sacred banners Two altars of repose
had been prepared in the spacious
presbytery garden grounds. The Rev. Fr
Boyle delivered an explanatory discourse
from a raised platform. The impressive
service closed finally in the church, when
the Te Deum was sung during
Benediction.
The Tablet, 31 May 1913
FROM THE ARCHIVE
30
|
THE TABLET
|
1 June 2013
Egan urges Catholics to
respond to deprivation
Christopher Lamb
THE BISHOP of Portsmouth has called on
Catholics in his diocese to devote a portion
of their time to help alleviate the dire state of
deprivation in their communities.
I would like to invite every Catholic to con-
sider tithing, that is donating 10 per cent of
your time and talents to Christs service, espe-
cially the care of the needy, Bishop Philip
Egan wrote in a pastoral letter for Trinity
Sunday which was read out at Masses last
weekend. It would be good if every pastoral
area engaged in local works of charitable
assist ance, thus giving witness that the Jesus
we love in the Eucharist is the Jesus we love
in the poor.
The bishop said that while people in the
diocese were generous in helping to alleviate
poverty overseas, it was important not to over-
look forms of deprivation in our own
communities. He cited a London Assembly
report that 34,000 people in the city were
reliant on food banks. I suspect that this dire
situation is mirrored in the urban centres of
our own diocese, the bishop added.
Bishop Egan called on Catholics to live
more simply and engage in new evangelisation
through justice, peace and social responsibility.
As Catholics, we are called to defend and
promote the dignity of human life from con-
ception to natural death, with care for the
environment and a willingness, in our affluent
Western culture, to adopt a simpler lifestyle,
he said.
The pastoral letter focused on the Holy
Spirit, with the bishop urging Catholics to
pray to the spirit every day, before making
big decisions and when there is discord and
division. He [the Holy Spirit] will fill you
with what is so often lacking in our world
today, in the mainstream media, the internet
in our parishes and even our own lives: love,
said Bishop Egan.
(To read the bishops letter in full, visit
www.thetablet.co.uk/texts)
ARCHBISHOP Diarmuid Martin of Dublin
has indicated that he would like to explore
the idea of a female diaconate proposed by
the leader of the German Bishops Conference,
writes Sarah Mac Donald.
Speaking to The Tablet after he had
ordained six men as deacons in Maynooth on
Sunday, Archbishop Martin said he would
like to get more information on a proposal
by German Archbishop Robert Zollitsch for
a specific diaconate for women.
Archbishop Zollitsch, of Freiburg, told dele -
gates at a conference on church reform last
month that he would promote further in-
depth study of the common priesthood of all
the faithful including the promotion of new
church ministries and offices which will be
open to women as, for example, a specific
deacon's office for women.
Archbishop Martin said he did not know
the details of what Archbishop Zollitsch was
proposing but that he might find out exactly
what he had in mind.
Archbishop Martin said the Church must
ensure that women are given responsible posi-
tions in the pastoral management and
ministry in parishes.
In his own diocese, there are permanent
deacons as well as lay pastoral workers many
of whom are women working alongside
priests. We are finding our way. It is slow
there are obviously teething problems but
I am very enthusiastic about it, he said.
Archbishop Martin said one of the charac-
teristics of the Church in Ireland in the future
would be an increasing number of permanent
deacons. In his homily last Sunday, he said
the place of the permanent diaconate had to
be more clearly established.
Permanent deacons do not exercise some
lesser form of diaconate because they are not
going to be priests, he said.
Martin interested in diaconate proposal
FR STEPHEN WANG, a
prominent priest who
regularly appears in the media,
is to become the senior
Catholic chaplain for London
University students in the
Archdiocese of Westminster,
writes Liz Dodd.
Fr Wang, who is currently
dean of studies at the dioceses
seminary, Allen Hall, will move
to the Newman House
chaplaincy in September.
Im a great believer in
university chaplaincies and the
work that they can do, he said.
Ive always loved working
with students and young
people and I think there are
enormous pastoral
opportunities to be present
with people and support
people in that stage of their
lives.
Fr Wang is chaplain to
Catholic Voices, a group of lay
Catholics who make the case
for the Church in the media. He
was born at University College
Hospital, next door to the
chaplaincy. So Im going back,
which is quite moving, he
added.
Fr Wang will be replaced at
Allen Hall by Fr Michael OBoy,
director of the dioceses
Agency for Evangelisation.
Since 2010 he has been parish
priest at St Aloysius in Somers
Town, where he established
the diocesan Youth Ministry
Centre. These moves are
believed to be the start of a
number of clergy changes in
Westminster.
1 June 2013
|
THE TABLET
|
31
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ACCOMMODATION WANTED
EVENTS
VHI International Workshop
The Economic and Financial
Crisis and the Human Person
8-9 June
Speakers and topics include:
The Personalist Idea of Money - Prof Luk
Bouckaert, Catholic University of Leuven
Ethics and the Limited Liability of Companies
Dr Peter Rona, Blackfriars, University of Oxford
Effect of the Global Economic Downturn on Children
- Mr Jeffry Korgen, Metuchen Diocese, USA
The Failure of Materialistic Management - Prof
Laszlo Zsolnai, Corvinus University of Budapest
Faith, Hope and the Global Economy - Rev Dr
Richard Higginson, University of Cambridge
VENUE: St. Edmunds College, Mount
Pleasant, Cambridge CB3 0BN
COST: 20 & 10 (concessions)
including
refreshments and a light lunch.
