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self
gratitude
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leap of faith
existentialism
modernity
objective
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Subjectivity is truth
S
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indirect communication
experimental
post-Enlightenment
Fear and
Trembling
Scandinavia
Sren
Kierkegaard
Its a minefield: the moral
hazards of intervening in Syria
Romeros message: what he
means for the Church today
My atheist childhood:
Clifford Longley takes on Dawkins
trust
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200th
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Christianity
01 Tablet 4 May 13 Cover_Cover 01/05/2013 18:39 Page 1
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4 May 2013
THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE
U
nder its new Pope, the Catholic Church begins to
feel like an animal that has emerged from winter
hibernation, blinking in the sunlight and looking
for pastures new. From around the world the signs
of this reawakening are becoming visible.
For instance, some German bishops are interested in the
possibility of women being admitted to a special diaconate, as
a step towards diluting the heavily masculine profile of
Catholic ministry. The idea needs pushing further, not even
ruling out the prospect, floated not long ago by Cardinal
Timothy Dolan of New York, that women could be appointed
as cardinals, given that red hats do not necessarily have to be
proffered to clergy. As the Epistles of St Paul make clear,
leadership positions in the Church can in principle be as open
to women as to men.
It seemed far-fetched to say such a thing in the closing days
of Pope Benedicts papacy. But a pope who washes womens
feet on Maundy Thursday, and is in many ways so different
from his two immediate predecessors, seems capable of doing
what was once almost unthinkable. Nor is it just what he does
himself that will change the Church, but how people respond
to him and to the opportunities that define this new Franciscan
era. In that respect, the German bishops fresh thinking on
womens ministry is a straw in the wind. Nor is it now
unimaginable that Pope Francis strictures against clericalism
when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires against clergy
who strut around declaring Im the boss, as he puts it
might influence the way the Church functions elsewhere.
THE TABLET
THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY
Founded in 1840
Anglican church leaders, who had come sadly to terms with
the fact that no further progress towards visible unity with the
Catholic Church was likely, have already noted that a change
in style in Rome could put organic union back on the agenda.
The international Anglican-Catholic theological dialogue is
about to resume, and the question of how the two Churches
reach decisions on disputed matters is a key one. In Anglicanism
the lay voice has a real right to be heard; in the Catholic
system this right is purely theoretical. For its own good as well
as for the sake of the ecumenical process, the Catholic Church
needs to grow structures of dialogue with its own laity for
genuine listening, with a genuine prospect of responding.
The Catholic Church in England and Wales has been negligent
in this respect, despite the positive encouragement given to
participative structures in the Second Vatican Council.
So far, the positive response to the election of Pope Francis
by the bishops of England and Wales has consisted of some
fine words, an expensive trip to Rome to pay him homage, and
little else. History does not relate whether Francis was impressed
by their visit, though it is not irrelevant that he discouraged
Argentine Catholics from flocking to Rome for his installation,
saying they would do better to spend the money on the poor.
The Catholic laity do not want bishops who go around pro-
claiming, Im the boss. They want partnership with bishops
who are ready to be held to account for their actions. And as
in Buenos Aires under the man now called Francis, they want
to be challenged by the Gospel, and in the name of Christ and
the new Popes namesake, to become the Church of the poor.
LOCAL VOTES ON LOCAL ISSUES
I
t does not add up. The Coalition Government has promised
to revitalise local councils by devolving more powers to
them. The same Government, and the entire political and
media class, are obsessed with regarding local government
elections as a referendum on national political issues. How
much will the Tories be threatened by the UK Independence
Party (Ukip) in the next general election? How badly has one
poor radio interview damaged Ed Miliband? Can the Lib
Dems still cut the political mustard? Nowhere is there the
slightest sign of regret at the lack of any real accountability by
local councillors to their local electorates.
These councils are responsible for some of the services most
important for the well-being of the citizen. They supervise and
pay for the care of the elderly and vulnerable; they see the
streets are clean, the dustbins are emptied and the homeless
are housed; the roads are mended and the verges trimmed. No
matter how well or badly they do these things, however,
councillors standing for election will win or lose their seats
depending almost entirely on the colour of their rosettes. This
year, blue is not the favourite colour, as it was four years ago
when most of the seats just fought over were last contested.
But this is not because one local Tory-controlled council has
just sacked half its social services department in order to
privatise welfare delivery, or another has shut all its public
libraries saying that if people want books, they can buy them.
Or indeed because in 2009 a Labour council would rather
see a youth club closed than have it run by a local church group.
It is purely because Labour is now 10 per cent ahead in the
opinion polls, and Ukip is overtaking the Lib Dems as Britains
third party. In other words, performance and reward were in
many neighbourhoods disconnected, often making a mockery
of local democracy. Some of the issues said to have attracted
Tory voters to Ukip, such as gay marriage, are as far removed
from the influence of local councillors as it is possible to be.
Yet local government is having to make key decisions,
particularly under the pressure of public-spending cuts. For
instance, many Tory-controlled councils are moving to a
commissioning-only basis where the authority will directly
provide no services at all, making most of their staff redundant
and contracting out virtually everything it does. Aside from
the loss of expertise, this can lead to invidious and unfair
competition between local charities and large shareholder-
owned national contractors, which can afford to bid low in
order to knock charities out of the running. In the process, the
culture of public service is replaced by a culture of cost-cutting
and profit-maximising.
The public has a considerable stake in all this, but little
influence over it through the ballot box. True, the choice
between Labour and Tory does crudely correspond to a choice
between public and private sectors, but that is more about
ideology than policy. If local government is to be revitalised, it
needs to be detached from national politics, so that local council
elections really are what the name implies, rather than an
opinion poll on the popularity of the party leaders at Westminster.
02 Tablet 4 May 13 Leaders_Leaders 01/05/2013 18:26 Page 2
4 Tread softly in the moral minefield Kenneth R. Himes
A moral theologian sets out the reasons why the West should take a
cautious approach to military intervention in Syria
6 Passionate thinker George Pattison
The 200th anniversary of Sren Kierkegaards birth is a chance to
reassess his achievements as a theologian and philosopher
8 Real cost of cheap clothes Clare Lissaman
In the wake of the Bangladeshi garment-factory disaster, a
campaigner explores the link between fashion and exploitation
10 The Church of God, which is the people,
will never die Julian Filochowski
Francis unblocking of the beatification cause of Archbishop Oscar
Romero spotlights the Salvadorean as a martyr for our time
TABLET CARE: ELDERLY LIVING CHOICES SUPPLEMENT
s1 Age of independence Sue Gaisford
We talk to the Augustinian nun behind a new retirement village
s3 Tunes that strike a deeper chord Abigail Frymann
How music therapy is enhancing the lives of dementia sufferers
s4 Care home or home care? Terry Philpot
Weighing up the alternatives produces a surprise result
s5 Keeping Mum Paul Donovan
One care-companys client describes his experiences
s6 All their yesterdays Michael Williams
The remarkable generation that remembers the Second World War
s7 Not just an illness Polly Kaiser
Compiling life stories can help staff perceive people as individuals
4 May 2013
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CONTENTS
4 MAY 2013
12 CROSSWORD
13 PARISH PRACTICE
14 NOTEBOOK
15 LETTERS
16 THE LIVING SPIRIT
23 THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD
Zollitsch to promote a diaconate for women
26 LETTER FROM ROME
27 NEWS FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND
Church could raise millions from Gift Aid scheme changes
COLUMNS
5 CLIFFORD LONGLEY
I was brought up as an atheist, which makes
me a victim of what Dawkins calls abuse
11 LAURENCE FREEMAN
The prisoner had discovered you could pray
anywhere, even in the worst conditions
BOOKS
17 ANN SMITH
Religion and Aids in Africa
Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb
IAN KER
Evangelical Catholicism: deep reform
in the 21st-century Church
George Weigel
HARRIET PATERSON
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
ARTS
20 FEATURE
Laura Gascoigne
Joe Machine
TELEVISION
John Morrish
Rupert Murdoch: Battle with Britain
RADIO
D.J. Taylor
The Reunion: Coronation Maids
THEATRE
Mark Lawson
Othello
FEATURES
COVER: JENNIFER WADDELL
03 Tablet 4 May 13 Cont_P3 contents 01/05/2013 18:24 Page 3
KENNETH R. HIMES
Theres evidence that government forces in Syria have used
chemical weapons, but still the United States and Britain are
evaluating whether to intervene in the conflict, and if so, how.
Here a moral theologian finds sound reasons for taking a
cautious approach
I
s it time for nations in the Western
alliance to escalate their opposition to
the Assad regime in Syria? Reports that
chemical weapons had been used by the
Syrian army in two attacks one near
Damascus and one in Aleppo have raised
anew the issue of military support for the
anti-government forces. Whether there should
be a policy change by Western nations in the
backing they provide the rebels has once more
become a topic of vigorous debate publicly
and behind the scenes.
Britains Prime Minister, David Cameron,
indicated there was growing evidence of the
use of the poison sarin by the Syrian
Governments forces and that such use crossed
a red line. The latter term referred to
President Obamas statement on 20 August
2012 that a red line for us is we start seeing
a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving
around or being utilised. That would change
my calculus.
Cameron declared that the Syrian armys
action constituted a war crime and that it was
now time for the Coalition Government and
its allies to put more pressure on the Assad
regime to bring it to an end. However, he did
not call for Western troops to enter Syrian
territory. In the US, Senator John McCain,
one of Obamas passionate critics on Syria,
also stopped short of calling for US troops on
the ground while advocating military aid for
the rebel forces.
For his part, the US President took a more
cautious path. He cited the need for greater
information on just what happened with the
two attacks: both the nature of the weapons
used and also whether their use came with
high-level government approval or a lower-
level military leaders decision in the midst
of battle. It should also be remembered that
the resort to sarin in two limited instances
does not equate to Obamas imprecise
standard of a whole bunch of chemical
weapons being used.
According to some military analysts, there
is no compelling rationale for the Assad
Government to use chemical weapons. The
regime has shown itself capable of terrorising
its population without such weapons. And
there is no significant military advantage
gained by such limited use. So it is not
unimagin able that the two cases reflect not
the policy of the Assad regime but rather the
frustration of military commanders in the field
acting impetuously in the heat of a skirmish.
On the other hand, this may be a situation
where the Syrian Government is testing the
limits, seeing how far it can push before it
arouses a strong reaction. Seen that way, Assad
may be trying to depress the fighting spirit
of the rebels by showing that the West will
not come to their aid even as he raises the
ante in the deadly high stakes game he has
been playing. And the psychological terror
that news of the use of sarin will create within
the Syrian population may be part of his cal-
culation as well.
At the moment, these are questions to which
we do not have answers. What we do know
is that this has been a barbarous conflict in
which tens of thousands of civilians have been
killed and many more injured and/or driven
from their homes as refugees or internally
displaced persons. The Governments forces
have shown little regard for norms of discrim-
ination or proportionality in the prosecution
of the civil war.
We also know that the rebel forces, while
predominantly Syrian, are now being strength-
ened by outside fighters whose motivation is
religious, seeing this as a Sunni uprising
against the Alawite Government of Assad
with its Shiite supporters in Iran and Iraq.
What links these external fighters have with
global terrorist networks are a concern for
those opposed to giving military aid to the
rebels. Where will the aid end up? For those
who have recently fought in Afghanistan and
once supported Afghan guerrillas in their
battle with Soviet Russia, the worry about
blowback is not easily dismissed.
So, from an American perspective, what
are Western nations to do, faced with the
suffering of Syrias people and the recent
evidence of chemical weapons use? In thinking
ones way through to a response, several factors
must be taken into account.
Chemical weapons are banned by inter -
national treaty and law, although Syria is one
of six nations that are non-signatories to the
1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. The use
of such weapons should not be ignored, or the
force of international law will be undermined
by those who habitually ignore it and go
unpunished. So chemical weapons are part
of the equation but there are more factors at
work.
There are good reasons for Obamas caution,
even after the recent incidents of chemical
warfare. Do something anything to stop
the bloodshed and suffering of innocents
may be understandable as an expression of
frustration, even desperation. Yet it is not
advisable as a policy.
Any student of ethics is familiar with the
old chestnut about a person drowning in the
river while another person watches from the
shore. Should the bystander jump in to save
the individual? One can only answer, it
depends. If the person on the shore cannot
swim, it does not make sense to dive in and
create a situation with two drowning persons.
A trained lifeguard incurs a different obliga-
tion. Having convincingly demonstrated its
weakness as a swimmer in the current of
Middle East politics, the US quite rightly is
thinking twice about diving in yet again.
But ought not a bystander to consider alter-
natives in order to save a life? Maybe there is
a rowing boat handy that could be used, or a
life preserver that could be thrown to the
drowning person? By all means one should
Middle East confict
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Tread softly in the
moral minefield
CLIFFORD LONGLEY
I was brought up as an
atheist, which makes
me a victim of what
Dawkins calls abuse
My late father, a New Atheist long
before the term was invented, could
out-Dawkins Dawkins any day of
the week. He particularly detested
Thought for the Day, or whatever
the BBC used to call it. He would
charge across the room cursing, to
switch off the radio before the
announcer could even say, Good
morning, vicar. So as the actual
Richard Dawkins moves up or down
in public fame or ignominy, I have
felt a certain familial sympathy for
him. But why, O Lord, does your
existence make atheists so angry?
For people who claim to be scientific
rationalists par excellence, why is
their irreligion so furiously irrational?
I was brought up a thoroughgoing
atheist myself, which makes me a
victim of what Dawkins has labelled
child abuse the raising of children
with the same religious beliefs as
their parents. There is one set of
convictions I greatly admired in
Longley Senior. He was an
outstandingly moral man with an
acute intellectual honesty (except
where religion was concerned).
Sometimes Ive been rebuked that
religious people like me think people
without religious faith cannot be
moral. I have the pleasure of
replying that my father, an atheist,
was one of the most moral men I
ever knew. To which I might
sometimes add that it is far more
admirable to be moral with no
prospect of reward in an afterlife,
than to be so as an eschatological
hedge against hellfire.
Richard Dawkins does not
currently ride quite as high as he
did, though he has just been named
by a magazine as one of the worlds
leading intellectuals despite the
fact that his standard level of
argument is pretty trite. But he has
recently horrified some of his own
godless constituency by the
outspokenness of his condemnation
of Islam, which he has described as
the greatest force for evil in the world
today. They think he has become
Islamophobic. They are not wrong.
What we are seeing at work, I
think, is desperation. Dawkins
convinced himself that a scientific
attack on the foundations of
religious belief would quickly see it
crumble. But he has had to admit
that his famous book The God
Delusion converted virtually no one.
To him and his followers that
proved, if proof were needed, that
believers were stupid. Indeed he
invented the name brights for
non-believers, to hammer the point
home that they are intellectually
superior in every respect. (Humility
is not a virtue atheists much admire.)
In the corners of the media where
his charmless brights hang out,
such as the Belief section of The
Guardians Comment is Free
webpage, the daily onslaught on
religion is tireless, often aimed at the
sections editor, Andrew Brown, for
not being atheistic enough. Those
who pop their heads up to argue that
some accommodation between
religion and science is possible receive
more abuse even than the Pope, who
is, after all, only doing his job.
The New Atheists are fighting a
one-sided battle, for very few
religious believers can bring as
much passion to the refutation of
atheism as atheists like my father
did in the other direction. Indeed,
on ceasing to be an atheist myself, to
avoid pointless family rows I
adopted the wise convention
(recommended by my mother) of
politely changing the subject as soon
as possible. For if it is true that no
amount of intellectual argument is
ever going to convert a believer into
an atheist, it works the opposite way
round multiplied by 10. There is no
conceivable argument in favour of
theism that Richard Dawkins - or
my father would take seriously.
None. Waste of breath.
Why is this? The answer is not the
corny one that they really do know
there is God, and are just pretending
not to. They are sincere. But I do
sense that maintaining their
position requires an act of will that is
in need of regular renewal. They do
not believe in God, and more to the
point, they do not want to believe in
God. The very idea is immoral. So
they must keep the thought at a safe
distance. Otherwise, they fear, they
might fall under its evil influence.
And while they are secretly aware of
its seductiveness, to succumb to a
false belief would be appalling, even
though, in the act of submitting, they
would be ceasing to regard it as false.
It is as if they can imagine looking
down at themselves from an atheist
perspective, grieving for their lost
disbelief even as they abandoned it.
It would feel like self-betrayal. Atheist
that I once was, it is a confusing
sensation with which I am familiar.
Cliford Longley contributes
regularly to Thought for the Day.
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5
look for strategies to help. In the Syrian
situation, what might they be? To say there
is a lack of enthusiasm for another military
venture in the Middle East region hardly
captures the US publics mood. Establishing
no-fly zones near borders with neighbouring
countries would require anti-aircraft batteries,
helicopters, radar systems, and the people to
operate them since the rebels have few soldiers
with necessary skills. To create humanitarian
corridors for civilians to escape would require
tens of thousands of troops on the ground.
Furthermore, neither proposal prevents the
use of chemical weapons.
Provision of weaponry and other material
so the rebels can take the fight to the
Government presumes the ability to distinguish
those forces that are truly democratic and sup-
portive of a religiously pluralist society from
others representing Sunni intolerance. Few
Alawites or Christians or even secular Sunnis
are confident that what follows post-Assad will
be a society and state committed to toleration
and minority rights. In whose hands will the
Western-supplied weaponry wind up?
Yet another element in the equation is that
the red line for Syria that Obama, Cameron
and others have repeatedly cited is not the only
red line. For years there have been warnings
issued to Iran about crossing the line in its ura-
nium production. America and other allies
have sought Israeli restraint towards Iran as
diplomatic activity continues in fits and starts.
Behind the Israeli inaction is a US pledge that
it will not let Iran develop a nuclear weapon.
If the US ignores the red line for Syria, will
Israel continue to trust the pledge of a red line
for Iran? Will Iran be emboldened by Western
inaction towards Syria?