For registration, programme and
enquiries visit:
www.vonhugel.org.uk
VHI, St Edmunds College, CAMBRIDGE
CB3 0BN
Phone: +44 (0)1223 336089
E-mail: [email protected]
CHAPLAIN
40,000 per annum
We are looking to appoint a Chaplain to join this Teaching School.
The successful candidate will be responsible for the spiritual
and pastoral needs of all students and staff. The school is
very popular and heavily over-subscribed.
For further details please see www.sjb.surrey.sch.uk
Have faith... believe you can
St John the Baptist School
Elmbridge Lane, Kingfield, Woking, Surrey GU22 9AL
RECRUITMENT
Classified 1 June.indd 31 24/05/2013 15:42
32
|
THE TABLET
|
1 June 2013
Volume 267 No. 9000 ISSN: 0039 8837
Independently audited certified average
circulation per issue of THE TABLET for
issues distri buted between 1 July and
31 December 2012 is 19,545
TABLET
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EDITORIAL
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DIRECTORS
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Robin Baird-Smith, Tina Beattie, Mike Craven,
Julian Filochowski CMG, OBE, Cathy Galvin,
Ignatius Kusiak, Keith Leslie,
Dermot McCarthy, Susan Penswick,
Catherine Pepinster, Paul Vallely CMG.
CALENDAR
Sunday 2 June:
Corpus Christi
The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
(Year C)
Monday 3 June:
St Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
Tuesday 4 June:
Feria
Wednesday 5 June:
St Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
Thursday 6 June:
Feria or St Norbert, Bishop
Friday 7 June:
The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Saturday 8 June:
The Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin
Mary
Sunday 9 June:
Tenth Sunday of the Year
22
9 770039 883202
For the Extraordinary Form calendar go to
www.lms.org.uk and look under Find a Mass
ANOTHER WARMISH
bank holiday weekend and
all at once the world is full
of little red bees. Or at least
the south side of the house
is. Basking on bricks, sunbathing on the roof,
warming up on window ledges, theyre every-
where. Once kissed by the sun, they pry into
every nook and crevice for a nesting place.
In looks midway between a honeybee and
a bumble, the red mason bee provides vital
pollination services by being active in spring
before bumbles and honeys are fully opera-
tional. This year, as with everything, theyre
a month late. Originally nesting in hollow
plant kexes and reeds, like house martins they
soon threw in their lot with human beings:
Glimpses of Eden
our sprawling dwellings providing an ecstasy
of crannies. No one knows a wall like a red
mason bee. Finding a suitable cavity in
stone or woodwork for their larvae, they then
quarry a nearby patch of disturbed soil, car-
rying it back grain by grain. Mortaring the
earth with a paste of pollen and a little nec-
tar, they patiently plug the hole an edible
dwelling for the young within. The proven-
der lasts until autumn when the next
generation will overwinter in a cocoon. Avid
nesters, red mason bees have been known to
use key holes. Ours use roof-tile tunnels, air
vents and a custom-made log with handy
holes. Gentle flame of spring, in a few short
weeks your distinctive red jersey will be gone.
Jonathan Tulloch
ROSE PRINCE
THE ETHICAL KITCHEN
Seeds of change
COLLECTING SEEDS from a plant that has
fruited abundantly is instinctive for an expe-
rienced gardener, as is giving a few seeds away
to a friend. But until now it never struck me
that this simple act of sharing might fall within
strict regulation. A proposed law aiming to
classify edible plants is currently being con-
sidered by the European Union (EU), however,
and environmental groups are protesting
that the legislation would prohibit diversity.
The Soil Association, the International
Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements
and various independent seed retailers are
campaigning against the plans, and a petition
has been signed by almost 250,000 people.
This has been organised by Noahs Ark Global
2000, a body concerned with the safe keep-
ing of historical plant varieties.
In brief, the EU proposals have been
launched to replace existing directives on
plant reproductive material law, which are
in need of simplification. The new rules are
due in 2016, when it will immediately
become illegal to grow, reproduce or trade any
vegetable seed or tree that has not been tested
and approved by a new EU plant variety
agency. This body will hold a list of approved
plants, and the seed companies must pay an
annual fee to keep their products on this list
or they cannot be produced.
The proposed legislation is set out over 70
pages so much for simplification. In the
summary, the authors make much of how the
changes will encourage diversity and how the
draft addresses all concerns put forward by
small-scale seed producers, who do not rel-
ish the bureaucracy of testing or costs. Such
producers feel they are being dragged into a
body of law that is irrelevant to them.
They, and other opponents, argue that the
new rules are being created only for the glob-
alised seed manufacturing giants, who require
such statutes to cover the patents they will need
to sell their most likely genetically modified
varieties to European agribusiness. The laws
will prevent farmers collecting seed from crops,
insisting they pay royalty fees if they do so.
Seed banks holding historical-food plant col-
lections will be exempt, but they may not give
seeds to the public, again lessening accessi-
bility to some of the most interesting seeds.
In the case of individual gardeners who like
to collect a little seed after each harvest, the
proposed law says they can do this as long as
they do not profit at all. So, to swap or give
away a few seeds you have harvested in your
own back garden will be allowed.
Oddly, it is what we may do under the leg-
islation that makes one so angry. Can anyone
tell another what they can and cannot give?
Surely our right to give and receive, provided
the goods are not stolen, is our own.
Farmers markets and even some supermar-
kets now sell tomatoes in a multitude of
colours and shapes. Mix them to make a pretty
summer tart.