T
here are many questions with few
convincing answers on the topic of
Syria. Since the use of chemical
weapons has been the impetus in
renewed calls for action, the first step is for
the allies to make an indisputable case that
the Assad regime did indeed use chemical
arms, a case that will withstand any ques-
tioning by Russia. Then the allies should go
back to the UN Security Council to see if
Russia can be moved to join in sanctioning
the Assad regime. Diplomacy must be
exhausted before considering military aid
that ratchets up the violence. A second step
is gathering more intelligence about the
various groups that constitute the anti-
government forces. We must know whether
military aid can be provided that will not end
up strengthening the most radical Islamist
segments of the rebellion.
Taking the above steps suggests that Obama
has been correct to avoid rushing to change
a policy that withholds military aid.
Uncertainty need not mean paralysis but it
does suggest we move slowly until we can see
the road ahead more clearly.
Kenneth R. Himes OFM teaches moral
theology at Boston College, Chestnut Hill,
Massachusetts. His new book Christianity
and the Political Order was published last
month by Orbis Books.
A
philosopher, or a theologian, or
even a literary writer. A Christian,
or possibly a post-Christian. The
debates continue, 200 years after
his birth, as to how to categorise Sren
Kierkegaard. But what is without doubt is that
it took about half a century for his work to
become known outside Scandinavia, and when
it did, its impact was astonishing. This impact
was probably at its peak in the second and
third decades of the twentieth century, espe-
cially in the German-speaking world, where
he provided many of the key terms, images
and metaphors for Heideggers philosophy of
existence and for the dialectical theology of
Karl Barth and his associates. And although
Kierkegaards thought strongly reflects the
Lutheran tradition of his native Denmark, he
also became a powerful presence in Catholic
theology in this time, with eminent figures
such as Erich Pryzwara and Romano Guardini
contributing significant studies. More recently,
Archbishop Bruno Forte published a small
book entitled Fare Teologia Dopo Kierkegaard
(Doing Theology after Kierkegaard), a title
suggestive of Kierkegaards role in bringing
some of the defining questions of modern
theology to a head. But where did
Kierkegaards own path lead and what does
he contribute to understanding the religious
situation of our own time?
His anniversary will be celebrated with
festivities in the Cathedral Church of
Copenhagen, and there will be academic con-
ferences this year in Denmark and abroad as
well as many new studies published. The irony
of all this will not be lost on those who have
read his own satirical outbursts against cele -
bratory gatherings in honour of writers and
thinkers at which toasts are drunk, speeches
made and the ideas for which they lived and
died are quietly ignored. That Kierkegaards
own funeral took place in the church where
the official commemorations of his life will
now commence is remarkable in itself, since
there were many at the time who thought it
highly inappropriate that a man whose life
ended with a vitriolic attack on the church
establishment should have such a funeral at
all. Offered Communion on his deathbed,
Kierkegaard who wrote some of the most
beautiful meditations on preparing to receive
the sacrament ever written declined, unless
it could be given by a layman (which he knew
to be impossible), such was his dis -
enchantment with established Christianity.
The manner of his death and the writings
from the period leading up to it provide sup-
port for two very different interpretations of
the overall trajectory of his thought. The one
is that he was half-way to secularism and that,
had he lived longer, he might have developed
into a kind of Danish Nietzsche. This is the
Kierkegaard who also appealed to the secular
and Death of God theologians of the 1960s.
The other is that his issue was precisely to do
with the way in which Protestant Christianity
was itself absorbed into secular society in such
a way as to leave no critical distance between
Church and society. To be Danish was to be
a Lutheran Christian. However, had he lived
longer, this disillusion might have led him to
a more Catholic version of Christianity and
the rediscovery of Catholic Christendoms own
counter-cultural dimension. He once said of
his own authorship that he was essentially in
the monastery when he first started to write.
Perhaps on this view the monastery might
have been a fitting home for such an extra -
ordinary poet of the love of God.
But whatever else is to be said for or against
him, Kierkegaard matters today: he is one of
the few post-Enlightenment thinkers whose
work is both defined by a Christian agenda
and nevertheless remains a major point of
reference for the secular world. He can be
seen as the progenitor of existential angst and
of postmodern irony just as much as he can
be read for his extraordinary insights into
pastoral care. And, typically, an academic
seminar on Kierkegaard today is as likely to
include secular moral philosophers as prac-
titioners of the devout life.
This divergence in Kierkegaards intellectual
heritage is not merely arbitrary. For he was
among the first Christian thinkers really to
grasp existentially as well as intellectually
that, after the Enlightenment and the demo -
cratic revolutions of the nineteenth century,
Christianity could no longer be assumed to
be the fallback position of any well-meaning
citizen. Here, however, we encounter a major
stress point in his thinking. On the one hand,
he regarded many aspects of modernity with
horror and some of his remarks about modern
science, womens emancipation, democracy,
and nineteenth-century progress come fairly
close to the views expressed in the Syllabus
of Errors. On the other hand, he seems to
have realised that attempts to restore the
ancien rgime were doomed to fail, intellec-
tually and socially. We cant go back behind
the Enlightenment by invoking an authority
that has lost its power to compel. Christianity
may have significant reservations and criti-
cisms vis--vis the ideologies of modernity,
but it needs to recognise the reality of what
has been called the condition of modernity.
This recognition leads to several of the
defining features of Kierkegaards thought,
starting with his strategy of indirect commu-
nication. In the modern world, he thought,
people have learned to interpret Christianity
as entirely accommodating of a comfortable
bourgeois lifestyle. Even if the content of a
sermon remains challenging, theyll think its
just the kind of thing that clergy are meant
to say and doesnt require significant action
in response. Therefore the contemporary
Christian communicator will begin like
Kierkegaards own role model, Socrates at
the point where the learner actually is. So, if
the modern world values the freedom of the
individual subject, thats where Christianity
should begin. Of course, Christianity too is
properly concerned to further human free-
dom, even if its idea of what constitutes
genuine freedom is different from the post-
Enlightenment ideas of autonomy and
freedom of choice.
The aim, then as Kierkegaard saw it is
to take the modern idea of freedom and to
show how it can be deepened to the point at
which it learns its need of God: Dependence
GEORGE PATTISON
Passionate thinker
Sunday is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sren Kierkegaard, one of Denmarks most notable
sons. Today he is arguably the most internationally renowned and influential philosopher to have
come from Scandinavia, bridging a divide between secularism and faith
Sren Kierkegaard by Johan Vilhelm
Gertner (1818-71). Photo: Bridgeman
Celebrating Kierkegaard
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4 May 2013
rationalisations for not wanting to get involved
with God. But, again, the point was not simply
to denounce the doubter but to show how
doubt reflected the divided self of the
modern world and how the primary task was
not to answer the theoretical questions but
to restore the unity of the self or person.
All of this meant that Kierkegaard saw faith
as calling for decision and commitment thus
the leap of faith that is often cited as summing
up his view of faith. But it is never, as critics
such as Alasdair McIntyre claim, a merely
arbitrary or unmotivated leap. For the whole
thrust of Kierkegaardian indirect communi-
cation is to show how faith resolves the
otherwise irresolvable tensions at the centre
of human existence. To use a phrase he
borrowed from Scripture, it is a matter of
strengthening in the inner being.
If Kierkegaards indirect communication
took his readers to the point at which they
began to seek such inner strengthening for
themselves, his directly religious writings took
up the story, developing it to emphasise the
fundamental tone of gratitude for life that
faith in God elicits, the need for constant com-
mitment to works of love, and the need for
suffering discipleship of the one whose love
was tested to the limits in being despised and
rejected by those he came to save. This model
of religious life drew not only on contemporary
Lutheranism but St Francis de Sales, and the
medieval mystical tradition, as well as on his
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4 May 2013
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7
on God is the only independence, he wrote,
for God is without weight and therefore
those who are entirely dependent on him are
light. How he did this was to offer fictional
explorations of the lifestyles of contemporary
advocates of artistic and moral freedom and
to show how they were really driven by despair
and self-hatred. In terms of his own stages
of existence, the aesthetic needed to realise
the moral and psychological need for inner
ethical commitment, which in turn needed
the foundation of trust in God. Friendship
and love are only possible if we recognise that
individual freedom is not everything, while
suffering, death and the giftedness of life show
that moral values too need a deeper basis.
Yet the point is that his readers had to find
this out for themselves rather than being
taught. In this way Kierkegaard endorsed
subjectivity as the medium in which the claims
of religion needed to be addressed. Proofs for
the objective existence of God or the soul or
the historical validity of Scripture mean noth-
ing unless the question of God grips us at the
heart of our existence. Subjectivity is truth,
he declared, though he also added that sub-
jectivity is untruth, meaning that much of
what counts as subjective freedom is based
on more or less wilful self-deception.
Conversely, the theoretical doubts that were
often put forward as objections to Christianity
were, in his view, mostly based on the self-
interest of the doubter and, at bottom,
constant and intense study of Scripture. If
most commentators think that, in the end,
Kierkegaard went too far in his emphasis on
the need for suffering, it is nevertheless true
that like Thrse of Lisieux or Charles de
Foucauld he never forgot that suffering and
abjection are pointless in themselves if they
are not lived in the spirit of gratitude. Those
who are truly independent, he wrote, are
independent but they give thanks.
Some may think that royal celebrations,
academic conferences and book festivals only
add up to a case of whitewashing the tombs
of the prophets. But if they are a sign that
Kierkegaard is being read, that is good and,
as far as theology is concerned, it is even better
if it is a sign that we are taking seriously the
task of Christian witness in a world that is no
longer in awe of the authority of hierarchies
or Scriptures and that has become dis -
connected from its own defining traditions.
It is better still if Kierkegaard can help the
modern Christian to reconnect to the spiritual
traditions that fed his own inner life and that,
as he wrote in commenting on the lilies and
the birds of the Sermon on the Mount, open
a path to silence, obedience and joy in, with
and under the conditions of modernity.
George Pattison is the Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity at the University of
Oxford. His most recent book is God and
Being, published by Oxford University Press.
CLARE LISSAMAN
Real cost of cheap clothes
Over 400 people died when a building that housed several garment factories collapsed in the
Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. Here a campaigner for ethical clothing looks at the connection
between fashion in the West and exploitation in the developing world
B
angladesh is one of the poorest and
most densely populated countries
in the world. It is also stunningly
beautiful: its location in the fertile
Ganges delta means water, rich silty soil, and
lush green growth.
Born out of post-partition India, Bangladesh
did not become a country in its own right until
1971 after its war of liberation from Pakistan.
The regular flooding of its alluvial plains,
though, often creates displacement and poverty
for the 64 million Bangladeshis who live on
less than US$1.25 (81p) a day. This extreme
poverty and insecurity has led millions to leave
their rural villages and seek paid employment
in the growing urban areas.
The first garment factory opened in 1976,
sub-contracted by Hong Kong factories that
were restricted by quota on the amount they
could export themselves, and now there are
almost 5,000 employing over three million
people, mainly young women.
On 24 April, the Rana Plaza, an eight-storey
building in Dhaka housing five garment fac-
tories as well as a shopping mall, collapsed.
Trapped inside were up to 3,000 workers
making clothes to supply stores that include
Primark, Matalan, Mango and Benetton.
About 2,500 people are believed to have sur-
vived the disaster; protesters have been on
the streets in recent days demanding com-
pensation for bereaved families and
guaranteed safety for workers in future.
Bangladesh is the second-largest garment
exporter in the world after China. It is quite
some way behind China, exporting a mere
US$19 billion (12.3bn) worth of clothes in
2011 to Chinas US$153 bn (98.7bn). Unlike
China, however, the country is almost totally
dependent on the apparel trade: clothing
accounts for 80 per cent of its exports com-
pared with just 8 per cent for China. As the
country is so dependent on the income from
clothing exports, the factory owners wield
huge influence. Safia Minney of the fair-trade
fashion company People Tree, one of the
Ethical Fashion Forums Fellowship 500, who
has been working in Bangladesh for over 20
years, notes that many politicians and gov-
ernment ministers are either involved in the
garment industry or have close relatives who
are. Over 10 per cent have direct stakes in fac-
tories, according to the Bangladesh Garment
Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
When workers took to the streets in 2009
to demand an increase to the minimum wage,
it was the garment associations representing
the factory owners who lobbied the
Government, saying that an increase would
render them uncompetitive internationally.
They made this claim despite the fact that the
minimum wage in China is four times higher.
Several Western fashion brands including
Gap, H&M and Ikea also wrote to the
Government calling on it to reconvene the
wage board and increase the minimum wage.
The minimum wage now is 3,000 taka
(30) per month, less than the 5,000 taka
(50) the unions were asking for and way
below the 10,000 taka (100) that the Asia
Floor Wage campaign set up by union lead-
ers and labour activists calculated would
be an actual living wage.
As if poverty wages werent enough, gar-
ment workers work 12 to 14-hour days as the
norm. Payment is based on meeting often
unrealistic targets, and the workers face
harassment from their mainly male bosses in
the factories. These young women, often from
protective rural homes, are also harassed by
men on their journeys to and from work. The
psychological toll on these workers of fighting
for survival in the city is great.
Fashion retailers have predominantly
responded to poor working conditions in their
supply chains by requiring suppliers to meet
their codes of conduct governing wages, work-
ing hours, health and safety and a raft of other
criteria all based on international and national
labour laws. They then have a process of
inspecting the factories. But this code plus
audit model has singularly failed both to find
poor practice in the first place and then to
deliver improvements.
Steve Lawson of the Ethical Fashion
Forums Source Consultancy, who has worked
with both factories and retailers on social
compliance issues for over 15 years, recently
came back from Bangladesh. He told me he
has seen endless social audit inspection reports
compiled there that dont even mention the
existence of a buildings safety certificate. In
other instances, he has seen certificates pre-
sented for certain factories but relating to
completely different buildings. Even where
an auditor has noted that a building certificate
is missing, all too often it is simply recorded
that the paperwork is not in order. A require-
ment for corrective action is then issued to
Business ethics
8
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4 May 2013
Centre for Marian Studies
with the
Digby Stuart Research Centre for
Human Flourishing
Mary and Women in
Christianity and Islam
Conference and study day
University of Roehampton
Saturday 8 June 2013, 10.a.m 5.p.m
An opportunity to consider the relationship
between women and the fgure of the
Virgin Mary in both Islam and Christianity
Speakers include:
Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour
(Te Islamic College for Advanced Studies, London)
Tina Beattie (University of Roehampton)
Basma Elshayyal
(Islamia Girls High School, London)
Tim Winter (University of Cambridge)
Fee: 25. Free to members of the University of
Roehampton. (Please enquire about a reduced fee
in case of need.)
Further details from Dr. Sarah Jane Boss,
Dept. of Humanities, University of Roehampton,
Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PU.
E-mail: sarah.boss@roehampton.ac.uk
held accountable for ensuring these rights.
The Clean Clothes Campaign an alliance
of organisations in 15 countries together
with local unions and labour activists, has
developed the Bangladesh Building and Fire
Safety Agreement, a sector-wide initiative
that includes independent building inspec-
tions, worker-rights training, public disclosure
and a long-overdue review of safety standards.
Crucially, under this agreement, unions and
worker-led committees take a central role in
monitoring and reporting back on improve-
ments that need to be made, in a public way.
They are calling upon fashion brands to sign
up to it but so far only two have done so.
But Bangladesh isnt all urban factories.
Fair-trade brands like People Tree are showing
that trade in the rural areas is possible and
has a positive impact for both workers and
the local economy.
According to Minney: It means that work-
ers can live with their families in a place where
the living costs are a third or less of living in
the city. And jobs create jobs: a large number
of shops have sprung up near one of our pro-
ducers because of the increased spending
power of the 250 women who work there.
There has been much questioning in recent
days as to whether the Wests consumer desire
for large quantities of cheap clothing con-
tributes to poor conditions. While there is no
doubt that the garment industry in
Bangladesh has thrived on increased demand
R43748
Wednesday 15 May 2013, 12 noon - 4pm
Beginning at Westminster Central Hall,
Storeys Gate, Westminster,
London SW1H 9NH.
To register email tickets@cafod.org.uk or
telephone 020 7095 5684
Opening and closing liturgies with:
Timothy Radcliffe OP and Gemma Simmonds CJ.
For I was hungry and
you gave me food
One in eight people will go hungry
tonight. Hunger is the greatest
scandal of our generation.
Please join us at Parliament ahead
of the G8 to lobby your MP and
stand alongside people worldwide
who struggle to get enough to eat.
Mt 25:35
Lobby of Parliament by Priests, Religious,
and Lay Associates of Religious Orders
4 May 2013
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9
provide certificate rather than anyone raising
urgent concerns as to whether the building
itself is actually legal or safe.
A 2005 report by the Institute of
Development Studies at the University of
Sussex concluded that clothing companies are
more likely to achieve positive change by work-
ing in conjunction with trade unions and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Codes of labour practice have helped to raise
awareness of employment laws, but are not a
substitute for more effective implementation
of effective labour legislation, says the report.
And yet eight years on, this collaborative
approach has yet to materialise in any mean-
ingful way. While some brands, including
Primark, have partnered with local NGOs to
conduct training programmes covering labour
rights as well as health and safety, there has
been no wholesale collaborative engagement.
Babul Akter, president of the Bangladesh
Garment and Industrial Workers Federation,
founded in 2001 by two former child labour-
ers, concurs: The infrastructure issues that
cause collapses as we saw last week demand
much bigger efforts than worker training
programmes. Instead they demand the gen-
uine and proactive efforts of brands, factory
and building owners alike. These issues are
deeply rooted in the industry and any effort
to change that must be implemented on
an industrial level. That is, all the actors
involved must make the effort and be
from Western consumers over the last three
decades, the reality is that its not just cheap
clothing that is made in these factories. Clothes
bearing designer labels or upper-end high-
street clothing may also be being made on a
different line in the same factory.
Labour cost is a small proportion of the final
retail price of a garment. In addition, the cost
of putting right all the factory buildings in the
Dhaka area has been estimated at only seven
pence per garment over the next five years. It
should be possible for people in Britain to buy
decently priced clothes without the cost being
borne by the workers. But one thing is clear:
the reform will need to be across the entire
garment industry, and in a globalised economy
that means worldwide coherent effort.
The Ethical Fashion Forum, through its
Source platform, is coordinating a collabora-
tive industry response, alongside partner
organisations and trade bodies, to say Never
again. The initiative will focus upon the prac-
tical and constructive steps that need to be
taken by the industry both supply and retail
sectors to make sure that garment workers
are safe in future and properly remunerated.
Clare Lissaman is a consultant on ethical
and fair trade, a board director of the Ethical
Fashion Forum and co-founder of ethical
menswear brand Arthur & Henry. More
information is available at
www.ethicalfashionforum.com
JULIAN FILOCHOWSKI
The Church of God, which
is the people, will never die
The announcement last week that the beatification cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero has been
unblocked by Pope Francis throws the spotlight once more on the Salvadorean martyr. Here the
chairman of the trust promoting his cause argues that Romero is a model for all Christians
H
alf a century ago, in the era of the
Cold War, Pope John XXIII pro-
duced his groundbreaking
encyclical, Pacem in Terris.
Alongside a critique of the nuclear-arms race
and the stockpiling of weapons, he entered
into a long discussion about human rights
(in the context of natural law) and on the
duties of states. The encyclicals full title was
On establishing universal peace: in truth,
justice, charity and freedom and its defence
of human rights was quite new in the official
pronouncements of the Church. It was exceed-
ingly pertinent to Archbishop Oscar Romeros
context in El Salvador.
In a seemingly explicit reference to Latin
America, Pope John wrote: In traditionally
Christian states civil institutions are often
little influenced by Christian motives and a
Christian spirit In our opinion, the explan -
ation lies in a certain cleavage between faith
and practice.
It is the beautiful peroration of Pacem in
Terris that I would argue set the framework
for Romeros ministry. Indeed, it could be his
epitaph: Peace is but an empty word if it does
not rest upon an order founded on truth,
built upon justice, nurtured and animated by
charity, and brought into effect under the aus-
pices of freedom.
Pacem in Terris arguably laid the founda-
tions for the Second Vatican Councils Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, Gaudium et Spes, which came two
years later. And Gaudium et Spes, with its
explicit call to scrutinise the signs of the times,
became Romeros constant inspiration. He
read those Salvadorean signs of the times
in the light of the Gospel, and at the same
time he interpreted the Gospel in the light of
the signs of the times an approach to doing
theology which the US theologian David Tracy
describes as a mutually critical correlation.
Oscar Romeros appointment as
Archbishop of San Salvador 36 years ago, in
February 1977, came as a shock to the clergy
and the people of the diocese, and probably
to Romero himself. The man who eventually
succeeded him, Bishop Rivera Damas, had
been expected to get the post. Damas shared
wholeheartedly the priorities of the illustrious
retiring Archbishop Luis Chvez, and his
vision of the Church alongside the poor.
But this was anathema to the landed elite
and the military class who ruled El Salvador.
They managed to persuade the Vatican,
through a young, inexperienced nuncio and
the arch-conservative Cardinal Mario
Casariego in neighbouring Guatemala, that
they should instead appoint the apparently
bland and socially conservative prelate Oscar
Romero, who, they believed, shared their dis-
taste for this social involvement of the Church.
For their own part, members of the oli-
garchy were determined to hold on to their
wealth and power, unchallenged by either the
Church or the rural populace. They main-
tained a land-tenure system on the coffee,
sugar and cotton plantations where 2 per cent
of the population owned 60 per cent of the
land and just 14 families had overwhelming
dominance where the legal minimum wage
for a coffee picker was a fiction (even on the
estates of Catholic landowners); where thou-
sands of landless campesinos scoured the
countryside in search of a days labour; where
trade unions and peasant associations were
outlawed; where a flourishing agricultural
export economy brought to the rural poor
only hardship and malnutrition; where oppo-
sition parties generally won elections but
through systematic fraud always lost the count.
The response to the ensuing social unrest
and popular demonstrations was violent
repression and the emergence of death squads,
which, in turn, provoked the birth of left-wing
guerrilla movements. But the shy, loyal, ortho-
dox Romero, the man they thought would
cause no waves, changed and was changed.
He was never going to be a political pawn of
coffee barons or any other grouping, be it on
the Right or the Left. The only person who
manipulated Romero was God to whom he
turned and with whom he communed in
prayer over many hours each day. His instal-
lation as archbishop, in 1977, coincided with
a massive presidential electoral fraud, followed
by killings and unprecedented national ten-
sion. He had scarcely moved in when the
Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, a man at the epi-
centre of the rural social conflict, was
murdered by a death squad as he drove to
celebrate Mass. His body was riddled with
police bullets.
Romeros initial disbelief became prophetic
determination. The following Sunday, he
decreed that the churches of the diocese be
closed and all Masses cancelled. He called the
faithful to attend a single Mass which he would
celebrate in front of the cathedral. He
preached eloquently about Fr Rutilio to a
crowd of more than 100,000 a passionate
witness to the ugly truth. As the crisis devel-
oped and the bloodshed increased, he called
for repentance and a change of heart.
But alongside his exhortations for peace,
Romero offered the services of the archdiocese
for efforts of mediation and dialogue. Most
important of all, he responded to the victims
of violence, whoever had been the perpetra-
tors. As he wrote to a fellow bishop in Bogot:
My new post seems to have put me on the
road to Calvary.
The kidnapping and murder, two months
later by leftist guerrillas, of the Salvadorean
Foreign Minister Mauricio Borgonovo, whose
release Romero had been desperately seeking
to secure, was followed immediately despite
Romeros pleadings against revenge by the
killing of a second priest, Fr Alfonso Navarro.
At the funeral, he declared: Violence is pro-
duced not only by those who kill but by those
who urge to kill. Violence is criminal, even in
those who merely do not do whatever is possible
to uncover its origins. They are sinners as much
as those who point the weapons to kill.
If we stand back, we can see that Romeros
mission was no more nor less than evangel -
isation in its fullest sense, preaching the Gospel
as good news to the poor, and making that
good news a reality in peoples lives. He was
Archbishop Oscar Romero, in an
undated photo. CNS
Archbishop Romero and Pacem in Terris
10
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4 May 2013
(Continued on page 12.)
LAURENCE FREEMAN
The prisoner had
discovered you could
pray anywhere, even in
the worst conditions
One of the worst things about prison,
he told me, was the time-wasting.
We were standing in a huge, barren
hall, where we had just participated
in meditative prayer with a large
group of his fellow prisoners. After the
profound, shared, sweet silence of the
meditation we had a lively discussion
about what the inner life on the
inside was like and how it could be
cultivated. This had graced me with
the strange feeling I have often had in
prisons, of being very close to the
Kingdom, which Jesus says is always
very close to you wherever and
however you find yourself serving
your life term.
The ugliness of the space we were
standing in reminded me of some
mens religious houses I have stayed
in, which reveal more than anything
else how a community can lose hope
in the spiritual life and in themselves.
It would be hard to keep faith in God
or yourself in such an aesthetic
inferno. But the prisoners on the
whole did not complain about the
lack of beauty, maybe because they
had discovered that complaining
about things that you cant change
doesnt make anything better; maybe
because it didnt seem the main
problem they were facing. They all
agreed, however, that the great
enemy of prayer in prison is the noise,
the continuous sounds of metal
gates clanging, or the rasping noise
of anger or hollow laughter.
It is bad enough to know that many
years of your life will be wasted in
incarceration. It becomes surreal
when you realise that you have
become a different and better person
than the one who was condemned
and excluded from society. Worse still
is to fill that wasted time with routines
that rob you of what meaning or
creativity you might be able to
cultivate. Meditation, the prisoner I
was talking to told me, had helped
him to transform this experience of
lost time, as in the hours spent
standing in line to be counted. Like
monks anywhere, he had discovered
you could pray anywhere and
continuously, even in the worst of
conditions, by releasing the prayer
already within you. As he stood for
his number to be called, he let go of
his thoughts and his resentment and
sadness. Often standing in line, but
standing too in his heart, he would
fall into the sheer joy of the presence.
Compare this with life in another
total institution of modern life, a
hospital. Doctors and nurses
complain increasingly about the
stress of their professional lives.
Substance abuse, depression and
suicide are growing in the medical
profession. As in prisons, medical
stress is a product of bad time
management. It breeds the
impression of being overwhelmed,
powerless to perform properly;
persecuted by colleagues or the
people you are supposed to be serving.
A hospital where I was speaking
recently runs four meditation groups.
When it ran a workshop on
interpersonal skills for doctors, they
were amazed to be told how badly
others perceived them to be
behaving interrupting the patients
before they had finished describing
their problems, avoiding eye contact,
being harsh with nursing staff and
colleagues, cold-hearted in relaying
bad news. They were amazed to be
told that if they visited a patient and
stood sideways to them at a distance,
avoiding personal contact, the patient
would either remember the visit
negatively or not at all. If the doctor
had sat on the edge of the bed for a
few moments, attentive, the patient
would later be convinced she had
stayed for a good 20 minutes.
How much time and resources are
wasted trying to achieve what a
simple spiritual practice makes
obvious? In prisons, the ethos of
punishment and degradation is
counter-productive. In hospitals, the
depersonalisation of medicine makes
no one feel better even if it prolongs
life, which it often doesnt. In schools,
government policies impose
education as a means of training
children as an economic resource for
reducing the national debt.
One way or another, we are all
processed through institutions today.
Wastage of time and resources
increase with the diminishing of the
human factor. And once the
humanity of relationships and the
quality of personal attention begin
to slide, it is hard to reverse the trend.
The Nazis perversely mastered this
process of self-dehumanisation that
leads, inevitably, to extinction.
Waste will waste us all in time.
Finding how to handle time under
stressful conditions, how to manage
restraint so as to be fully present, is
probably one of the greatest spiritual
needs of our time. Regardless of any
belief system or management
theory, the simple human art of
being present, the lost art of prayer,
patiently calls us home to ourselves.
4 May 2013
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11
the evangeliser par excellence. The Church,
he said, wants to offer no other contribution
than that of the Gospel. It has no purely polit-
ical contribution to make, nor any merely
human skill to offer. It is interested only in
offering the country the light of the Gospel
for the full salvation and betterment of men
and women, a salvation that also involves the
structures within which Salvadoreans live, so
that, rather than get in their way, the structures
can help them live out their lives as children
of God.
Romeros theology is best described as the
theology of the beatitudes, and only when
they are put into practice can the civilisation
of love be built. He said: A civilisation of love
is not sentimentality, it is justice and truth.
A civilisation of love that did not demand jus-
tice for people would not be true civilisation.
R
omeros own space was his cath -
edral; here he unpacked the
readings and interpreted them in
the context of El Salvador. Then
came the good news of the week the cele-
brations and patronal feasts, and the visitors
and letters of solidarity. Then the bad news.
Incident by incident, atrocity by atrocity, he
named the victims all the victims what
had happened, where and when, and who
was responsible. He sought justice, supported
recompense and offered pastoral care. This
methodology was the forerunner of truth
commissions around the world.
For three years Archbishop Romero con-
fronted pervasive and extreme poverty;
paramilitary killings of community leaders;
peasant massacres and the indiscriminate
shooting of urban demonstrators by the
security forces; the torture and disappearance
of political prisoners; decapitation of death-
squad victims; the assassination of six of his
priests and dozens of catechists; the corruption
of the judiciary; the kidnapping and execution
by leftist groups of businessmen, government
ministers and public figures; death threats
from both the Right and the Left.
Romero constantly offered the Churchs
mediation, especially in labour or land dis-
putes, or in the case of kidnappings. But the
violence intensified remorselessly. He
devoted a substantial part of both his Third
(1978) and Forth (1979) Pastoral Letters to
an examination of violence, distinguishing
between the arbitrary violence of the state,
which uses brute force, and the structural vio-
lence that works through legal mechanisms;
and then the terrorist violence of the Right
and the Left.
In a homily in February 1978, he wrote:
When the Church decries revolutionary vio-
lence, it cannot forget that institutionalised
violence also exists, and that the desperate
violence of oppressed persons is not overcome
with one-sided laws, with weapons, or with
superior force. Instead, as the Pope says,
revolutionary violence must be prevented by
courageous self-sacrifice, by giving up many
comforts. Two years later, Romero sent an
open letter to President Jimmy Carter asking
for a halt to US military assistance to El
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4 May 2013
Salvador, which, he said, was being used to
kill innocent campesinos. This was a wake-
up call to the US Churches to intensify their
solidarity, their lobbying and their campaign-
ing over military aid to the Salvadorean regime.
As El Salvador edged towards war and the
threats intensified, Romero knew he was going
to die. Those around him tried to persuade
him to wear a bullet-proof vest or use a body-
guard. His response was simple: Why should
the shepherd have protection when his sheep
are still prey to wolves? Shortly before he
died, he told a Mexican newspaper: A bishop
may die, but the Church of God, which is the
people, will never die.
At 6.25 p.m. on Monday, 24 March 1980,
Romero celebrated a memorial Mass in the
chapel of the cancer hospital where he lived.
His homily was a reflection on Johns gospel:
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth
and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if
it dies, it yields a rich harvest. After his homily,
Romero moved to the centre of the altar to
pick up the chalice and the paten with the
words. May this body broken and this blood
shed for human beings encourage us to give
our body and blood up to suffering and pain
as Christ did, not for self but to bring justice
and peace for our people
It is certain at that moment that he saw the
assassin take aim through the open chapel
door. He did not shout out, fearing that those
around him would be killed too. But he
flinched, and a cold sweat poured out of his
body. The marksman fired and the single
bullet entered his body just above the heart.
He slumped to the floor at the foot of a huge
crucifix with blood pouring from his mouth,
nostrils and ears. Pandemonium followed;
he was packed into the back of a pickup truck
but declared dead on arrival at hospital.
Let us think about that: in one of the most
Catholic countries in the world, the
metropolitan archbishop of the capital city
was shot dead in the middle of saying Mass.
The action was carried out by a death squad
linked to the nations armed forces, close allies
of the Pentagon, in an operation planned,
approved and financed by wealthy and
powerful members of the Catholic oligarchy.
In 2010, Mauricio Funes, the president of El
Salvador, offered an official apology to
Romeros family and the people of El Salvador
for the complicity of the state in the assassin -
ation and subsequent cover-up.
What does remembering Archbishop
Romero mean, and should it mean, today? The
fundamental Christian model of remembering
is, Do this in memory of me. For the Church
to remember Romero must first mean to con-
tinue his work not only loving the poor but
actually defending the poor; pursuing justice
for the crucified peoples of our world; and
taking risks for peace and the kingdom of
God. Like him, it means to struggle with all
the paradoxes and conflicts that such a com-
mitment throws up for us. Indeed, he warned
us in no uncertain terms: A Church that suf-
fers no persecution but enjoys the privileges
and support of the things of the earth beware
it is not the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Romero has shown us that the preferential
option for the poor is not just meaningless
rhetoric from the late twentieth century. He
lived it. And so he challenges us and if we
truly commit ourselves, then the option for
the poor is do-able, even for bishops. With
Romero, there was no cleavage between faith
and practice, between his orthodoxy and his
orthopraxis. The rhetoric of his preaching
and teaching, and his concomitant pastoral
actions, were coherent, consistent and mutu-
ally reinforcing.
His road to martyrdom reminds us that
maintaining the unity of the bishops confer-
ence is not a fundamental kingdom value;
and saving the face of the hierarchy can never
trump speaking the truth about the violation
of human rights and securing justice for the
abused and excluded.
Romero is not a martyr because they killed
him; they killed him because he was a martyr,
a witness to the truth, to the Magisterium of
the Church, to Vatican II, and indeed a witness
to Pacem in Terris.
Julian Filochowski is a former director of
Cafod and chairman of the Archbishop
Romero Trust (www.romerotrust.org.uk).
This article is based on his lecture at
the University of Notre Dame, Indiana,
on 22 March to mark the thirty-third
anniversary of Archbishop Romeros
martyrdom and the fftieth anniversary of
Pacem in Terris.
To read the full lecture if you are a
subscriber, visit www.thetablet.co.uk/texts
CROSSWORD No. 358: Enigma
Across
7 How a dog makes a hit with a hundred signs of affection (6)
8 With your sharpness of mind, take your turn in the haunt of the
financiers (6)
10 A biblical greeting may have provided some inspiration for
Shakespeare (7)
11 All right! A devout animal is the solution! (5)
12 (and 18 Across) Produce a large amount of artwork to raffle (4,4)
13 Leave the examination paper unchanged and it will be
something worth having (5)
17 Fail to get a taxi on the return journey with the meat (5)
18 See 12 Across
22 Write about the dreadful sin involved in doing what the
dentist tells you (5)
23 We hear that the Spaniard is aghast at having to announce
from behind the vehicle, his graduation (7)
24 Ill tell you what I did to contact the operator quickly
in Italy (6)
25 Gather rapidly around the head of the house to meet the
Native American (6)
Down
1 Agrees with those Bill ropes in (7)
2 One using a camel for sewing would have more success than
such a person enjoys in reaching his ultimate goal (4,3)
3 It takes great ability to start writing a satire on murder (5)
4 A second-century Pope took to heart the business of providing
transport (7)
5 The first of many said, wrongly, that he was a greedy king (5)
6 I fancy Nicaragua is harbouring a doubter (5)
9 During the game, they are all gathered for beer at a little
cottage by the church (9)
14 They prevent people from copying Dads mobile homes (7)
15 These sleepyheads are party to a terrible crime (7)
16 After a request for silence, the publicity surrounding me
should make them feel guilty (7)
19 In favour of additional material for actors (5)
20 It is said they have peeks, in conjunction with those who
started the escapade (5)
21 The last of the harvest ready for gathering? Rubbish! (5)
Solution to the 13 April crossword No. 355
Across: 7 Oboes; 8 Wolfram; 10 Orpheus; 11 Sibyl; 12 Haig;
13 Escapade; 15 Inert gas; 18 Love; 20 Tokyo; 22 Olivier; 23 Cantata;
24 Heels. Down: 1 Monotheistic; 2 Compline; 3 Asser; 4 Twists;
5 Elissa; 6 Crab; 9 Maltese Cross; 14 Anodized/Anodised (accept
either); 16 Thomas; 17 Atonal; 19 Eight; 21 Kant.
Winner: Canon Ralph Mallinson, of Bury, Lancashire.
1
7
10
12
19
22
24
1 2
20
17
3
14
13
13
4
9
23
8
25
4
11
21
18
5
15
7 6
16
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
Please send your answers to: Crossword Competition 4 May,
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 17 May. The answers to this weeks
crossword and the winners name will appear in the 25 May issue.