Heirloom tomato tart
300g puff pastry
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
500g red, yellow and green tomatoes, sliced
20 small black olives
10 basil leaves
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Preheat the oven to 200C. Roll the pastry
into a rectangle, about 2mm thick, and place
on a baking sheet. Prick all over with a fork,
spread the mustard over the surface leaving a
1cm border. Lay the tomatoes on top, scatter
over the olives and basil, and brush with olive
oil. Bake until crisp (about 20 minutes).
TABLETEducation
INSIDE | Inspirational teacher | Creeping secularisation | Richmonds new head
SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES JUNE 2013
1 June 2013
|
TABLET Education
|
s1
expansively as Jesuit Commons: Higher
Education at the Margins teamed up with
the JRS and currently operates in the vast
refugee camps of Jordan, Kenya and Malawi.
There are plans to expand it to 10 more sites,
including, it is hoped, to camps in Afghanistan,
Burma and Chad, in the next five years.
Last month, the JRS signed a
groundbreaking agreement with the office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees to boost the initiative in a move
welcomed by James Stapleton, JRS
international communications coordinator,
who explained that refugees can now take a
liberal arts degree focusing on leadership
skills, with certificate courses available for
those who have not reached university
entrance level.
A long-standing advocate of lifelong
A
mong the many privations suffered by
the millions of long-term refugees
around the world is access to higher
education. While charities and other
non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
work tirelessly in camps that have come to
resemble permanent tented cities to provide
basic schooling to those displaced by strife,
specialised further education has remained
elusive for most.
But now through the use of the worldwide
web, more and more of those denied
conventional educational opportunities are
getting the chance to acquire the knowledge
and skills to help them survive and hopefully
thrive in the modern world through online
courses such as those being pioneered by the
Jesuit Refugee Service, or JRS.
Launched in 2010, an initiative known
learning, Professor John Field of Stirling
University also welcomed the move, saying:
This strikes me as utterly brilliant. If you
are in a refugee camp, by definition youre
almost entirely excluded from conventional
educational opportunities. Its a really neat
way of widening access for a very vulnerable
population.
Principal partner in the initiative is the
Jesuit Regis University in Denver, Colorado,
which validates the qualifications. But there
are now plans to expand the number of
academic partners, which include
Georgetown University in Washington DC,
the United States oldest Catholic higher
education institution.
Georgetown is at the forefront of radical
changes in teaching and learning using open
educational resources, known in the trade
as OER. At a time when many students face
increasing fees, a growing number of higher
educational institutions are producing OER
material that is freely available to anybody
with access to the internet. This can range
from slides of a presentation or digitised text
to podcasts of lectures and complex sets of lab
data. These Massive Open Online Courses,
or Moocs, enable millions of students to learn
at their own pace through video lectures,
tests, assignments and online forums.
Some critics claim OER are loss leaders,
and little more than a cynical branding
exercise. Professor Field agrees that those at
the forefront of the OER movement have
gained a certain public relations benefit but
he takes a wider view, saying: I see a lot of
this as the new extra-mural education,
displaying a strong sense of civic and social
responsibility. Universities can and should
be making their knowledge available to the
wider community.
This altruistic approach to higher
education arguably began with the Khan
Academy, a not-for-profit organisation
created in 2006 by Bengali American
educator and entrepreneur Salman Khan,
that offers more than 4,000 free videos on
everything from arithmetic and physics to
finance and history.
Last year, a comprehensive worldwide
online learning initiative, edX, was set up by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) and Harvard University, and recently
joined by Georgetown. This autumn, it will
offer two Moocs Introduction to Bioethics,
and Globalisations Winners and Losers:
Challenges for Developed and Developing
Countries. Next year, it plans to offer courses
Click and learn
Digital technology is bringing the chance of higher education to millions
of refugees worldwide through radical online courses such as those
currently pioneered by the Jesuits, reports Olga Wojtas
8
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P
A
G
E
S
U
P
P
L
E
M
E
N
T
(Continued on page s2.)
s2
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TABLET Education
|
1 June 2013
TABLET Education
on terrorism and counterterrorism, personal
genomics, and human dignity and human
rights. EdX president Anant Agarwal, an
Indian IT expert and a professor of electrical
engineering and computer science at MIT,
believes the traditional model of higher
education has remained virtually unchanged
since the advent of the printing press,
saying: A big part of what we want to do is
really reinvent education.
A revolution does indeed seem under way.
EdXs first official courses attracted 370,000
students. Last year also saw the creation by
two Stanford University professors in
California of Coursera, which now has
almost three million students. It involves
dozens of universities in North America and
beyond: in January, Edinburgh became the
first British university to offer a Coursera
Mooc. Meanwhile, Britains long-time
deliverer in distance learning, the Open
University, is one of 11 international
institutions in OpenupEd, a Mooc initiative
of the European Association of Distance
Learning Teaching Universities, supported
by the European Commission.
Digitisation hasnt revolutionised
everything yet, but its changing the terms
of the game. Its now very easy to take teaching
materials, even quite small chunks, and
make them available online, said Professor
Field, adding that this major development
is making educators more conscious of what
and how they are teaching, and is hence
leading to an improvement in quality. Its a
bit like the OU [Open University] when it
usedTV it had to be better-quality than other
universities because everyone could see it.
Professor Field says it is no accident that
the pioneers of OER are the big names,
explaining: Its a huge demonstration of
confidence in the ability of their staff. These
are very prestigious universities, and theyre
saying, We know our teaching is good you
can see a podcast of our Professor X
teaching macro-economics and judge for
yourself.