(Continued from page 11.)
first thing the priest did when you came for
baptism, but be aware that your parents
and godparents did the same.
Then the holy water leads you into the
fact that you have been baptised with water
and the Holy Spirit. I know a priest who
invites the parents and godparents to pour
water too as a gesture to symbolise that the
whole faith community is involved in the
regeneration of souls. The very sign of the
cross that we make at the beginning and at
the end of Mass is saying we are sealed with
the blood of the risen Lord.
The sign becomes even more significant
when we come to the Gospel. In this gesture
we are inviting the Good News to be in our
heads, on our lips and in our hearts. For St
Augustine, making the sign of the cross is
an external profession of faith. Affirmation
indeed for those footballers and other sports
people who are not afraid to profess their
faith with the sign of the cross!
I know that lots of parishes
have ignored the beating of
the breast in the Confiteor, as
laid down in the new transla-
tion. We do not do it in my
parish, and I never beat my
breast. So I do not consider
this to be a very important
gesture. Perhaps the time has
come for us to spend time on
the gestures and symbols in
the liturgy now to the same
extent as we have done with
the words. Our actions speak
louder than words.
The offertory, including the
offertory procession, has to
be the most undervalued ges-
ture in our liturgy. We throw
money into a box while we sing a hymn that
has nothing to do with sacrificial giving.
Then two people are picked out of the con-
gregation because they happen to sit in the
back row and they and the collectors walk
up the aisle. Anna Burke makes a point in
her recent book, While They Were at Table,
when she says that we offer food for sharing
and it becomes the bread of life; we offer
speech as we tell of the wonders of our
world; we offer material things (money)
given to us for responsible stewardship; and
F
rancis, the new Bishop of Rome, is
a Pope who makes big gestures that
express his ministry in a very special
way. The simple silver cross on a
simple white cassock speaks volumes, as
does the kissing of a disabled man in St
Peters Square. I am delighted to say that he
is not afraid to take these gestures to the
heart of the liturgy, which is full of sacred
and secular gestures.
His washing the feet of two women, one a
Muslim, on Holy Thursday has to be the
gesture par excellence of the papacy so far.
As if actions were not enough, the words
from Pope Francis come from the heart: to
wash your feet, is a symbol, a sign that I am
at your service. But it also means that we
have to help each other.
The Pope is locking into something that
is fundamental to Christianity. Catholicism
is loaded with powerful gestures, especially
in the sacraments. From the
very moment of our baptism
to the rite of anointing of the
sick at the end of our days, we
have sacramental signs of deep
significance.
I would like to think that
we have continued where John
the Evangelist left off. In the
Johannine tradition, every-
thing is symbolic of a deeper
and a more fundamental
meaning. William Barclay says
that, for John, a miracle or a
parable is never an end in
itself but is always a window
into the reality of the truth of
Jesus. And everything Jesus
did is a gateway into eternity.
Johns focus is not merely
with the facts but how the facts can lead the
reader beyond, into the spiritual. Washing,
anointing, breaking bread, sharing the cup,
are all gestures that enrich the horizontal
and the vertical of our religious life. The
same has to be true with all our liturgical
gestures.
The next time you are at Mass, engage in
the gestures in order to absorb what is
beyond. The very first gesture on entering
the church connects you in two senses with
your baptism. The sign of the cross was the
PARISH PRACTICE
Actions speak loudly
TOM GRUFFERTY
The gestures that are part of the liturgy of the Mass, as well as many others made by Christians,
can say more about the deepest truths of the faith than written or spoken words
we offer faith as a signpost of the way
forward.
This gesture cries out for embellishment
and meaning, for as usually performed it
has little external value and no inner meaning.
If possible, take responsibility for the offertory
procession at the Mass you normally attend
and give it a high profile with families espe-
cially taking part.
The sign of peace is another gesture that
calls out for our attention. Because of the
instructions in the Gospel, some people
think that it should come before the offertory
procession and, indeed, originally it came
before the Eucharistic Prayer. The inner
meaning of the sign of peace is that we are
at one with Christ and his Body, those with
us at Mass. We are actually saying that
nobody should be left out; nobody should
leave Mass as a stranger. For every parishioner
to live the full implications of the sign of
peace would mean a complete transformation
of the ethos of the Christian community.
After Vatican II, when the priest first
started facing the congregation, the elevation
of the host and the chalice lost its original
purpose. For generations, because the
priest had his back to the people, it was an
important gesture giving the people a brief
opportunity to venerate the sacred species.
But in many ways, this obsolete gesture
in the new liturgy has taken on a new
significance.
Notice the reverence the next time you
are at the elevation of the host and the
chalice. In the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, there is a beautiful description of
the sacraments as the powers that come
forth from the body of Christ, which is
living and life giving. They are the
masterworks of God (para. 1116).
Thank God our liturgy is full of nonverbal
communication that we may not always be
tuning into. It is vital that we make the con-
nection between the outer reality and the
inner meaning. Allowing the symbol or the
sign to speak to us is crucial. It enriches our
lives and our religion.
Fr Tom Grufferty is parish priest of St
Josephs, Havant, Hampshire.
Anna Burkes book While They Were at
Table is published by Veritas.
TO DO
Look out for all liturgical
gestures, engage in them and
get to know why we use
them
Take responsibility for the
offertory procession and give
it a high profile
Pray with and through all the
gestures in all sacraments
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13 Tablet 4 May 13 PP_P27 parish practice 01/05/2013 15:31 Page 14
NOTEBOOK
Bare-faced cheek
NOT SINCE the eleventh century, when the
length of a mans beard was said to equate to
the number of his sins, have the hirsute had
cause to believe that the Church discriminated
against them. But the Bishop of Portsmouth,
Philip Egan, reignited the conflict last week
when he suggested in a letter to the Equality
and Human Rights Commission that its
recent report on belief was offensive because
it equated lifestyle choices like having a
beard with the great religions.
If anyone is being offensive here, it is the
bishop, the Beard Liberation Front organiser
Keith Flett shot back in a press release. Of
course, wearing a beard is not a religion but
it can be a way of life and the bishop should
respect that. The group added that all great
religions have had bearded members, but
observed that there had not been a bearded
pope since 1700. In the eleventh century,
canon law threatened with excommunication
priests who wore a beard; Pope Alexander
III ordained that clerics who grew a beard
were to be shaved by their archdeacon by
force, if necessary.
(See News from Britain and Ireland,
page 27.)
Her old china
FOR SOMEONE whose vows include poverty,
Sr Wendy Beckett has managed to amass a
valuable personal collection of ceramics and
porcelain. And in the spirit of detachment
from worldly things, she has put them up for
auction and raised almost 30,000 for the
Carmelite Monastery at Quidenham, Norfolk.
On Tuesday, all her 45 items were sold for
an impressive 29,620 at the Salisbury sale
rooms of the estate agents and auctioneers
Woolley & Wallis.
They included a rare Meissen model of a
nun from the mid eighteenth century with
an estimate of 300-500, which sold for
1,300, and five Nymphenburg figures of
putti from around 1775 expected to make
between 800 and 1,200, but which fetched
3,000. Three of the latter were given to Sr
Wendy while filming in Europe with the BBC.
A spokesman for the auctioneers said that a
number of items went for more than expected
because of their connection with Sr Wendy.
The 83-year-old hermit and consecrated
virgin lives in a caravan in the monastery
grounds at Quidenham. She has written and
broadcast widely on the history of art.
Womans word
CARDINAL TIMOTHY Dolan told Catholics
last year that the days of fat, balding Irish
bishops representing the Church in the
media are over. He also suggested that an
attractive, articulate, intelligent woman might
do better in presenting Catholic teaching.
Backing up these words with actions, the
cardinal has now appointed a woman to be
his spokesperson in his capacity as president
of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
She is Kim Daniels, a director of Catholic
Voices USA the American version of the
British original and a former aide to Sarah
Palin, the one-time Republican vice-
presidential nominee. Daniels, a mother of
six, was one of those involved in helping to
set up Catholic Voices USA, which seeks to
make the Churchs case in the media.
Daniels also takes an interest in the role of
women in the Church. She wrote a chapter
in a book by Helen Alvar, who has also
worked for the US Catholic bishops
conference, titled Breaking Through: Catholic
women speak for themselves.
Explaining Daniels decision to work for
Palin, Kathryn Lopez, a fellow director of
Catholic Voices USA, said she felt a call to
work with this most prominent pro-life
mother ... I wouldnt read too much into the
political significance of this as a bishops
conference matter.
Francis who?
A CARETAKER at the Archdiocese of
Crdoba in Argentina was surprised last
week by a phone call from a man calling
himself Francis. Francis who? he naturally
responded.
Im Pope Francis, I need to speak to the
archbishop, said the caller, who was indeed
the Pope. Shocked, the caretaker apologised
that the archbishop was not around, before
nervously asking, Your Holiness, will you
bless me? My son, youll get your blessing
when you get me the archbishop, he was
told. According to the archdiocese website,
the call was then passed to a secretary, Fr
Pablo Marquez. Hello, Fr Francis. The arch-
bishops in a meeting. Ill go and get him,
said Fr Marquez. Son, Ill call back in five
minutes, the Pope replied.
Francis then called back and was finally
able to speak to Archbishop Carlos Nez,
whom he wanted to thank for a letter received
the day before. Its not clear whether the
caretaker got his blessing.
Buonissima sera
THE ENGLISH BISHOPS, led by Cardinal
Wiseman, attended the opening of St Peters
in Londons Little Italy on 16 April 1863. The
celebration this week to mark the 150th
anniversary of the event was no less grand,
with two cardinals and the papal nuncio
among the seven bishops in attendance at
the Mass. The Archbishop of Westminster,
Vincent Nichols, greeted the congregation
at the Italian church in Clerkenwell with a
cordial Buona sera, echoing Pope Francis
first words to the crowd in St Peters Square
on the night of his election. He told them
that nobody is quite as good at celebrating as
the Italian community something amply
demonstrated later when all were invited to
the social club next door for wine and lasagne.
The welcome was a far cry from that dis-
played at the original opening, when those
wishing to attend were charged between six-
pence and two shillings and sixpence for
seats. Thats in the region of 1.30 to 6.50
in todays money.
St Peters was built in the Roman basilica
style by the Pallottine Fathers and completed
two years before the unification of Italy.
A guest of honour at Mondays celebration
was Cardinal Renato Martino, president
emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Justice
and Peace. The cardinal, who was born in
Salerno, spent five days here, during which
he received the freedom of the City of London.
He told us this was his fourteenth visit, but
that he considered it the most important.
Church and country
IS THATCHERISM Anglican patrimony?
The Friends of the Ordinariate of Our Lady
of Walsingham have invited Charles Moore,
the official biographer of Margaret Thatcher,
to address them on the future of Christianity
in Britain. A former editor of both The Daily
and The Sunday Telegraphs, Moore was
received into the Church in 1994. He has
appropriately entitled his talk, I Vow to
Thee My Country, the name of one of
Baroness Thatchers favourite hymns, which
was sung at her funeral.
Moore is an honorary vice president of the
friends and is keen to support the ordinariate,
set up for Anglicans to become Catholics
while retaining aspects of their identity,
which he says can help heal divisions between
Protestants and Catholics. The talk will be
given in London on 13 June at the Little
Oratory, Brompton Road, South Kensington.
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14 Tablet 4 May 13 Notebook _P28 notebook 01/05/2013 15:30 Page 14
An outsiders vengeance
The murder during the Boston marathon
has more to do with injured self-esteem
than with the Islamic faith (Holiness and
the unhinged mind, 27 April). In spite of 10
years in the United States, Tamerlan Tsarnaev
had still not got a job, and managed to
survive as a part-time pizza deliveryman.
His wife, a white American, worked 70 hours
a week maintaining the family. Tamerlan
had reached some standing as a boxer at
state level, but amateur boxing in America
does not attract a living wage. He said that
in spite of the time he had lived there, he
had no American friends. His parents, too,
had failed to integrate into American society,
and after two years trying, felt rejected and
went to live in Dagestan.
It seems that the inability that many of us
have to accept foreigners in our country
produces lonely, rejected people, some of
whom even go through a pantomime of
being ready to kill. Unless stopped, this
play-acting can turn into reality. Added to
this, in American popular television shows
like Homeland, Muslims are depicted as
extremists and enemies of American democ-
racy. Even in the more liberal society of
Britain, I have watched the same syndrome
taking place here, though thankfully it has
not resulted in murder.
Roger Nelson
Alphamstone, Essex
Plight of Syrian Christians
We are writing to express our shock and
sadness that the Syriac Orthodox and Greek
Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna
Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, were kidnapped
on 22 April in the village of Kfar Dael, on
the road to Aleppo from the rebel-held Bab
al-Hawa crossing with Turkey (The Church
in the World, 27 April).
These two bishops, who have fortunately
been released, are the most senior church
leaders caught up in the Syrian conflict
which is now in its third year and has pro-
duced one of the most serious humanitarian
crises ever known. Christians make up fewer
than 10 per cent of Syrias 23 million people
and, like other religious minorities, fears for
their future have increased, with the growing
strength of rebels and a pledge of allegiance
to al-Qaeda by the hard-line Nusra Front
rebels two weeks ago.
Whereas it is important that political
leader ship is aware of the gravity of the situ -
ation, we feel that all people of faith should
speak out against all acts of inhumanity and
violence against others as contrary to the
fundamentals of anyones faith. If we are
people of the One God, we need to do more
to stand alongside those in each of our faith
traditions to support a concern for love,
truth, compassion and justice. It is imperative
In all the sadness, hurt and disillusionment
surrounding the resignation of Cardinal
OBrien, it is important to remember, I
think, that, solely among the Catholic bishops,
he gave clear leadership and moral guidance,
drawing on Catholic Social Teaching, regard-
ing the immorality of nuclear weapons and
the renewal of Trident. If only we had clear
teaching on this from the Bishops of England
and Wales who, alas, continue to remain
silent.
Anne Dodd
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Speaking truth to power
Fr Paul Gunters defence of his elucidation
of liturgical instructions concerning the
mandatum is that authority to change the
contents of liturgical books rests with Rome
(Letters, 27 April). To me that suggests a
simple question: Why? After all, it is the
centralising tendency which has landed us
with the frequently mediocre new translation
of the Roman Missal. Men (I cant imagine
any women are involved!) who do not inhabit
our culture are allowed to stand in judgement
over the language and gestures we may use;
and that I find bizarre.
As a subsidiary question, why does the
Catholic Bishops Conference of England
and Wales seemingly require its officials so
to toe the company line, rather than speak-
ing from the heart and using their undoubted
expertise to explore how to develop our
mission and worship creatively? Im sure
that most of our bishops would agree with
Pope Francis that the washing of the feet
on Maundy Thursday is not in itself a rite
of priestly ordination; it being, rather, the
expression of the deepest calling of the
Church, to be a servant community in imi-
tation of Christ. If so, why not say so
directly?
Evangelical obedience isnt conformist and
doesnt defend the status quo. It speaks the
truth with love to power, wherever that
power may be. We need more of that sort of
obedience in the institutional Church and
its offices at all levels.
(Fr) Rob Esdaile
Thames Ditton, Surrey
Matters of record
As the biographer of Cardinal Gordon Gray,
I have a particular interest in the British
Catholic challenge to Mrs Thatcher over
the Falklands conflict. Having signed the
letter with Cardinal Hume, Gray privately
noted that the statement from the Scottish
bishops on nuclear war was very carefully
worded and was intended to be a document
that might stir up discussion among so
many of our people who do not want to be
involved.
Personally but I could not say this or
that the Church speaks out clearly and forth-
rightly and without fear: this means that all
Christians, and our leaders, especially those
of us who can worship without fear, must
raise our voices in support of the Living
Stones of the Middle East, who live in such
threatened circumstances. We must put flesh
on the bones of the statement, Where the
body of Christ in one place suffers, the whole
Church suffers.
(Professor) Mary Grey
On behalf of the trustees, Living Stones of the
Holy Land
Uncoveted honour
In his overview of the Catholic Church in
Scotland following the recent burst of dam-
aging revelations about Cardinal OBrien,
Stephen McGinty (Atonement for past sins,
27 April) makes some valid and insightful
points. However, I have to correct one unfor-
tunate statement relating to Archbishop
Mario Conti, for 25 years Bishop of Aberdeen
and 10 years Archbishop of Glasgow.
The article states that the archbishop cov-
eted OBriens red hat. As someone who has
worked closely with the archbishop for more
than a decade, I can state that the opposite
is true. Indeed, many times over the last
decade I have heard Archbishop Conti state
that he was glad that particular chalice
with its extra demands in terms of interna-
tional travel, political engagement and media
expectation had passed him by.
Ronnie Convery
Director of Communications,
Archdiocese of Glasgow
LETTERS
The Editor of The Tablet 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY
Fax 020 8748 1550 Email thetablet@thetablet.co.uk
All correspondence, including email, must give a full postal address and contact telephone number. The Editor reserves the right to shorten letters.
Cardinal Keith OBrien at an
anti-poverty rally in Edinburgh in 2005:
he gave clear leadership and guidance,
drawing on Catholic Social Teaching.
Photo: CNS
4 May 2013
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15
involve my brother bishops in my own views
I feel almost convinced that unilateral
disarma ment is the only way in conformity
with the teaching of Our Blessed Lord. But
who am I to put forward a view? I would not
dare to do so. The whole question of legitimate
war is so complicated. And now we are
standing on the threshold of what could
escalate into even a third world war with no
greater motive than pride in sovereignty. I
cannot write to the papers. I do not want to
be quoted. That is one of the problems of
being a bishop.
Unhappily, the papers covering these events
are currently not available, as the Scottish
Catholic Archives are at present closed
following the premature departure of the
two full-time archivists from 16 Drummond
Place, Edinburgh, in October 2012. It may
well be that, after six months of prolonged
closure and the aggressive mould which
erupted due to poor air circulation, there
will follow another six months of closure for
the eradication of the mould.
Columba House has not been demolished
by the cannons of the military but by the
patent disregard for the Churchs canon 486
which advises the greatest care over parish
and diocesan documents and ordains that
in every curia there should be a safe place,
a diocesan archive or record storage area in
which instruments and written documents
which pertain to the spiritual and temporal
affairs of the diocese are to be safeguarded
after being properly filled and diligently
secured.