While undoubtedly part of this new
educational movement, the Jesuits initiative
differs in two crucial ways. First, the
students are not charged for studying
towards a recognised qualification. While
most Moocs are free, universities generally
charge if students want letters after their
name. Secondly, refugees not only have
online access, but also have regular
face-to-face support in their studies.
All the research suggests that the learning
tends to be better-quality when there is
access to support, said Professor Field.
That support might be online, but the
consensus is that blended learning [a
mixture of online and face-to-face teaching]
seems to be the best way. Theres a difference
between making information available and
translating that into knowledge.
One of the drawbacks of the huge numbers
taking Moocs is that individual support is
mostly impossible, and consequently current
completion rates are very low. Only 12 per
cent of students who started the Edinburgh
University courses reportedly finished, and
this month the Times Higher Education
magazine published research by Open
University doctoral student Katy Jordan that
showed an average Mooc completion rate of
under 7 per cent. With this in mind, one of
Georgetowns key roles in edX is researching
how students learn, and how the emerging
technologies can best be used. Martin Bean,
vice chancellor of the Open University, has
warned that Moocs are only one chapter in
advances in higher education, and that there
should not be a headlong rush to adopt them.
Despite some shortcomings, Professor
Field is still enthusiastic about the new
learning methods, saying: There is some
suggestion that Moocs tend to attract those
who are already well qualified, but even
then, theyre attracting such high numbers
that there will be many who are getting
something out of it. Some people use them
for completely independent study. You
might want to improve your Brazilian
Portuguese and dip into a couple of OERs,
and it seems to me that thats perfectly fine.
Somebody else might need a Portuguese
speaker to talk them through it.
With many NGOs and other small players
I went to Farnborough Hill
Convent, a direct-grant
school in Farnborough,
Hampshire, from 1966 to
1973, from the ages of 10
to 17, writes Helen Ghosh.
I had family links to the
school, as my mother had
also gone there, and I
enjoyed my time there I was generally
hard-working and boringly well-behaved.
The school had fascinating buildings; the
old part of the convent had been the home of
Empress Eugnie, the wife of Napoleon III, so
parts of it were reminiscent of the life she had
lived there in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The teachers were an
interesting mix of nuns a small Irish order
called the Religious of Christian Education
and an impressive group of laymen and
-women from a variety of backgrounds.
The particular teacher that I always
remember was called Mary Brister, a very brisk
and straight-talking Oxford graduate who
taught me English. Her husband went on to
become the deputy head of the Prison
Service, so she had a strong sense of public
service in her private life, but she was also
strongly driven by her religious faith, which
came through very much in the pastoral side
of her job.
I remember her firstly because of the strong
message she gave us about the importance of
how you use evidence to demonstrate things.
She would always say when we were writing
an essay or doing an exam, Youve got to give
the point and then the example, meaning
that you cant claim something unless you
could produce the evidence from the text.
She had a real sense of intellectual
discipline, which was enormously stimulating.
I really felt that I had to work hard for her and
have that kind of clarity of thought. Although
I went on to study history at university, I
enjoyed English enormously, because of the
sense of intellectual rigour Mary Brister
encouraged. Thats been important to me in
my own enjoyment of literature, and certainly in
studying history, but its also been important
in the public life that Ive had. Starting off with
a real understanding of what the evidence of
all kinds is telling you is important both in
academic disciplines and in professional life.
I also remember admiring her because of
her strong faith and the impact that it had on
her life. She once gave a talk in the chapel to
the sixth form that I remember very clearly,
when she spoke from Lukes account of the
birth of Jesus. She was taking Mary pondered
these things in her heart (2:19) as her text,
and said to us, There will be times in your life,
particularly when youve got children or when
youre dealing with difficult issues, when you
will have to learn to ponder things in your
heart.
And since then, particularly when I had
small children, when I was puzzling over why
the baby wouldnt go to sleep or why my child
appeared unhappy, or wondering how I
should deal with a particular personal or
professional challenge, that idea has stayed
with me.
Helen Ghosh has been director general of
the National Trust since November 2012,
having previously been Permanent Secretary
at the Home Office. She was talking to
Hannah Shaddock.
THE TEACHER WHO INSPIRED ME
now involved in making OER available,
questions about copyright and intellectual
property have been raised that Professor
Field admits are far from being resolved.
Were feeling our way because easy
availability through digitisation is very new.
Remember its just over 20 years since the
first text message was sent, said Professor
Field, who also highlighted potential
problems over quality. You have to use your
judgement. With many, you cant tell in
advance whether the materials are good or
not. If something comes from a high-
reputation university like the OU, Id be
astonished if the quality were poor. But its a
crowded marketplace and some of the actors
are much less trustworthy than others.
He adds that quality also depends on
fitness for purpose, saying: Something from
MIT might be great for my sociology
students, but is it great in a refugee camp?
Thanks to the Jesuits unique initiative of
combining online and face-to-face teaching,
some of the worlds most disadvantaged people
are gaining just the education they need.
Olga Wojtas is former Scottish editor of
Times Higher Education.
(Continued from page s1.)
O
ne can hear the roaring crowd at
Twickenham Rugby Stadium from
the grounds of St Richard Reynolds
Catholic College, which opens in
September. And there is a loud hurrah from
within the local Catholic community, which
has campaigned for more than a decade for
a secondary school. Opposition from the
British Humanist Association meant there
was still uncertainty until last year when
Richmond Council won a judicial review in
the High Court. Until now, pupils from the
boroughs six local Catholic primaries had to
travel long distances to school or leave
Catholic education.
Last month the new principal, Richard
Burke, invited all the children offered a
place at the college to a Mass of welcome at
the chapel of St Marys University College in
nearby Strawberry Hill. The young voices
sang Bernadette Farrells hymn: This is the
Time of New Beginnings. And Burke
summoned his pioneers, the 100 or more
children joining in Year 7, on to the altar.
They organised themselves in orderly rows,
in silence. If this is how its going to be
from now on, said the principal, with a
chuckle, we will have a fabulous school!
Burke took up his first headship in 2004
and transformed Christs School, a failing
Church of England comprehensive in
Richmond. To appoint his senior
management team at Richard Reynolds, he
asked a group of Christs pupils to spend a
day being taught eight lessons by different
prospective deputy heads. They wrote
detailed notes for Burke that informed his
decision to appoint two women, both
Catholics, each with more than 10 years
experience in Catholic schools.
When I met Richard Burke at a cafe on
Twickenham Green, he was open about his
own difficulties growing up as well as his
successes in later life. I didnt do as well as I
should have done in my A levels and lost my
place at York University, he told me. I was
head boy [of Bishop Ullathorne School,
Coventry], captain of the First XI football
team, played for Coventry Citys Youth Team
and basketball for the West Midlands, so I
had a few other interests. His parents, first-
generation Irish immigrants who had left
school at 14 and 16 respectively, guided him
through and he got a place to read
mathematics and management sciences at
Manchester University. He was attracted by
the sporting opportunities at
It is our duty to help
nurture talent
1 June 2013
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s3
Loughborough University and did his
postgraduate training there to become a
mathematics and PE teacher. I was in my
element, he recalled of his first day of
teaching practice. I love working with
young people.
After Christs, he taught at Gunnersbury
Catholic School, west London, where he
met his wife, Geraldine, who is deputy head
teacher of the Sacred Heart Language
College in Harrow, north-west London. He
was previously deputy head teacher of two
London Catholic schools: Richard
Challoner in New Malden and St Pauls
Catholic College in Sunbury. Two of their
children are still at London Catholic
comprehensives and the eldest is at
university.
Richard Reynolds will have both a
primary and a secondary school. The first
year will begin with one Reception form
and five Year 7 forms accommodated in a
collection of classrooms that used to house
the Curriculum and Teachers Centre for
Richmond. The handsome Victorian
buildings are still used as an adult
education college but in two years time will
serve as the main buildings for the school
which will grow to over 1,000 pupils aged
from four to 19. Initially there will be no
formal library or chapel but they will use
sports facilities at St Marys University
College.
We could teach the children in a tent on
Twickenham Green and it would still be
successful, because it is the teaching and
relationships that truly matter, he said. St
Richard Reynolds will be a place where our
young people will come first, be loved,
listened to, challenged and inspired.
So what are the main challenges?
Convincing people to send their children to
the school, and spending the 2 million we
have to get it ready in the next few months.
There is indeed some caution among
parents about taking the leap into a school
that is not proven and Burke is making his
way around the primary schools to answer
parents questions.
It will be distinct from other Catholic
schools in west London, he says,
emphatically. Yes, rugby will be one of the
main sports but there will be football too.
There are plans for it to be a music
specialist school, but Burke is keen to
emphasise the inclusivity of the schools
ethos with opportunities for all abilities. He
intends to have six enrichment periods a
week where Latin will also be offered. He is
also vehemently opposed to streaming
children and will instead set them for
individual subjects as he believes children
may excel in one subject rather than in
another. Prospective pupils were pleased to
hear that there are plans for the school day
to run from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an
earlier finish on Wednesdays and Fridays of
2.30 p.m., and Burke has said he will not
load them with homework so they have
time to pursue interests in sport and the
arts. Parents are attracted to his plan to
keep class sizes to a maximum of 25 pupils.
In what way will it be a Catholic school?
Our chairman of governors, Andrew Cole,
likened Catholic education to preparing
people for death. It sounds morbid, but if
you unpick it, it is most profound. At the
heart of Catholic education lies the
Christian vision of the human person. His
own faith, he said, is his anchor and he
will ensure there is a voluntary Mass every
week at the college, which is named after a
local saint, St Richard Reynolds, a
Brigittine monk at Syon Abbey, Isleworth,
who was martyred at Tyburn in 1535.
As for discipline, Burke is known as a
stickler for top buttons and ties being done
up properly. High expectations, he believes,
breed good behaviour. I have never seen a
bad child. I have seen some awful behaviour
and some pretty bad parenting, but never a
bad child. Burke said he dislikes the term
gifted and talented, widely used in schools
to describe children with abilities
considered well above the average.
All young people have talent and it is our
duty to help find and nurture it. He is also
wary of focusing too closely on results and
league tables. Academic success is hugely
important, but so is our happiness and
well-being.
Behind him stands a strong Catholic
community and the support of the Dioceses
of Southwark and Westminster. It is
incredibly exciting and a huge privilege, he
said. St Richard Reynolds has grown from
a swell of local desire.
Victoria Combe is a freelance journalist.