This is a war of a different kind and I am
sure that Cardinal Gray, founder-president
of the Scottish Catholic Heritage Commission
in 1981, would have been as disturbed by the
current state of Columba House and the
Scottish Catholic Archives as he was over
the conflict in the Falklands.
Michael T.R.B. Turnbull
Longniddry, East Lothian
Support Justice and Peace workers
I was disappointed to learn (News from
Britain and Ireland, 27 April) that only nine
of the 22 dioceses in England and Wales
have Justice and Peace fieldworkers, and in
only one of these, Liverpool, is the post
full-time.
The shift in focus from the Justice and
Peace response to charitable outreach is, I
feel, a serious mistake. The option for the
poor involves both, the two should not be
separated, and indeed in situations of
injustice and poverty, the Justice and Peace
response is the highest form of charity.
Anyone who has read about Catholic Social
Teaching, not to mention the works of
people like Jon Sobrino, Leonardo Boff and
Gustavo Gutirrez, and the great documents
of Medelln of 1968 and Puebla of 1979, will
be in no doubt that working for justice in a
very unjust world is an essential part of
Christian faith.
The New Evangelisation will have little
effect if it is not accompanied by this kind
of work for social justice. As far back as
1975 in Evangelii Nuntiandi (Evangelisation
in the Modern World), it was made clear
that working for justice is an integral part
of any effective evangelisation. We have much
to do.
Peter Boucher
Derry
Thatcher reforms were inevitable
Catherine Pepinsters column (13 April) on
the changes that Mrs Thatchers Government
wrought in the industrial north of England
lacks the larger world picture, I fear. I ran a
manufacturing business in Somerset from
1971 to 1987 years of great creativity but
horrifying logistical backdrop. What became
starkly apparent was that our most expensive
component was rapidly moving from machin-
ery that was worth repairing, to labour that
demanded wages to keep up with oil-inspired
rising prices.
By the time of Mrs Thatchers arrival, new
sophisticated equipment such as high-speed
faxes was enabling our Western designs to
be transmitted to factories in the Far East
where labour costs were probably 10 per
cent of ours.
Suddenly we had to become a knowledge-
based economy rather than a labour-intensive,
skill-based economy. Catherine Pepinsters
account of her own experiences in Sheffield
confirms this.
What I cannot understand is why individual
governments so rarely woke up to this step
change. At least Mrs Thatcher had the wit to
appreciate what was at stake.
If Mr Scargill had expended only half his
energy on thinking about what would be
best for his members, he would have
embraced retraining.
Ross Coad
Zeals, Wiltshire
Too broad a brush
I enjoyed Theo Hobsons knockabout attack
on public school Evangelicalism in his review
of the new biography of Justin Welby (Books,
20 April) but I think he is a being a little
unfair and inaccurate in his implied analysis
of the social and class background of con-
temporary Evangelicals.
In my experience, many of the ultra-
liberals in the mainstream Churches (myself
included) come from a similarly privileged
and public-school background, even if we
are not old Etonians.
Indeed, theological liberalism is often
attacked, not entirely unjustly, by its con-
servative Evangelical critics for being the
creed of the comfortable and of those who
have not themselves gone through great
traumas and hardships. Hobsons caricature
of the yuppie atmosphere of Holy Trinity,
Brompton, and other successful and fash-
ionable Evangelical churches is well drawn
and has more than a grain of truth in it but
there are many other Evangelicals I know
who were at state schools and whose faith is
not a product of a privileged ethic of noblesse
oblige.
(The Revd Dr) Ian Bradley
University of St Andrews,
Fife
Though we are in such pain, trouble
and distress, that it seems to us that we
are unable to think of anything except
how we are and what we feel, yet as
soon as we may, we are to pass lightly
over it, and count it as nothing. And
why? Because God wills that we should
understand that if we know him and
love him and reverently fear him, we
shall have rest and be at peace.
Julian of Norwich
Enfolded in Love
(Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004)
The mystery of Christ is the ultimate
truth, the reality towards which all
human life aspires. And this mystery is
known by love. Love is going out of one-
self, surrendering the self, letting the
reality, the truth, take over.
Bede Griffiths (1906-93)
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert
in it with thanksgiving. At the same time
pray for us as well that God will open to us
a door for the word, that we may declare
the mystery of Christ, for which I am in
prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I
should. Conduct yourselves wisely towards
outsiders, making the most of the time.
Let your speech always be gracious, sea-
soned with salt, so that you may know
how you ought to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:2-6
Martyrdom means bearing witness to
God. Every soul that seeks in pureness
of heart to know God and obeys the
commandments of God is a martyr,
bearing witness by life or by words.
In fact even if it is not a matter of
shedding blood, the soul is pouring out
its faith because it is by faith that the
soul will be separated from the body
before a person dies. That is why, in the
Gospel, the Lord praises the person
who has left house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the Gospel. That
person is blessed because he too is going
to meet martyrdom simply by living in a
way that is different from the crowd,
because he is following the rule of the
Gospel for love of his Lord.
St Clement of Alexandria (150-215)
Today is the Feast of the English Martyrs
The living Spirit
16
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4 May 2013
4 May 2013
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17
BOOKS
eligion is adding to the spread
of HIV. The Catholic Church
causes the deaths of millions.
Weve all heard these accusa-
tions, often made casually, as if they are
self-evidently true, in the media, at confer-
ences, even at the water cooler at work.
Perhaps we even suspect there might be some-
thing in them. Those hoping, or fearing, that
this important new study would provide evi-
dence in support of these claims must prepare
to have their expectations shattered. Its
authors are two North American sociologists:
Jenny Trinitapoli, an assistant professor at
Pennsylvania State University, and Alexander
Weinreb, an associate professor at the
University of Texas. Drawing on their own
extensive work in Malawi over 10 years, and
on data gathered by other researchers from
more than 30 countries, they examine whether
and how religion shapes local responses to
the reality of HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan
Africa, and they also consider whether and
how HIV and Aids have influenced religion.
Their conclusions turn many common pre-
suppositions and lazy prejudices about religion
and Aids in Africa on their head.
Trinitapoli and Weinreb focus on the atti-
tudes and practices of religious leaders
usually male clerics and of congregations
at village level and they identify the wider
patterns of social behaviour that emerge. They
consider Muslims and Catholics and also look
at Evangelical Protestant and Pentecostal
Churches and communities. In the past, sta-
tistics have sometimes been used to suggest
that the lowest prevalence of HIV occurs in
Muslim or conservative Christian countries
or areas. Trinitapoli and Weinrebs more
nuanced analysis shows that no single religious
group stands out as either more or less likely
to be protected against HIV. HIV clusters in
particular villages and is significantly affected
by the degree of religiosity (that is, involve-
ment in and practice of religion), at both
individual and village levels. But the evidence
suggests that it matters hardly at all what reli-
gion someone is; what matters a lot is how
R
religious they are. Religion alters not only the
behaviour of an individual but the pool of risk,
which of course is heavily influenced by the
behaviour of other members of the community.
A vital part is played by strong social networks
and by vigilant religious leaders. But the level
of religiosity emerges as the dominant char-
acteristic in the interplay between religion
and prevention, care and stigma.
When the authors examine the evidence for
the impact made by religion on the prevention
of Aids, Christianity and Islam perhaps to
the surprise of some emerge in a positive
light. While secular campaigns against infec-
tion in sub-Saharan Africa are image-driven
and utilitarian, associating abstinence with
being cool and having a successful career,
religions teach that sex outside marriage is
sinful. The net result is that the average age
at which sexual activity begins is put back,
though not necessarily delayed until marriage.
On condom use, pragmatism rather than reli-
gious dogma tends to prevail. The authors
point out that the sexual behaviour of believers
cannot be inferred from the moral teachings
of their leaders. Other strategies helpful in the
prevention of Aids attributed to religions
include the encouragement of stable and faith-
ful marriage and the discouragement of alcohol
abuse and consumption sex. Gossip inspired
by religious values also plays a valuable role.
If it is whispered that a young woman is living
an immoral life, she will find it harder to secure
a husband; similarly, when the talk is that a
man frequents bars every night, he becomes
less of a catch.
Using statistics drawn from their own stud-
ies in Malawi, the authors conclude that where
religious leaders provide a combination of
moral teaching with informed medical advice
is where there is the lowest HIV prevalence,
while infection is higher on average where the
leaders of the community promote faith
healing. The ABC approach (abstinence, being
faithful and the correct use of condoms) is
critical in HIV prevention, though Trinitapoli
and Weinrebs analysis shows that religion
plays a vital role in HIV prevention beyond
the promotion of the simple ABC formula.
The evidence also indicates that religious
organisations do more to dampen the stigma
of infection than to perpetuate it. In Malawi,
research shows that care for people with AIDS-
related illnesses is significantly greater among
Christian groups than with Muslims. Visiting
the sick is a distinctly Christian practice.
Religion and Aids in Africa is a scholarly
yet readable exploration of many of the ques-
tions key to understanding the complexity of
HIV and religion in Africa, setting the dis-
cussion of the role played by religion within
the wider secular context. It is liberally sprin-
kled with helpful graphs and tables, though
the data is occasionally dated. The finding
that 86 per cent of Catholic religious leaders
in Malawi believe Aids is Gods punishment,
and that 60 per cent of Catholic leaders are
likely to advise people to see traditional/faith
healers, will raise eyebrows, but this research
dates from 1990 to 2004; there have been
changes in attitudes over the last 10 years
wrought by advocacy and education work.
Trinitapoli and Weinreb do not examine
the role of religious communities and leaders
at local level in addressing the social, economic
and cultural underlying causes of Aids that
international Christian agencies such as Caritas
have always insisted must be addressed if HIV
is to be prevented. This may be a gap in
research or it may reflect a failure by the
Churches seriously to engage with the root
cause of the disease. (Incidentally, the influence
of international faith agencies working through
local faith groups is also left unexplored.)
Another dimension not considered is the con-
tribution of faith-based initiatives to moving
models of care away from a narrowly medical
focus, to include psycho-social, spiritual, eco-
nomic and human-rights factors.
The research shows significant discrepan-
cies between official teaching and policies
and local attitudes and practice. I would have
liked some discussion of the interplay between
teachings and theologies and the experience
of individuals and communities. Also missing
is a consideration of female religious congre-
gations, which played a wide-ranging role in
responding to HIV in most African countries
from the mid-1980s, and brought a more
gender-balanced perspective to the Catholic
Churchs approach to the Aids pandemic.
Policymakers, politicians, academics and
journalists have shied away from the religious
and moral component in addressing the
scourge of Aids. Trinitapoli and Weinreb make
a powerful case that religion has played an
essential role in enabling people in Africa to
meet the challenges of HIV. Rather than dis-
missing them out of political correctness, they
conclude that they should recognise and lever-
age these religious contributions as readily as
they have denied or ignored them in the past.
ANN SMITH
BEING PART
OF THE
SOLUTION
Religion and Aids in Africa
Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 272PP, 18.99
Tablet bookshop price 17.10 Tel 01420 592974
An Aids clinic in South Africa that
operates under a partnership between
the South African Bishops Conference
and Catholic Relief Services. Photo: CNS
18
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4 May 2013
All change, please
Evangelical Catholicism: deep
reform in the 21st-century Church
George Weigel
BASIC BOOKS, 291PP, 15.99
Tablet bookshop price 14.40 Tel 01420 592974
G
eorge Weigel contends that it was Pope
Leo XIII who began the process of
reform which culminated in the Second
Vatican Council, which effectively brought
to an end the Counter-Reformation. The
pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict
XVI, he writes, put an authoritative
interpretation on Vatican II by treating the
council as one of reform through retrieval,
renewal and development, in which lost
elements of the Churchs life that had been
forgotten or marginalised during the
Counter-Reformation were recovered and
made into instruments of evangelical
renewal. Rejecting both traditionalist and
progressive forms of Catholicism, he calls
for a spirit of missionary discipleship in
the Church, rooted in Scripture and the
sacraments.
Both conservative and liberal Catholics
are likely to be annoyed by this book, which
doesnt see the Churchs future in either the
Extraordinary Form of the Mass or Justice
and Peace groups; but Weigel has some
interesting suggestions for reform in the
Church which deserve to be taken seriously.
He calls in particular for a renewal of the
episcopal office, pointing out that most
bishops are essentially administrators
rather than the true and authentic teachers
of the faith which Vatican IIs Decree on the
Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church
called them to be. The other ministries of
sanctifying and governing were seen by the
council to be secondary to that of
evangelising and teaching. The only time I
have ever been asked to give an opinion
about a possible episcopal candidate, I was
struck that apostolic zeal was not among the
qualities that I was specifically asked about.
And it is surely true, as Weigel says, that
most Catholics have little sense of their
bishop as their primary leader in prayer and
worship, as they have little direct sense of
their bishop as pastoral shepherd. It is
something of a paradox that, in spite of
Vatican IIs teaching on episcopal
collegiality, most lay Catholics probably
have little or no idea what the local bishop
looks like, whereas they have no difficulty in
recognising their parish priest and the Pope.
Weigel cannot understand why, when a
bishop is incompetent, malfeasant, or
dubiously orthodox, it is so hard to remove
him from office.
Similarly, Weigel calls for priests to see
themselves as primarily evangelists and
teachers rather than administrators and
managers. He sees the low quality of
preaching as caused partly by a homiletic
training in the seminary in which too much
emphasis is placed on storytelling,
references from pop culture, humour, and
other preaching tricks thought to make
sermons relevant and engaging. He agrees
with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI that the
Church should take seriously the possibility
of returning to the ancient orientation
during the eucharistic rite so that the priest
faces the same way as the congregation
towards the rising sun an orientation that
directed the Churchs attention to Christ, the
light of the world. That would certainly
reduce the temptation of the celebrant
especially prevalent in the United States to
emphasise his own personality rather than
Christ. Weigel wants more holy days of
obligation rather than fewer and deplores
the practice of transferring important feasts
to the Sunday. But he doesnt consider the
objections to that: the fact that a holy day
is meant to be a holiday and the fact that on
a working day it is very difficult for a lot of
people to attend and for the possibility of
the kind of celebration that a feast like the
Ascension surely deserves. He calls for the
restoration of the Sundays after Epiphany
and Pentecost and deplores the fact that
Ordinary Time begins immediately after the
Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord. And
he reminds us of Vatican IIs teaching that
Gregorian chant should be given pride of
place in liturgical services.
Weigel has an interesting
chapter on Reform of the
Churchs Public Policy
Advocacy in which he
warns that the Holy See and
episcopal conferences are to
some extent still stuck in
an older paradigm drawn from the days
when the Church was a political actor in the
old-fashioned sense: a player among players
in a political power game. He thinks that
the Church should concentrate on
defending the right to life from conception
until natural death and on the principles of
Catholic Social Teaching as opposed to
attempting to offer technical solutions to
those who have responsibility for the
common good, arguing that when the
Church intervenes in the public policy
process on a host of matters that do not,
except in the remotest sense, touch on
questions of first principles or on areas of
the Churchs special competence, this
suggests that all issues are equal.
Finally, Weigel offers his own
contribution to the current debate about the
reform of the Roman Curia. He suggests
that the College of Cardinals should meet
regularly to advise the Pope. More
controversially, he advocates the relegation
of pontifical councils to the in-house think
tanks they were originally intended to be.
Even more controversially, he wants the
Council for Promoting Christian Unity to
re-examine its long-standing commitment
to various bilateral dialogues with liberal
Protestant bodies that seem to be
achieving very little, while opening new
lines of conversation with the Evangelical,
fundamentalist and Pentecostal
Protestants that are manifestly the
growing Protestant communities of the
twenty-first century.
Completed in the final months of
Benedicts papacy, Evangelical Catholicism
is an eloquent book about the renewal of the
Church and raises a number of points that
deserve serious consideration by his
successor. Ian Ker
Redemptorist Publications will endeavour to sell you the book at the price
advertised. However, occasionally on publication the published price is
altered,in which case we will notify you prior to debiting your card.
THE TABLET BOOKSHOP
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OUR REVIEWERS
Ann Smith led Cafods global strategy on HIV
until late 2011 and continues to provide
consulting services to non-governmental
organisations.
Ian Ker is the author of G.K. Chesterton:
a biography, which was reissued in paperback
last year.
Catherine Nixey is a freelance writer.
Harriet Paterson is a freelance writer who
lives in Singapore.
George Weigel: he has
some interesting
suggestions for reform in
the Church which deserve
to be taken seriously
Sunday 5 May 2013
Mass Times:
Vigil: Saturday 6pm
Sunday: 8am, 9.30am (Family Mass),
11am (sung Latin),
Langlais, Dupr
12.30pm, 4.15pm, 6.15pm
www.farmstreet.org.uk
JESUIT CHURCH
FARM STREET, MAYFAIR
4 May 2013
|
THE TABLET
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19
Hope floats
Falling Upwards: how we took to
the air
Richard Holmes
WILLIAM COLLINS, 416PP, 25
Tablet bookshop price 22.50 Tel 01420 592974
W
innie the Pooh, it seems, got it wrong.
There are those who can be quite
uncheered with a balloon. Take Sophie
Blanchard. On the night of 6 July 1819, in
Paris, she climbed into the small silver
basket of her balloon and, like a Botticelli
Venus in a silver scallop, ascended above
the delighted spectators below, letting off
decorative fireworks as she went.
Quite. You will have guessed what
happened next. As one eyewitness
observed, there was seen a momentary
sheet of flame the poor creature ... fell
with a frightful crash into the street, and
Madame Blanchard was taken up a
shattered corpse!
But as Richard Holmes Falling Upwards
shows, Poohs dictum holds generally as
true as it ever did, even now. Because unlike
other Enlightenment excitements which
have become at best (like electricity) a thing
of mere utility and at worst (like carbon
dioxide) a worry, balloons have, as it were,
retained their ooh. As too have the
dashing romantics who dare to fly them
who, says Holmes, never quite seem to be
down to earth.
Except of course, as this fascinating book
shows, many of these early balloonists were
all too often just that. The basic balloon
design was created in 1783 by Montgolfier,
and changed little in the coming years. As a
result, phrases such as plummeted into a
large oak tree, the wreckage came to rest
and inexplicably none was dead are
common in early accounts.
Few were put off. It wasnt that they
didnt know the risks. One balloonist had a
line from Ovids telling of Daedalus and
Icarus caelum certe patet, ibimus illi
(surely the sky lies open let us go that
way!) emblazoned on his balloon. Hardly
a note of aerial optimism.
But they just went anyway. Some went in
the name of science. Some in the name of
discovery. Some simply in the name of a
jolly. All seem to have taken vast quantities
of food. One banquet included 45 pounds
of cooked game and preserves 16 pints
each of sherry, port and brandy, together
with several dozen bottles of champagne.
In a difficult flight, champagne bottles were
jettisoned as ballast.
Though there were serious applications:
the 1870 Siege of Paris being one example.
This was a siege so long and so serious that
the citizens were reduced to eating rats
(albeit in the form of pt: they may have
been starving but they were still French).
Worse almost than the lack of food was the
lack of information. The final Paris mail
coach was turned back with a
contemptuous volley of shots on
19 September. From then, no information
could enter or leave the city.
In an unconscious echo of Daedalus, a
French balloonist called Tissandier
declared there remains but one other
dimension open to the besieged THE
AIR! Braving leaking balloons, Prussian
musket fire and almost certain execution if
caught, Parisian balloonists launched
themselves from the besieged city and over
enemy lines in balloons called things like
La Libert. Over the coming months,
almost 70 balloons were launched and
millions of letters were delivered. It was,
writes Holmes, the first successful civilian
airlift in history.
There are moments when this book, at
416 pages, feels rather weighty for such an
airy subject. And particularly when you
come to the third detailed description of
aerial victualling you feel some of these
champagne bottles might also have been
jettisoned for an easier ride (Holmes
previously tackled the whole of the
eighteenth-century scientific revolution in a
book not much longer).
But then you come to a story like that of
the Parisians and the story lifts again. And
it would be impossible to remain
uncheered. Catherine Nixey
NOVEL OF THE WEEK
Hunting tofu in Lagos
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
FOURTH ESTATE, 400PP, 20
Tablet bookshop price 18 Tel 01420 592974
W
itty and irreverent, clever and
clear-eyed welcome to Americanah.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was described
as fearless by her literary hero and fellow
Igbo, the late Chinua Achebe; she proves
him right again. She has a lot to say, and
youd better listen. For although
Americanah is structured around a love
story, its principal subject is race;
something Adichie, like her protagonist
Ifemelu, says she only discovered when she
left Nigeria for America.
Adichies first two novels, Purple Hibiscus
and Half of a Yellow Sun, were absorbing
portraits of Nigeria: the mesmeric story of a
girl with a violent father, then a tale of lives
devastated by the Biafran war. With
Americanah, however, Nigeria is a
springboard from which she launches into
contemporary black experience in America
and Britain. Her best and boldest writing is
about the differences between being
African in the US and being African
American, and about the many ways in
which racism endures for the latter group.
Dont be put off this is not an angry
book, although anger is there and rightly so.
But the extremely accomplished Adichie,
from a middle-class, Catholic background
in Nigeria, has no chip on her shoulder.
Ifemelu is more often amused than
offended by white misconceptions: your
English is so good; black people dont need
sunscreen do they; can women actually vote
in your country ?
Ifemelu can afford the humour, since she
comes from a society where race is not an
issue. Furthermore, she finds success in the
US, writing a bitter-comic blog on her
observations of African Americans.
Meanwhile, for her Nigerian ex-boyfriend
who lands in the UK, the dream fails. He
has visa troubles, remains an unskilled
worker and eventually is deported. No
amusing reflections for him. This British
section is less engaging than those set in
America and Nigeria, but it helped me
understand what makes well-educated
Africans so desperate to leave home (In
Nigeria, people hold prayer services to get
an American visa, Adichie remarked wryly
in a recent interview) even though they
often find themselves shoved to the bottom
of the heap in the countries they idolised.
Some of the funniest writing is about
Nigeria. Adichies Big Men and
man-hunting women are hilariously
gruesome, and she is priceless on the elite
returnees from Harvard or Yale whose new
first-world selves shudder at their imperfect
home; they cling together, bewailing the
lack of vegetarian food in Lagos.
You could say too many characters are
wheeled on just to make a point about race,
or call it formulaic that the heroine dates a
Nigerian, then a white guy, then an African
American. The books overall achievements,
however, dwarf such quibbles. White
middle-class-liberal readers like me will feel
skewered, then laugh along, and finally
emerge with something like a new
understanding. Black African readers
might raise a collective cheer, but thats not
for me to say. This is an open-handed,
honest invitation to talk about something
deeply important.
Harriet Paterson
A Balloon Wedding in the Clouds, drawn
for an Italian magazine in 1911
20
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4 May 2013
ARTS
LAURA GASCOIGNE
hen Joe Machine was five, he
started selling bubblegum in his
fathers amusement arcade on the
Isle of Sheppey the age at which
he witnessed his first assault with a broken
beer glass. It was good for business to stay
open until the pubs closed; not so good for
child development. But that didnt worry Joes
father, the descendant of Romany fighters.
By the time I was 10, remembers Joe, Id
lost count of the amount of stabbings with
extremely sharp instruments Id seen. At six
he was excluded from primary school for spear-
ing a teacher through the hand with a compass
after she reprimanded him for drawing the
Incredible Hulk on a murderous rampage.
But that didnt cure him of the compulsion to
depict violence, as a gruesome painting of a
bottling made when he was 16 attests. The
picture looks especially horrific in the front
room of the comfortable terraced house in
Gillingham where the 40-year-old artist now
lives with his wife, Charlotte, and their four
young children, and where Im previewing the
work about to be unveiled in his first major
solo exhibition at the Cock n Bull Gallery
under the Tramshed restaurant in Shoreditch.
In an essay introducing the show, the dis-
tinguished critic Edward Lucie-Smith
compares the self-taught Joe Machine with
Blake and Bacon. This is high praise for a
founder member of the Stuckists, the figurative
painting movement with a largely untutored
membership started in 1999 as a reaction
against conceptual art. But it is not as far-
fetched as it might seem. The artist has come
a long way since his painting of a throat-slitting
sailor provoked outrage at the Stuckists Punk
Victorian exhibition in Liverpool in 2004.
His new show, titled Machine Evolution,
explores three very different themes currently
absorbing his attention: Genesis, the Russian
Revolution and, perhaps most surprisingly,
the beauties of nature.
The subjects might appear to have nothing
in common, but for Joe Machine, whose
mother was an Ashkenazi Jew of Russian
descent, the first two are related. In his eyes
both are revolutions that failed: the Russian
Revolution because of human violence,
Genesis because of human greed. Genesis is
the first revolution, Gods revolution the
failure is on mans part, he explains. Thats
the way I look at it, because I think Gods
revolution is ongoing.
With their elongated figures, flattened forms
and jewel-like colours, the Genesis paintings
instantly announce themselves as sacred.
Whatever you make of their rather mixed
iconography, combining references to the
Kabbalah with ancient Celtic symbolism and
Byzantine art, they are iconic in the basic
sense of looking like icons. Their interpretation
is, however, personal and heterodox. The devil
tempting Eve under Joe Machines Tree of
Knowledge is a scarlet-clad cardinal, although
this seemingly anti-Catholic message is belied
by a Glorious Virgin of the Assumption candle
on the mantelpiece, a memento of family visits
to Aylesford Priory a wonderful place to
go and see the anemones and bluebells.
Joes latest project, not yet ready for exhib -
ition, is a series of paintings of the life of Christ
focusing on the role of Jesus as a Jewish
reformer: the figure bound to a tree between
Pilate and Longinus in the unfinished painting
on his easel has a skullcap and a bushy Hasidic
beard. Compared to the bloodthirstiness of
some of his Russian Revolution pictures, his
Crucifixion projects an air of serenity. I want
to make the picture as beautiful as possible,
he says, no blood or nails. There will be flowers
on the tree and curling around the shaft of
the soldiers spear. He is keen to stress the
brotherhood of Abrahamic faiths: in the image
of the Virgin and Child which began the series,
Marys blue robe is topped by a black hijab and
she sits between a Torah scroll and a crucifix.
She is not the first Virgin in Joe Machines
oeuvre. On the Stuckism website, among the
sailors, prostitutes and dog fights, is a Virgin
and Child dating from 2004 when the artist
was on bail pending charges of ABH his
last brush with the law after a youth spent in
and out of reform institutions. Even now, he
has not stopped painting violent subjects a
picture of sailors titled Cut Throat shares his
kitchen studio with the newly emerging scenes
from the life of Christ. After 12 years in psy-
chotherapy, he is still dealing with the
emotional legacy of his violent past. Painting
is a form of therapy, a process Im still working
out, he explains, and quotes a key passage
from the gnostic gospel of St Thomas: If you
bring forth what is within you, what you bring
forth will save you. If you do not bring forth
what is within you, what you do not bring
forth will destroy you.
The treatment is obviously working, but I
wonder what followers of his earlier work will
make of his new direction? Whatever people
make of it is up to them, he answers. I do
what works. My past life was only going to lead
to two places, prison or death. Its worked out
that things can change, there is no set outcome
you can elect to be a certain way.
The old Joe Machine only painted things
he had directly experienced, dashing off a pic-
ture in two days; the new one labours for
weeks over a single image. Its a process of
evolution, as his exhibition title says. Still, the
religious subjects do seem like a radical depar-
ture. Where did the inspiration come from?
His seven-year-old son Josef. Why dont you
paint God? he asked his father one day. The
resulting painting, God and Tree, won first
prize in the 2012 Cork Street Open. I gave
Josef a crisp 20 note, at which he said: I
think you should paint more pictures of God.
Joe Machine: Machine Evolution runs for
three weeks from 3 to 24 May; the Genesis
paintings will be on show for the first week.
SAVED BY THE BRUSH
Joe Machine is self-taught and has a violent past. But his work has been compared to Blake and
Bacon. In a remarkable exhibition, he explores themes from the book of Genesis
W
Detail of God and Tree by Joe Machine
4 May 2013
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21
My intuition is that this reading is
influenced by the experience of Americas
first non-white President, PAGE 22
TELEVISION
Outsider dealing
Rupert Murdoch: Battle with Britain
BBC2
L
ady Thatcher did not act alone. She had
a partner in her enterprise. Rupert
Murdoch: Battle With Britain(28 April) told
us his story.
Written and presented by a sympathetic
Steve Hewlett, this documentary attempted
to depict the press baron as an agent of
change that struggling post-war Britain
urgently needed. Well, you might also argue
that he coarsened public debate, championed
greed and fostered yob culture. Certainly his
effect on the reputation of journalism has
been disastrous.
Murdoch has always manifested an antipathy
to the status quo. He saw himself as an outsider,
which was true up to a point. In his native
Australia, he was part of the Establishment,
the son of a nationally famous journalist and
newspaper tycoon. But as a student at Oxford,
with a bust of Lenin in his room and a car
he came up against the English upper classes
and didnt like what he saw. A three-month
spell of work experience at the Daily Express
not available to most outsiders prepared
him for his return to Australia, where he inher-
ited his first newspaper.
In many ways his first big scoop on the
Adelaide News was a taste of things to come:
a photographer dressed as a doctor
photographed Marianne Faithfull in a coma.
When he came to London and acquired the
News of the World, already a scandal sheet,
he upped the ante by investing 21,000 in
the memoirs of Christine Keeler, an old story
but one guaranteed to annoy the political
Establishment. Then he bought a high-
minded, left-wing, money-losing broadsheet
called The Sun and turned it into a brash
tabloid. It took on the established Daily
Mirror and won, by rejecting that papers
middle-class aspirations. The Mirror, someone
sneered, was educative: and there was no
room for that in the Murdoch world.
When Mrs Thatcher came along, the sup-
posedly apolitical Sunthrew its weight behind
her. Its editor, Larry Lamb, accepted a knight-
hood, much to Murdochs distaste. In came
Kelvin MacKenzie, another Thatcher follower,
whose enthusiasm for sex stories was not
much appreciated by his proprietor, who asked
why the paper couldnt occasionally write
about something above the waist.
The Sun made money, however, which
Murdoch needed for his next adventure: the
purchase of The Times and Sunday Times,
and the decision to produce his papers at
Wapping, with new technology and no print
unions. His move into satellite television was
equally risky, but he triumphed. And then
came the cosy relationship with New Labour,
rather closer and more insidious than that
with Thatcher.
Nemesis came with the phone-hacking
scandal. There was the apology in Parliament,
the partial loss of control of News Corporation,
and the wrecking of the prospects of his chosen
successor, his son James. As Andrew Neil
pointed out, he had created a new kind of
aggressive tabloid journalism, made a fortune
out of it, and now what he had created came
back to destroy him. According to Hewlett,
who gave us an interesting though for the
most part unsurprising portrait, the Murdoch
era is virtually over. Not everyone will be sad
about that. John Morrish
RADIO
Noblesse oblige
The Reunion: Coronation Maids
BBC RADIO 4
F
or top-class radio entertainment, you cant
beat the sound of half a dozen aristocratic
old ladies reminiscing about the adventures
of their hot youth. The genres absolute peak
was probably achieved in Rachel Johnsons
recent programme about all the well-born
travellers to 1930s Berlin who had ended up
playing canasta with Goebbels, but Coronation
Maids (21 April), which brought together five
of the six young women who had attended
Her Majesty at the coronation of June 1953,
ran it pretty close.
A unique and truly blue-blooded gathering,
the Radio 4 announcer had deferentially pro-
posed. Here, graciously assembled to answer
Sue MacGregors equally deferential questions,
were Lady Rosemary Muir, Lady Jane Rayne-
Lacey, Lady Moyra Campbell, Lady Mary
Russell and Lady Glenconner. Each quite
properly professed astonishment at the task
thrust upon them: Yes, one was rather sur-
prised ... the envelope just suddenly arrived
with a command, Lady Rosemary recalled.
Lady Mary declared herself to have been gob-
smacked, which cant have been a word she
learned at finishing school.
Lady Glenconner had been in America
when the invitation arrived. (My mother had
sent me orf to get over a rather sad love affair.)
Yet however surprised, terrified or dispersed
around the globe, noblesse was determined
both to oblige and employ its hereditary
expertise. You were used to very grand occa-
sions? MacGregor enquired of Lady
Rosemary, who had admitted to being brought
up in a house with 36 indoor servants. Yes,
verygrand occasions, Lady Rosemary briskly
returned. The Duke of Norfolk, in his role as
Earl Marshal, stated his requirements (solitary
necklace, single pearl ear stud), the dresses
were ordered from Hartnell and the equipage
of the royal state occasion moved crisply into
gear.
Here, amid the recitation of centuries-old
protocols, the countless dry runs and the girls
fear of fainting or dropping something, lurked
the harbingers of the modern media age.
Television cameras had been allowed into
Westminster Abbey for the first time. Lady
Glenconner, having turned up to a rehearsal
with only a stole over her costume, appeared
on the front page of the Daily Sketch under
the headline She didnt know it was a secret.
Everyone turned out to be very keen on the
Duke of Edinburgh (frightfully good-looking
We were all slightly in love with him) and
slightly less so on the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, who at one point
retired to a side aisle and produced a bottle
of brandy from beneath his robes.
All this was both terrifically funny, oddly
moving (or rather not oddly why shouldnt
one be moved by the coronation of ones sov-
ereign?) and not without its moments of
poignance. Princess Margaret, for example,
told that she looked sad, remarked that she
had lost a father and was now about to lose
a sister. We were the Queens Spice Girls,
somebody observed, to which one wanted to
reply that no, madam, you were the finest
specimens of young aristocratic womanhood
that the peerage had to offer, come to do your
humble duty. D.J. Taylor
Sue
MacGregor,
presenter of
The Reunion
22
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|
4 May 2013
and so is stunned to discover the effect that
he has had on Iago. This interpretation is
clearly informed by the contemporary setting
Hytner has chosen, with Venice, in effect,
becoming Whitehall and the Cyprus scenes
taking place in a British army base. Racism,
in modern institutions, is more often covert
than open and Hytners dramatisation cleverly
depicts that situation. But the decision also
has the benefit of solving the constant problem
of this play in performance, which is why
Othello is so easily tricked by Iago. In this
playing, the Moor bright, sophisticated, at
ease with himself is fooled because he believed
society has evolved further than it has.
If Lesters Othello has long felt like a natural
career progression, Rory Kinnear has seemed
an equally inevitable Iago and anticipation is
equally satisfied. He finds every possible
moment of dark comedy in the speeches, to
the extent that his scenes sometimes have a
comic-horror Jacobean feel, as if a text of
Shakespeares play has been found with the
subtitle Tis Pity Shes a Whore.
Characteristically of Hytners Shakespeare
stagings, there is a sense of a deep intelligence
having been applied to plot and lines, although
there is rarely the sensation as in his Much
Ado About Nothing and Hamlet of unex-
pected new meanings being given to speeches.
This, though, is largely the fault of the play,
which contains relatively few ambiguities.
Though academic criticism has famously
spoken of Iagos motiveless malignancy, actor
and audience are offered at least three com-
pelling reasons for his villainy: racism,
Othellos preference for Cassio as his lieu-
tenant, and Iagos twice-repeated suspicion
that he has been cuckolded by the Moor. While
some productions in the past have suggested
that the treacherous servant was secretly in
love with his master, Kinnear plays him as an
aggressive heterosexual who clearly is enraged
by the thought of Othello having committed
adultery with Emilia, who is played earthily
and perkily by Lyndsey Marshal. Helping to
avoid the risk of the female characters becom-
ing merely plot accessories, the production
cunningly makes Emilia a serving officer as
well, in one of the two-soldier marriages that
are now common in the military.
One unintended consequence of the forensic
clarity Hytner brings is to expose the holes in
the play. The impossible time scheme in
which Iago seems to have taken against Othello
only days before but Emilia insists that he has
asked her to steal Desdemonas handkerchief
at least a hundred times over several months
is attributed by some to sloppy playwrighting
but by others to a precociously postmodern
use of parallel narratives. In a production as
clear as this one, the contradictions can become
confusing.