Come September, the London Borough of Richmond will have its
first Catholic secondary school. Its principal told Victoria Combe about
his hopes for the school and his idiosyncratic approach
Richard Burke, principal of
St Richard Reynolds Catholic College,
opening in September
Six years ago, the UK languished
at the bottom of a table compiled
by the international charity Unicef,
comparing childrens overall
well-being in 21 of the worlds
richest countries. When the latest
report was published in April, the
UKs standing had markedly
improved but, as Jeremy Sutcliffe
reports, its score for education
remains a cause for concern
U
nicef s most recent evaluation of the
well-being of children makes more
positive reading than it did in 2007.
The UKs overall ranking has climbed from
twenty-first (out of 21) to sixteenth (out of 29).
The improvement reflects successful
action in tackling child health issues such as
smoking and obesity, and promoting healthy
lifestyles. But other data in the report, Child
Well-being in Rich Countries: a comparative
overview, reveal a far less rosy picture.
With the UK ranking near the bottom of
TABLET Education
s4
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1 June 2013
the league on teenage pregnancy and young
people not in education, employment or
training [Neets], we know that many are
facing a bleaker future, warns Anita Tiessen,
deputy executive director of Unicef UK.
The compilers give each country separate
scores on five criteria: material well-being,
health and safety, education, behaviours and
risks, and housing and environment. It is in
education that the UKs performance is
woeful it trails in twenty-fourth place.
The reason for our poor performance is
our dire record in
encouraging young people
to stay on in education or
training between the ages
of 15 and 19. On this
measure, the UK comes
near the bottom of the
league. Not great for one of
the worlds richest countries.
Tellingly, the report states: The United
Kingdom is the only developed country in
which the further education participation
rate falls below 75 per cent. This may be the
result of an emphasis on academic
qualifications combined with a diverse
system of vocational qualifications which
have not yet succeeded in achieving either
parity of esteem or an established value in
employment markets.
Worse still is the fact that many of those
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A school in Finland:
One of the key reasons
for Finnish schools
success the expectation
that all children can
attain at high levels
1 June 2013
|
TABLET Education
|
s5
who cease their education at 16 fail to get
employment or a training place, and join the
ranks of the so-called Neets. With nearly 10
per cent of 15- to 19-year-olds in this
category, only four out of 28 developed
countries have a worse record than the UK.
According to Unicef, these vulnerable
teenagers are at risk of a potential lifetime of
mental health problems, drug abuse,
involvement in crime and long-term
unemployment and welfare dependence. So
how is it that a wealthy country such as ours,
with a school system that performs relatively
well until children reach their mid-teens,
appears to be failing so many youngsters as
they approach adulthood?
One way to answer this is to look at the
top-performing countries in the educational
well-being stakes. In first place is the
Netherlands, followed by Belgium, Germany
and Finland. To prove it is not just the most
affluent countries that do well, however,
other countries in the top 10 include
Slovenia, Hungary and Poland, all former
Communist countries.
One country that has consistently
outperformed the rest of the world for
academic achievement over the past decade
is Finland. According to the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), Finlands success has
been remarkably consistent across schools
and is unconnected to students family
background, socioeconomic status or ability.
One of the key reasons behind this success
is a political consensus to educate all
children together in a common school
system. The consensus also includes the
expectation that all children can achieve at
high levels, regardless of their family
background or regional circumstances;
single-minded pursuit of teaching excellence;
collective school responsibility for learners
who are struggling; modest financial
resources that are tightly focused on the
classroom; and a climate of trust between
teaching professionals and the community.
While Finland represents the poster
pin-up for supporters of comprehensive
education and investment in high-quality
teaching, the most important ingredient
appears to be a broad consensus about what
a country requires of its education system.
Until 2000, Germany believed its tripartite
secondary school system, which provides
separate streams for academic, technical
and vocational students, was among the best
in the world and was shocked when the
OECD published its own league table
ranking it in the bottom half of developed
countries for academic achievement.
This shock began a great debate which led
to Germany making significant changes to
its system to allow children greater flexibility
to change track and choose learning
pathways that suit them. The country also
built on its traditional strengths of
high-quality (and well-paid) teaching and its
renowned dual system which helps
children develop workplace skills before
they leave school.
As a result, Germanys education system is
arguably the best among the worlds major
economies and the consensual way it
handled its own reforms serves as a model to
future school reorganisation in the UK.
Sadly, in this country there is little sign of
a consensus emerging, according to Dr Paul
Doherty, head teacher of Trinity Catholic
High School in Woodford Green, Essex.
In England we are still divided by class.
There has been a national consensus in these
countries that do well in international league
tables that this is the way forward, and this
is what we need to do. Those countries are
also characterised by a more disciplined,
more rigorous approach to studies, he says.
We could learn from that. Learning
should be something that children enjoy, but
it should still be very rigorous, whether it be
dance and football, or Latin. There is a
certain lack of rigour in our system that
leads to public consternation and sometimes
chaos. But the root cause is that there isnt
really a cross-party consensus on what our
system should be.
We are forever chopping and changing.
We have got academies and free schools,
ordinary comprehensives and grammar
schools. Post-16 we have a whole diversity of
colleges. So here we are 70 years after the
1944 Education Act, and we still havent got
it right. We are constantly changing the
wheel. Why? Its because the consensus is
missing.
One major change to our education system
that does command support, however, is the
imminent raising of the school leaving age.
From September 2013, students will be
expected to stay until the age of 17 in
full-time education, an apprenticeship or
employment with training. This will rise to
18 the following year so that by the summer
of 2015, all young people between the ages of
15 and 18 will remain in education, take up
an apprenticeship or take up a job with
access to training.
This is likely to boost significantly the
UKs standing in the next Unicef league
tables. Crucially, it is also likely to have a
beneficial impact not only on those young
people who will now stay on in education or
take up training, but also on future
generations, according to researchers at the
universities of Bristol and Bath who have
been examining the impact on pupils who
left school in 1972 when the leaving age was
raised from 15 to 16.
Parents with higher levels of schooling
provide a better childhood experience and
home environment and consequently their
children do better in school. The proposed
further raising of the leaving age to 18 by
2015 should lead to benefits not just for the
generation affected but also in the future for
their children, says lead researcher
Professor Paul Gregg.
Jeremy Sutcliffe is a freelance journalist
specialising in education.
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s6
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TABLET Education
|
1 June 2013
schools, then the demographics cannot be
ignored for long. There has undoubtedly
been a decline in Catholic religiosity
measured by church attendance, which
raises the question of why admissions to
Catholic schools are expanding within a
declining Church. There is a demand for the
education that Catholic schools offer, but
not for a Catholic education per se.
According to Vatican II and the
post-conciliar documents, there is a
Catholic world view that should influence
the Catholic schools curriculum. This world
view is derived from Catholic teachings,
Scripture and tradition. The aim of the
Catholic school is to enable students to
achieve their complete dignity as persons in
a relationship with Christ. According to this
view, religion cannot be separated or
divorced from the rest of the curriculum,
nor can religious education be seen as the
raison dtre of the Catholic school.
The idea that the school subjects that
make up the curriculum (excluding
religious education) are value-free and
therefore somehow separate from the
Catholic faith is clearly contrary to the
Catholic world view. If they were separated,
then it would also be contrary to the basic
premise of unity between revelation and
other sources of knowledge, and would
ignore the view that all subjects in the
curriculum need the light of the Gospel in
their delivery. From the Catholic point of
view, God is the source of all knowledge and
in creating human beings he has endowed
them with a desire for knowledge and a
freedom to pursue it.
Simply teaching religious education does
not qualify a school as Catholic. The only
model of the school that can be adopted,
according to church teaching, is an
all-embracing one of faith, and so as one
English bishop put it: We do not accept
that we can include religious education in
any curriculum and be content that our
duties are fulfilled. Nor can we be satisfied
with a situation where a teacher is
competent in a particular discipline but
does not share in an agreed vision of the
whole task.
The central point remains that a school
cannot be truly Catholic unless Catholicism
and its values are diffused into the entire
curriculum, methods, organisation and
ethos of the school. If Catholicism is a
comprehensive way of life, it seems logical
that it should animate every aspect of the
curriculum.
In England, the dominant values in
schooling are largely secular. It is an
education system that acknowledges that
there are many good ends and that, while
these ends may conflict with each other,
none is necessarily overriding. The threat
that Catholic parents see in morally
pluralist schools, which are often viewed by
them as being entirely secular in
orientation, is that the values that their
children have learnt in the family are
What is the point of
a Catholic school?
Over the last 20 years, Catholic professor of education James Arthur
has argued that the Churchs schools are gradually succumbing
to secularism. In an extract from a recent essay, he explains why
he believes this trend is accelerating
The aim of the
Catholic school
is to enable
students to
achieve their
complete
dignity as
persons in a
relationship
with Christ.
Photo: CNS
TABLET Education
T
odays typical English Catholic school
curriculum is almost
indistinguishable from its secular
counterpart and increasingly those who
teach in and attend Catholic schools have
no particular commitment to the official
vision of Catholic education.
The statistics alone testify to the rapid
changes in the demography of Catholic
schooling within England. Between 1978
and 1993, the percentage of non-Catholic
teachers in maintained Catholic schools
increased from 22 per cent to 29 per cent.
Between 1993 and 2011 this increased to 45
per cent with the pace of change
accelerating annually.
The number of non-Catholic children
admitted to Catholic schools also increased
rapidly. In 1974 there were a total of
944,536 children in all maintained Catholic
schools, of whom only 14,000 were
non-Catholic fewer than 2 per cent of the
total. By 1992, the number of children in
Catholic maintained schools had declined
to 709,932, but non-Catholics accounted
for 85,090 more than 11 per cent of the
total. Between 1992 and 2011, the number
of children in Catholic maintained schools
had risen to 762,282 of whom 29 per cent
were non-Catholic representing a
dramatic increase.
While in the 1970s Catholic education
authorities were primarily concerned about
the number of non-practising Catholics in
their schools, today the overwhelming
majority of children and teachers within
Catholic schools are either non-Catholic or
do not practise and therefore can only be
considered, at best, as baptised Catholics.
Demography is, of course, only one factor
in evaluating a schools Catholicity, but
when the overwhelming majority of staff
and pupils do not attend Mass in their
parishes and therefore do not contribute to
the financial maintenance of Catholic
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1 June 2013
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TABLET Education
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s7
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adjusted in such schools. Such family values
may even gradually disappear in a school
system that emphasises that children ought
to choose and design their own set of values,
even if this means detachment from the
beliefs, practices and values that have been
carefully nurtured in the family. In other
words, the Catholic Church is conscious
that transmitting secular values can
undermine a childs sense of religious
identity.
In Catholic schools, both teachers and
pupils should be able to articulate a
Catholic worldview through a set of values.