Turning a play about an outsider into a
resonant modern tragedy about a man who
fatally miscalculates the extent to which he
is an insider, this production constantly uses
its present-day setting to solve textual prob-
lems an overhearing scene is staged with
unusual plausibility in a gents lavatory but
is anchored in the thrilling double-acting of
Lester and Kinnear. Mark Lawson
Olivia
Vinall as
Desdemona
and Adrian
Lester as
Othello
THEATRE
Subtle shadings
Othello
OLIVIER, NATIONAL THEATRE, LONDON
B
ecause of a historical imbalance in drama-
school graduates, British theatre has
always had a more natural supply of Iagos
than Othellos. Its a shaming fact that, since
the blessed end of the practice of blacking
up, two of the highest-profile Moors of Venice
in UK productions have been imported from
opera (Willard White, 1990) and TV comedy
(Lenny Henry, 2009).
Thankfully, though, the UK now has leading
classical actors whom the role beckons as
inevitably as King Lear would call an acting
great in older age and there is understandable
excitement about Adrian Lester leading the
new National Theatre production of Othello
by Nicholas Hytner, a decade after Lester
played Henry V for the same director in a pio-
neering so-called colour-blind version.
In a different sense, this Othello also fascin -
atingly ignores race for much of its length. A
fundamental judgement for any actor playing
Othello is how angry to get in the opening
scenes and how consciously the character
should be ostracised from society by his dif-
ference. Lenny Henry, for example, visibly
raged against the open racism of his father-
in-law, Brabantio, and there was a constant
sense of the other soldiers resenting his leader -
ship. In this version, though, Lester, crucially,
seems scarcely to notice the bigotry of William
Chubbs excellent Brabantio and appears splen-
didly assimilated within the military set-up.
My intuition is that this reading is influenced
by the experience of Americas first non-white
President. Before taking office, Barack Obama
and his closest associates spoke of his hope of
being a post-racial President, whose skin
would essentially be irrelevant. But, in office,
Obama was seemingly startled by the extent
to which his opponents (especially in the Tea
Party movement) could be seen as interpreting
his presidency from a racial perspective.
Just as the Obamaites didnt see the Tea
Party coming, Lesters Othello has convinced
himself that he is living in a post-racial culture
Margaret continues: I know I cant take it
with me, so I want to feel that I can still make
a contribution. Of course Ill look after my
family at home but I will also leave a gift for
my families abroad.
Margaret knows that even a small legacy
can make a big difference.
Each one provides the
building bricks of our
churches and schools,
orphanages and clinics.
Every gift lives on,
year after year, so that
generations to come will
receive the gift of faith
and hope.
Please consider leaving a gift to Missio in
your Will.
Missio has written an
information pack that
can be helpful when you
are thinking about your
Will. We will send you
this in condence and
without any obligation.
For a copy please
contact the Legacy
Administrator, Mary
Rafat, on 020 7821
9755. Alternatively, you
can email the National Director, Mgr Canon
James Cronin, at director@missio.org.uk
Your gift can make a
real, lasting difference.
GLAD13TAB1
You can nd out more about Missio at www.missio.org.uk
Missio, 23 Eccleston Square, London SW1V 1NU
Missio is part of the Pontical Mission Societies worldwide network. Registered Charity Number 1056651

When I go, Im
leaving it all to
my families.
THE CHURCH IN THE
WORLD
Zollitsch to promote
a diaconate for women
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt
A CALL from the president of Germanys
bishops conference for the creation of a new,
specific office for women deacons, without
ordaining them, has triggered a heated debate
among church leaders.
I will promote further in-depth study of
the common priesthood of all the faithful,
encourage diversity as far as church ministries
and offices are concerned and I will do so
based on the Churchs teaching. This will
include promoting new church ministries and
offices which will be open to women such as,
for example, a specific deacons office for
women, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch told
the delegates with whom he had been dis-
cussing possible church reforms at a four-day
conference in his Freiburg Archdiocese.
The conference was part of the five-year,
ongoing nationwide dialogue procedure for
church reform in Germany initiated by the
German bishops conference in 2010 as a
result of the torrent of clerical-abuse revela-
tions in that year. The 300 delegates, 100
women and 200 men, were chosen from the
archdiocese of Freiburgs deaneries but also
from the new movements.
The German bishops promised to increase
the number of women in leading positions in
the Church at their plenary in March and
devoted an entire day of their three-day
plenary to the question of how to promote
the role of women in the Church. Couldnt
the Church create an office for women that
had its own profile? the former president of
the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian
Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, asked at the
plenary. He suggested officially appointing
women to pastoral, caritative, catechetical
and certain liturgical ministries and allowing
them to participate in synods, pastoral councils
and commissions.
Reacting to Archbishop Zollitschs
announcement, a spokesman for Cardinal
Reinhard Marx of Munich, whom Pope
Francis has appointed cardinal-adviser for
Europe, said ordaining women deacons was
not on the agenda. And in a statement on
his website, the new Bishop of Regensburg,
Rudolf Voderholzer, said the office of deacon
was inseparably bound to that of priest and
bishop and therefore to the sacrament of
ordination. The tradition that only men can
be ordained is based on the Bible, he said.
The German branch of We Are Church
praised Archbishop Zollitschs proposal.
These are only tiny steps but they are in the
right direction, spokesman Christian Weisner
said. But for both the largest lay organisation,
the Central Committee of German Catholics
(ZdK), and the Network for Womens
Diaconate, Archbishop Zollitschs promise
did not go far enough. On 29 April, the two
organisations celebrated Women Deacons
Day together for the first time. Of course,
women can look after the sick or the homeless
without being ordained, but some women
feel called to be deacons, the chairman of the
Network for Womens Diaconate, Irmentraut
Kobusch, said in an interview.
Interfaith call for female lead in Nigeria
A PROMINENT Nigerian interfaith group,
which is led by an Irish missionary, has called
for greater participation of women in policy-
making and in the ranks for the countrys
security and law enforcement agencies, if the
current cycle of violence is to be resolved,
writes Sarah Mac Donald.
The Interfaith Forum of Muslim and
Christian Womens Associations of Kaduna,
a city in the north of the country which has
seen some of the worst atrocities linked to
the Islamist Boko Haram terrorists, made its
call after holding a groundbreaking meeting
with some of Nigerias top security agencies.
The Womens Interfaith Council blamed
the failure of the Nigerian state to live by the
rule of law for the countrys conflicts.
It described northern Nigeria as bedevilled
by a very dangerous level of insecurity which
threatened almost all aspects of its socio-
political and economic life and impacted worst
on women and children. The Irish nun Sr
Kathleen McGarvey OLA is general co -
ordinator of Kadunas Interfaith Council of
Muslim and Christian Womens Groups. She
is the only non-Nigerian selected to participate
in the Northern States Governors Forum
Committee on Reconciliation, Healing and
Security which is seeking to resolve the
ongoing conflict with Boko Haram.
At the meeting in Kaduna on 16 April, she
underlined that Nigerian women are mar-
ginalised from peace building, security and
conflict prevention. The Muslim and Christian
womens representatives also described drugs
as a critical factor in Nigerias conflicts.
The Catholic Church in Benue State
reported that at least 70 of its churches have
been destroyed in 12 months of violence that
rocked eastern Nigeria, near the border with
Cameroon, writes Ellen Teague. Boko Haram
has been pushing southwards through Benue.
4 May 2013
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23
Archbishop
Robert
Zollitsch.
Photo: CNS
ROME: Pope Francis has urged young Catholics
to be counter-cultural and to stake their lives on
lofty goals, writes Robert Mickens. Swim against
the tide; its good for the heart, the Pope said on
Sunday as he confrmed 44 mostly young people
at a huge Mass in St Peters Square. Commit
yourselves to great ideals, to the most important
things, he said. We Christians were not chosen
by the Lord for little things; push onwards
towards the highest principles.
The 44 who received the Sacrament of
Confrmation from the Pope ranged in age from
11 to 55. They came from 22 countries, including
two each from Ireland and the United States.
Remain steadfast in the journey of faith, with
frm hope in the Lord. This is the secret of our
journey! He gives us the courage to swim against
the tide, the Pope told them.
The Vatican said an estimated 100,000 people
packed St Peters Square and the surrounding
area for the Mass. Some 70,000 of those were
youngsters mostly from Italy who had already
been confrmed this year or are preparing for
confrmation in the coming weeks.
The Vatican ofce that deals
with family issues has denied
reports that it is currently
preparing a document that will
help ease the way for divorced
and remarried Catholics to
receive the sacraments, writes
Robert Mickens.
The Pontifcal Council for the
Family declared on 25 April,
There is no basis in the story
that a document is being
prepared concerning the
reception of Holy Communion
by the divorced and remarried.
That same day, the
Rome-based daily La
Repubblica reported that Pope
Francis had ordered the
council to start working on
such a text. The Pope met with
the councils president,
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia,
on 20 April.
Robert Mickens
In Rome
and Ellen Teague
POPE FRANCIS has accepted an invitation
by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, to visit
Jerusalem, though a date has yet to be estab-
lished. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and
Benedict XVI all visited the Holy City.
Mr Peres extended the invitation to Pope
Francis on Tuesday during a 30-minute meet-
ing at the Vatican. A communiqu said the
two men discussed hopes for a speedy
resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
and a political solution to end the Syrian
conflict. Mr Peres then went to Assisi the next
day where civic and religious leaders of St
Francis home town made him an honorary
citizen and gave him a peace prize.
On 20 March, the Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople, Bartholomew I, invited Pope
Francis to meet him in Jerusalem this year,
to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the famous
hug between their predecessors, Pope Paul
VI and Patriarch Athenagoras.
Meanwhile, Israel is being challenged over
its plans to press ahead with construction of
the West Bank separation wall in the valley of
Cremisan, around a convent near the Christian
town of Beit Jala. Last week, Israels Special
Appeals Committee for land seizure under
emergency law ruled in favour of the route,
which leaves the convent on the Palestinian
side of the 26ft high wall, and a companion
monastery and land belonging to the convent
and local families on the Israeli side.
According to the Society of St Yves, a
Catholic human-rights organisation repre-
senting the convent, the ruling was highly
problematic and unjust. The Salesian Sisters
Convent and School, which provides education
to more than 400 children from local villages,
will be surrounded on three sides by the wall.
More than 50 Palestinian families are likely
to lose access to their agricultural land. There
will be a gate, but permits will be necessary
to pass through it.
The campaign against the route of the barrier
at Cremisan was taken up last year by the UK
Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.
The UK Government took the view that Israel
is entitled to build a barrier but it should lie
on the internationally recognised 1967 Green
Line, not on confiscated Palestinian land.
Pope Francis is not likely to visit his native
Argentina this year, despite earlier reports
that he would be going to Buenos Aires in
mid-December. Instead, the only international
trip he has scheduled for 2013 is to Brazil in
July for World Youth Day, according to Vatican
spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ.
Speaking on 24 April, the priest said the
only other visit the Pope was pondering for
this year was to Assisi. Speculation is rife that
the papal visit could take place over the saints
4 October feast day.
Fr Lombardi said Pope Francis might also
issue his first encyclical by the years end, and
it would probably be based on a rough draft
begun by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who
had been working on an encyclical on faith
to coincide with the current Year of Faith,
that would complete his series of encyclicals
on the theological virtues.
24
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4 May 2013
EUROPE
ISRAEL
Francis accepts invitation to Jerusalem
Council urges accommodation of religion
THE COUNCILof Europe in Strasbourg gave
Christian rights activists a boost on 24 April
when its Parliamentary Assembly urged the
47 member states to accommodate religious
beliefs in the public sphere and ensure the
right to well- defined conscientious objection
in relation to morally sensitive matters, writes
Tom Heneghan.
The assemblys resolution, passed by 148
to 3 votes, came as three Britons aiming to
overturn court rulings on their religious free-
dom mounted a campaign to have the
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
accept their final appeals.
Nurse Shirley Chaplin, registrar Lillian
Ladele and relationship counsellor Gary
McFarlane lost their appeals to the ECHR in
January and now want the courts Grand
Chamber to reconsider their cases.
Ms Chaplin was barred from wearing a
cross at work, Ms Ladele disciplined for refus-
ing to conduct gay civil union ceremonies and
Mr McFarlane fired because his employers
thought he would not provide sex therapy for
gay couples.
The resolution is only advisory, but the
assembly elects the ECHR judges and they
decide cases on legal grounds and a margin
of appreciation to account for national dif-
ferences within Europe.
In their latest appeals, Ms Chaplin and Mr
McFarlane argued that the ECHR had given
Britain too much leeway to interpret religious
freedom issues restrictively. The Grand
Chamber will decide in a few weeks whether
to accept the appeals.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of
the Christian Legal Centre in London, said
the assemblys resolution presented a practical
way forward for the cases in which the defen-
dants religious rights were wholly
undermined in the member states where the
prevailing political ideology conflicts with
that belief .
Egypts Pope Tawadros II will
meet Pope Francis in the second
week of May, the frst ofcial visit
by a Coptic Orthodox leader to
the Vatican in 40 years, writes
Michael Gunn.
Tawadros, who was enthroned
as pope of Egypts largest Church
in November 2012, is to visit the
Vatican on 11 May as part of a
European tour of Coptic parishes,
the state-run Ahram news website
said. His predecessor, Pope
Shenouda III, who died last year
aged 88, visited the Holy See to
meet Pope Paul VI in 1973,
launching dialogue between the
two Churches.
Last week, Tawadros accused
Egypts Muslim Brotherhood-led
authorities of neglecting the
countrys Christians and failing to
protect them from violence. Four
Christians and one Muslim were
killed in 5 April clashes in the town
of Khosous, north of Cairo. The
violence spread to the capitals St
Marks Cathedral after the funerals
and claimed two more lives.
In his frst interview since
emerging from seclusion,
Tawadros called ofcial accounts
of the violence a pack of lies and
said authorities were doing little
to improve the lot of Copts.
After the last incidents, we
gained some promises from the
authorities and the Government,
from some ministers, but till now
there is nothing new, the 60-year
old patriarch said.
There is a sense of
marginalisation and rejection,
which we can call social isolation.
THE FOUNDATION stone of a new Catholic
church large enough to hold a congregation of
600, which will be ideally situated in Leipzigs city
centre, was laid by the new Bishop of
Dresden-Meissen, Heiner Koch, at an open-air
service on 27 April. Leipzig lies in the
Dresden-Meissen Diocese, writes Christa
Pongratz-Lippitt.
The new church is to replace the present
Catholic church which was built in the
Communist era and located on the periphery of
the city. The old Catholic church in Leipzig, in the
Protestant heartland of Germany, was bombed in
1943 during the Second World War.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain and German
unifcation, the Leipzig parish has doubled in
size. Catholic parishes nationwide are collecting
towards paying for the new church which is
expected to cost 15 million (12.7m), a sum the
Leipzig parish cannot hope to collect on its own.
GERMANY
New Catholic church
in Protestant Leipzig
Peter Kavanagh
In Toronto
IN A PASTORAL letter read out at all 225
parishes in the archdiocese, Cardinal Thomas
Collins has urged the local city council to
reject the Ontario Lottery and Gaming
Corporations bid to build a casino in Toronto.
This discussion is an appropriate occasion
for each of us to reflect more deeply upon the
effects of gambling in our community, the
cardinal wrote. In my years of pastoral min-
istry as priest and bishop, I have become sadly
aware of the grievous suffering experienced
by individuals and families because of gam-
bling dependence.
Ontario has operated casinos for two
decades and governments describe gambling
and casinos as revenue sources and job
creators.
Cardinal Collins disputes both arguments.
Individuals, and the Government, and char-
itable organisations as well, can become
enslaved by the lure of easy gambling revenue,
and that is clearly not healthy, the cardinal
writes.
The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of
Ontario has consistently argued against the
increasing tendency of governments to rely
on gambling revenues. Gambling is inher-
ently based on illusion on promoting the
fantasy, particularly attractive to the most
vulnerable and the most desperate, that it is
an easy way to provide a quick solution to the
financial problems that they face. That is a
cruel illusion, and it is not wholesome for gov-
ernments to promote it, especially through
extensive advertising, Cardinal Collins said.
Toronto City Council is expected to deal with
the proposal in the next two weeks.
Also in Toronto, some parents are concerned
about the latest tactic of the pro-life group
the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
Centre supporters hold vigils across from pub-
lic high schools, urging students to reflect on
abortion. Complaints that the demonstrations
are in bad taste have had little effect and school
officials say they can do little since the demon-
strations are on public property.
4 May 2013
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25
ROME CANADA
Cardinal
opposes
casino plan
Pope speaks up
for Bangladesh
workers
POPE FRANCIShas called for safer and
more humane working conditions in
Bangladesh after hundreds of people were
killed in the collapse of a garment-factory
complex near the capital city of Dhaka,
writes Robert Mickens.
I express my solidarity and profound
closeness to the families mourning their
loved ones and make a forceful appeal with
all my heart that the dignity and safety of
workers might always be protected, the
Pope said on Sunday at his noontime
Regina Coeli reflections. The illegally
constructed, eight-storey Rana Plaza
collapsed on 24 April killing at least 400
people who worked inside its five garment
factories. Managers had ordered their
employees to report for work despite
warnings the previous day that the complex
was unsafe. More than 3,000 workers,
mostly between the ages of 18 and 22, were
believed to have been inside the complex.
Police arrested the Rana Plazas owner, who
had permission to build only a five-storey
building. He added the other three illegally.
Xaverian Missionary Fr Silvano Garello
said the factory collapse has sparked
protests by textile workers. In many places
there is no respect for the dignity of work,
or life itself, he told the Rome-based
Fides news agency. The workers are
treated like slaves.
(See Clare Lissaman, page 8.)
THE FORMER ARCHBISHOPof Canterburys
representative to the Holy See, Canon David
Richardson, said in an interview last week
that the manner and timing of the Vaticans
establishment of an ordinariate for disaffected
Anglicans four years ago was offensive, writes
Mark Brolly. He added that he did not expect
Pope Francis to promote the provision as
much as Benedict XVI had done. Canon
Richardson, due to return to his native
Australia in June after five years as director
of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said the for-
mer archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, and
Pope Benedict had had a very good relation-
ship, but were quite capable of talking frankly
on sources of contention between them.