The danger facing Catholic schools is that
they adopt woolly and unfocused mission
statements that are merely hollow Christian
slogans signifying nothing in particular
about a Catholic philosophy of education
school mission statements that reduce
Catholicism to the repetition of hollow
formulas. If such statements remain at the
level of Catholic edu-babble, there can be
no meaning or justification for Catholic
schools and inevitably such schools become
secular in all but name.
It was reported that English Catholic
schools, at GCSE level examinations,
outperform the national average by 6 per
cent and that the majority of schools are
judged by Ofsted as good or outstanding.
Forty-four per cent of secondary schools
were rated outstanding for pupils
behaviour, compared with a national
average of 24 per cent. This is an impressive
picture, but it simply indicates that the
Church has some very good schools. The
research says nothing about whether they
are good Catholic schools.
In so far as schools claim to be specified
by their Catholicity, there is little in the way
of benchmarks to assure the wider Church
of their Catholic identity. Most schools,
including Catholic ones, are also marked by
a high degree of formal control emphasising
selection, competition and vocationalism,
and these are linked to future career
opportunities and potential social status.
In other words, many Catholic schools
look no further than the secular models of
education that surround them. They adopt
a dualistic model of the curriculum, which
divides education conceptually and
practically into a religious section and a
much larger secular part. There is also little
in the way of an evaluation of the secular
context, far less a coherent response to the
secularisation process in education.
Indeed, the Church has adopted and
embraced secular thought in education
through a process of internal secularisation
resulting in conformity to secular models of
the curriculum. Religious identity is eroded
in these secular models, with links to
Catholic educational principles becoming
historical memory.
The challenge facing English Catholic
schools is to both reconstruct a Catholic
curriculum and address the militant
secularism that surrounds them. The task
of the Catholic school, as the great Catholic
historian of ideas, Christopher Dawson,
saw it, is first to recover its own cultural
inheritance through its curriculum and
teaching, and secondly to communicate it
to a sub-religious or neo-pagan world.
Failure in this project simply maintains the
fact that many English Catholic schools are
currently indistinguishable from their
secular counterparts and a focus on their
academic success simply advances secular
culture.
The de-Catholicising of the curriculum
through a process of internal secularisation
in Catholic schools is the result, which
raises the question: what is the Church
trying to accomplish with its considerable
investment in Catholic schools?
James Arthur is head of the School of
Education and professor of education at the
University of Birmingham. This article is
adapted from his essay, The
De-Catholicising of the Curriculum in
English Catholic Schools, in the journal
International Studies in Catholic Education
(vol. 5; no. 1). Thanks to ISCE editor Gerald
Grace and the publishers, Routledge,
for permission to use this material.
s8
|
TABLET Education
|
1 June 2013
The school: Saint John Bosco College in
Wimbledon is a co-educational
voluntary-aided secondary school run by
the Salesians of Don Bosco and the
Archdiocese of Southwark. It is in an
ethnically diverse area and more than half of
the pupils speak English as a second
language. Almost 50 per cent of the students
are eligible for support as looked-after
children, or for free school meals. More than
the national average have behavioural,
emotional and social difficulties.
A new beginning: Saint John Bosco opened
at the beginning of September 2011, when
two Catholic secondary schools Salesian
College, Battersea, and John Paul II School
closed. Both had struggled to cope with a
complex intake of students, the majority of
whom were of black African or black
Caribbean heritage, and many of whom had
learning difficulties. The archdiocese and
the Salesian Order decided to open a new
one, with better facilities and a fresh
approach to educating children from
deprived backgrounds. The school currently
has 555 pupils but will be able to take up to
1,300 when, subject to planning approval,
it moves to a new building on the site of the
former Salesian College in Battersea in 2015.
Vote of confidence: Saint John Bosco
school was awarded a good inspection by
Ofsted, just 18 months after it opened. The
inspectorate acknowledged the progress
that had been made in such a short time,
praising the school for the work it did to
help children from diverse backgrounds.
Could do better: Ofsteds report highlighted
concerns about students opportunities to
excel. The number of students who attained
five A*-C GCSE grades was below the
national average in 2012, and Ofsted said
that high attainers underachieved. It
criticised the school for not pushing brighter
students, and was concerned about
inconsistency in homework. The
school is tackling both problems.
Spirituality: Only half the schools
population is Catholic, of whom
even fewer are practising. The school
maintains a strong Catholic identity, with
regular Masses and an assistant chaplain
on site. Students also go on retreats to
Worth and Buckfast Abbeys and a
sixth-form trip to Lourdes is planned. The
schools ethos, based on the teachings of St
John Bosco, has been developed by head
teacher Simon Uttley, whose doctoral thesis
was on Catholic education. The schools
motto is a saying of St John Bosco: It is not
enough for young people to be loved they
must know they are loved.
The Salesians say: Our preference is to be
in areas where education is a precious gift,
which can be liberating, especially if youre
from a background where you dont have
many opportunities, said Fr Kieran
Anderson SDB, Battersea rector. The new
school is a big commitment on behalf of the
Church: we are really serious about
providing an education resource for the
children of this borough.
Head teachers comments: What
always humbles and delights me
is how much non-Catholic
students buy in to what we do,
said Simon Uttley. Ive got one
student, a Muslim, whos probably the most
articulate ambassador of Salesian education
Ive ever met. Our challenge is to welcome
more families into the school to show them
what were made of so they can benefit from
an education which is excellent but also is
truly loving and truly Catholic.
Compiled by Liz Dodd.
Saint John Bosco College, Wimbledon, south-west London
A school that has made remarkable progress in the two years since it opened
SCHOOL REPORT
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