He told the Australian Broadcasting
Corporations Religion and Ethics radio pro-
gramme on 24 April that the Roman Catholic
hierarchy wasnt particularly thrilled with the
look of it either, because they were going to
get a lot of married clergy working alongside
Roman Catholic clergy, who arent allowed
to get married, so it was going to put pressure
on where they didnt really need it.
As a piece of diplomacy and as a piece of
ecclesiology, and equally in the timimg, it did
strike me as offensive, Canon Richardson, a
former Anglican Dean of Adelaide and
Melbourne, said. The archbishop managed
to continue to keep good relationships with
the Roman Catholic Church in England
because of course the Vatican had to deal with
the responses from its own Church.
A DEBATEhas flared in the Brazilian
Church over how to respond to the
increasing popularity of Pentecostal
churches in the mainly Catholic country,
writes Francis McDonagh. At the April
meeting of the bishops conference it was
suggested that base communities, small
church groups in poor communities that try
to relate the Gospel to day-to-day problems,
might be the best way of countering the
drift of Catholics to Pentecostalism.
One of Brazils most famous priests, Fr
Marcello Rossi, a successful gospel singer
whose Masses draw huge congregations,
told the newspaper Folha de So Paulo: I
think the base communities are important,
but these days our people need big spaces.
The Protestants are building big centres
because that brings people in. If you stay
locked up in a base community, you forget
about prayer and just do politics.
UNITED STATES: The largest newspaper in the
state of New Jersey has called for Newark
Archbishop John Myers to resign after reporting
that a priest who admitted to abusing a child
was still active in ministry with children, writes
Michael Sean Winters.
The Star-Ledger reports that Fr Michael Fugee
admitted to molesting a teenage boy, but his
conviction was overturned on a legal
technicality. To avoid retrial, Fugee underwent
therapy and the archdiocese assured prosecutors
he would never be permitted an assignment that
would place him near children. In fact, he has
participated in several youth-centred events at St
Marys parish, including weekend retreats.
UNITED STATES: A 57-year-old physical-
education teacher in a Catholic school in
Columbus, Ohio, is fghting to get her job back
after being dismissed for being in a lesbian
relationship. Carla Hale was fred in March after
it was disclosed in an obituary of her mother
that Ms Hale had a long-term female partner.
Ms Hale taught at Bishop Watterson High
School for 19 years. A parent who saw the
obituary reportedly called school ofcials to
complain and school administrators fred Ms
Hale when she returned from her mothers
funeral.
An online petition calling for Ms Hales
reinstatement has garnered 55,000 signatures.
AUSTRALIA
Williams aide found ordinariate offensive
BRAZIL
Call for Catholic
mega-churches
26
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4 May 2013
B
enedict XVI, who resigned from the
papacy on 28 February, has finally
moved into his home inside the
Vatican gardens. He returned by helicopter
on Thursday from the papal summer
residence at Castel Gandolfo where he spent
the first two months of his retirement.
The sojourn was necessary to allow
workmen to finish remodelling a building
(reportedly to the tune of 800,000
[680,250]) that Blessed John Paul II had
designated in 1994 to be a monastery for
successive groups of contemplative nuns.
The Polish pontiff probably never imagined
that, so quickly after his death, the nunnery
would be turned into an Old Popes Home.
But Benedict XVI, now 86, made that
decision just after he announced his
resignation. He also decided that he would
be called Pope Emeritus (rather than Bishop
Emeritus of Rome) and that he would
continue wearing the white papal cassock
(albeit without a shoulder cape). Like other
times in his nearly eight-year pontificate,
the former Pope took these decisions motu
proprio that is, by his own initiative and
without any apparent consultation. He has
vowed to be hidden from the world and
his aides insist he will do nothing to try to
influence Pope Francis. But its hard to believe
that Benedicts presence in the Vatican
hes literally just over the hedgerow from his
successor will not have at least some
psychological effect on the new pontificate.
How much so may depend ultimately on
Archbishop Georg Gnswein. The 56-year-old
Black Forest prelate will return to being the
old Popes live-in, personal secretary. But
hell also continue to be prefect of the new
Popes (pontifical) household. Some might
see this as a conflict of interest; others an
example of the hermeneutic of continuity.
I
ts been three weeks since Pope Francis
named eight cardinal advisers to help
him govern the Universal Church and
reform the Roman Curia, and people at the
central bureaucracy are growing more
nervous over how that announced reform
might shape up. Theres been lots of
speculation in the press and some of the
Curia heavyweights dont like it. Its a bit
strange; the Pope has not even met with his
group of advisers yet and already the advice
is pouring down, said Archbishop Angelo
Becciu, the Vaticans Sostituto or Deputy
Secretary of State.
After having spoken with the Holy Father,
I can say right now that it is absolutely
premature to put forth any hypothesis
regarding the future reordering of the Curia,
he said in an interview on the front page of
Wednesdays LOsservatore Romano. The Holy
See press office took the unusual step of
printing the entire Q & A in its daily bulletin.
Archbishop Becciu was keen to point out
that, contrary to speculation, the Pope had
no intention of closing the Vatican Bank,
properly called the Institute for the Works
of Religion (IOR). In fact, at one of his
recent morning Masses, Pope Francis said
the IOR was important, but only up to a
point. The Sostituto claimed the Pope was
surprised that some people gave an
ominous interpretation to that off the cuff
comment, which the archbishop described
as merely a witty remark.
But not everyone is laughing. For many,
Papa Bergoglio remains an enigma. While
he has made no major personnel changes in
the Curia and has encouraged officials to
continue with their current projects, theres
a sense that he is detached from them.
Apparently, hes connected to many others
outside of Rome via his mobile phone.
P
ope Francis has caused some perplexity
for Catholics outside the Roman Curia,
too, especially after he allegedly
affirmed the ongoing investigation by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
(CDF) into the US-based Leadership
Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).
Archbishop Gerhard Mller, the CDF prefect,
announced the papal affirmation in a
statement on 15 April after talks here in
Rome with the LCWR presidency. Many
wanted to know why the sisters could not
just have a meeting with the Pope himself.
Well, they will sort of. Pope Francis is
due to meet next Wednesday with some 800
heads of female religious communities about
an hour before his weekly general audience,
and LCWRs president, Sr Florence Deacon
OSF, is expected to be among them.
The women are currently in Rome for the
Nineteenth General Assembly of the
International Union of Superiors General
(UISG), an umbrella group that includes
many heads of some 1,900 orders that
number about 700,000 religious sisters
around the world. The five-day meeting,
which takes place every three years, is
focusing this time on authority in the
Church. The theme is, It will not be so
among you (Matthew 20:26): the service of
leadership according to the Gospel.
Cardinal Joo Braz de Aviz, head of the
Congregation for Religious, was to spend
much of tomorrow with the women, while
on Tuesday, his assistant, Archbishop-elect
Jos Rodriguez Carballo OFM, was to
celebrate the concluding Mass. Given the
large group, next Wednesday mornings
meeting with Pope Francis cannot include
an in-depth discussion. But those women
superiors that get the chance to greet him
personally will have a golden opportunity to
say at least something to a fellow Religious.
Robert Mickens
Letter from Rome
Same-sex marriage rejected
The Colombian Senate has voted down a
bill to legalise same-sex marriage, rejecting
the proposal of Senator Armando
Benedetti by 51-17 on 23 April. The
president of the bishops conference,
Cardinal Rubn Salazar, had warned politi-
cians to protect traditional marriage. As
the Church, we have clearly outlined the
meaning of marriage and how equating
it to homosexual unions affects the very
foundation of society, he said on 25 April.
Bishop made terrible mistake
A former Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald
Mulkearns, had made a terrible mistake
that led to tragic consequences by allowing
convicted serial child abuser Fr Gerald
Ridsdale to continue as a priest, his suc-
cessor, Bishop Paul Bird, told the
parliamentary inquiry into the handling
of child abuse from religious and other
non-government organisations in Victoria,
south-eastern Australia, this week. Bishop
Bird and his immediate predecessor,
Bishop Peter Connors, appeared before
the inquiry on 29 April. Bishop Mulkearns,
82, led the Ballarat church from 1971-97.
Sexual exploitation increasing
Cardinal Norberto Rivera, Archbishop of
Mexico City, has said that sexual exploita-
tion is rising in Mexico. In the name of
sexual preference men and women are
prostituted and thousands of children are
sexually exploited. They have no one to
defend them, but people are profiting from
their exploitation, he said. In his homily
last Sunday in Mexico Citys cathedral, the
cardinal also said that the poverty and
hunger experienced by large numbers of
Mexicans is being politicised and simply
used as an electoral tool to win votes.
Morales accuses Church of theft
The Church has roundly rejected accusa-
tions by President Evo Morales that
bishops have been involved in the looting
of nine churches. Who holds the keys to
the churches? Its the bishops and they
know who comes and goes, so they know
where the jewels are, said Mr Morales last
week. The bishops conference said it was
very unhappy about the comments.
Canadian priest murdered in Haiti
Police in Haiti have arrested a man fol-
lowing the murder of Fr Richard Joyal,
62, on 25 April. The Canadian priest was
killed after he withdrew money from a
bank inPort-au-Prince, but the money Fr
Joyal was carrying was not stolen. He had
been in Haiti to help relocate students in
the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and
was due to return to Quebec on 3 May.
IN BRIEF
For daily news updates visit
www.thetablet.co.uk
NEWS
FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND
Church could raise millions
from Gift Aid scheme changes
Liz Dodd
THE CHURCH in England and
Wales is in line for a windfall of
millions of pounds thanks to a
new Gift Aid scheme.
Catholic parish churches will
be able to claim from HM
Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
an extra 20 per cent for each dona-
tion of up to 20 without
requiring the giver to complete a
form. It is estimated that every
church could benefit by up to
1,250 a year.
If all 2,400 Catholic churches
in England and Wales claim,
around 3 million could be
claimed each year. The money
could help dioceses cope with the
loss of thousands of pounds fol-
lowing the cut that could be
claimed in Gift Aid in 2011 from
23p to 20p in the pound.
The windfall has become pos-
sible due to the Gift Aid Small
Donations Scheme, which came
into effect last month. Under the
scheme, parish churches are for
the first time being treated as indi-
vidual charities. As such, each
church can claim from HMRC for
every 1 of a small donation.
This top-up represents the basic
rate of tax the donor is assumed
to have paid on each 1 of his
donation. For the purposes of the
scheme, a small donation is
defined as up to 20 from an
individual donor. Donations
totalling a maximum of 5,000
are eligible.
Previously the Churchs 22 dio-
ceses were each treated as
registered charities rather than
the parish churches within them.
Large dioceses such as
Westminster and Birmingham,
which each have more than 200
churches, could benefit to the tune
of hundreds of thousands of
pounds. Jim Whiston, the finance
director in the Diocese of
Middlesbrough, said that they
hope to raise 80,000 under the
new scheme. Its going to make
a difference, he said.
However, some have voiced
concerns that administrating the
scheme, a task that will fall to
parish volunteers, will prove
difficult.
Paolo Camoletto, financial
officer in the Diocese of
Westminster, said that the diocese
was aware of the scheme and had
communicated it to parishes. He
said it allows Catholic parish
churches to be treated in the same
way as Church of England
churches which have historically
been treated as separate charities.
Robert Meakin, a trustee for
the Diocese of East Anglia and
partner at charity lawyers Stone
King, said that the change was
good news for the Catholic
Church. The scheme took into
account the peculiar structure of
the Catholic Church which has 22
diocesan charities administering
parish churches which are not
constituted as a separate charities,
he said. If the scheme only
allowed charities to claim then
the Catholic Church would have
been prejudiced (only having 22
diocesan charities) so it allowed
each charity to make a claim in
respect of each and every com-
munity building which it owns
which in the Catholic Church
opens the scheme up to approx-
imately 2,500 parish churches.
HMRC said that it hoped the
new scheme, which was agreed in
consultation with representatives
of the Catholic Church, would
make it easier for small charities
to claim top-up payments. It said
that in the past, churches found
it difficult to claim gift aid, because
collection donations might be too
small to warrant a Gift Aid
declaration.
Kenny plans reform of Irish abortion law
THE IRISH Government has
announced plans to bring forward
legislation for abortion for the first
time in the countrys history, writes
Sarah Mac Donald.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny
says the new law would clarify for
doctors the circumstances in
which they can carry out a termin -
ation when a womans life is at
risk. But he told a press conference
this week that the bill would not
change the countrys law uphold-
ing the right to life of the unborn.
The move comes after the death
of Savita Halappanavar last
October in a Galway hospital, who
was refused an abortion. Doctors
had opted not to end the 17-week
pregnancy because they detected
a foetal heartbeat. The woman
later died of septic shock and an
inquest gave a verdict of death by
medical misadventure.
The legislation, if passed, would
allow for a termination following
an assessment from two doctors.
The legislation also provides for
abortion where a pregnant
woman cites suicide as a risk. A
panel of three consultants, includ-
ing two psychiatrists, would need
to agree unanimously that she is
suicidal because of her pregnancy.
Currently the Irish constitution
bans abortion, although in 1992
the Supreme Court ruled that
abortion was legal if a mothers
life was at risk, including by
suicide. The new legislation effec-
tively ratifies that ruling. The
Government has also come under
pressure to legislate for abortion
following a European Court ruling
that found a woman in remission
from cancer should not have been
forced to travel overseas for an
abortion. The bill does provide for
a conscientious objection among
doctors and nurses. However, no
institution will be able to refuse
to provide a lawful termination
to a woman on grounds of con-
scientious objection.
THE ELECTIONof Pope
Francis has given a boost to
Anglican-Catholic relations,
according to a leading
ecumenical figure, writes
Christopher Lamb.
The Bishop of Guildford,
Christopher Hill, chairman of
the Church of Englands Council
for Christian Unity, said the
Popes emphasis on being the
Bishop of Rome was extremely
helpful for ecumenical relations.
The bishop is also a member
of the Anglican Roman Catholic
International Commission
(Arcic) which is meeting this
week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This is the third meeting of
the third phase of Arcic, which
is examining the local and
worldwide Church, and how
ethical decisions are made at
these levels.
In an interview with Vatican
Radio, Bishop Hill said: The
new emphasis on the Bishop of
Rome is so congenial
ecumenically, and helpful, it cant
help but make a big difference
in the long run. He said it
showed that there is not just one
bishop ruling over the whole
Church although he accepted a
primatial role for the Pope.
He said the meeting in Rio
will have a new feel because of
Pope Francis, adding: Its like a
horizon where you cant see it
but there is a glimmer through
the mist.
Mgr Mark Langham, who
serves as Catholic co-secretary
for Arcic III, said that despite
the real problems that exist
between Catholics and
Anglicans, there was a feeling of
a new beginning. He added
that Pope Francis remarks on
being Bishop of Rome echoed
an earlier Arcic document on
authority. Mgr Langham, who
works at the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity,
said the meeting is looking
forward to an agreed statement.
Francis credited
with giving
boost to
ecumenism
4 May 2013
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28
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Sam Adams
A NEW POLL has revealed that almost half
of practising Catholics support legalisation
for assisted suicide.
Forty-four per cent of respondents to a
YouGov survey who identified themselves as
actively participating Catholics said they would
support a change in the law to allow close
friends and relatives of those suffering from
incurable diseases to help them commit
suicide. Forty-two per cent opposed it.
A majority (56 per cent) of those who iden-
tified themselves as Catholic whether active
or not also said they would support a change
in the law.
Support among Anglicans was even more
pronounced with 72 per cent backing legal-
isation, while majorities of people of other
faiths, including Jews, Sikhs and Methodists,
were also in favour.
Overall, nearly three-quarters (70 per cent)
of the 4,437 people who took part in the poll
which was commissioned for this weeks
Westminster Faith Debate on assisted dying
including those of no faith, said they supported
the legalisation of assisted suicide, with only
16 per cent opposing it.
A majority of those opposed to a change in
the law (59 per cent) said they did so because
of concerns for vulnerable people who could
be, or feel, pressured to die.
A third of respondents who supported a
change in the law said they did so mainly
because they believe the NHS and welfare
systems cannot provide decent end-of-life
care for the terminally ill.
Christians voice support for assisted dying
DUBLIN: The Supreme Court
in Ireland has ruled that there
is no constitutional right to die
or to be assisted to die in a
challenge brought by a
terminally ill woman, writes
Sarah Mac Donald.
The ruling by the seven judges
of Irelands highest court
means the ban on assisted
suicide remains. However,
Chief Justice Mrs Susan
Denham said lawmakers could
introduce legislation, with
appropriate safeguards, to
deal with tragic cases like that
of 59-year-old Marie Fleming,
who is terminally ill
with multiple sclerosis.
The judges noted that
similar cases had been brought
tothe European Court of Human
Rights and in the UK had been
unsuccessful. The European
Court ruled it was up to each
state to decide whether to
introduce assisted suicide.
4 May 2013
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29
We are committed to working for
a more human future through
education, healthcare, social and
cultural activities.
We draw our inspiration from the
life of the early Christians who were
deeply imbued with the Spirit of Jesus.
We wear no distinguishing sign,
and live either alone, in our family
or in a community.
We welcome enquiries from
single women.
Further information from Daughters
of the Heart of Mary, 41 Murray Road,
Wimbledon, London SW19 4PD.
Tel.0208 946 3564
International Religious
Congregation
Daughters of the Heart of Mary
Sam Adams
THE EQUALITY and Human Rights
Commission (EHRC) is wrong to treat every
belief as equal and identical, according to the
Bishop of Portsmouth.
In a letter to the commission in response
to its recent guidance on religion and belief
in the workplace, Bishop Philip Egan claimed
the document contains a philosophical flaw
in that it fails to differentiate adequately or
robustly between what constitutes a religion
and what constitutes a lifestyle or moral con-
viction.
He said the result of this is that beliefs like
vegetarianism, environmentalism, and even
having a beard, become equated with the
great religions of Judaism, Hinduism, Islam
and Christianity.
The document is based on the thesis that
every religion or belief must be treated as
absolutely equal and identical, rather than
respected as essentially different and com-
plementary, he said. In other words, a
totalitarian or absolutist concept of equality
is at work.
Bishop Egan said this meant minority reli-
gions such as Druidism would be treated dis-
proportionately, diluting the influence of
Christianity what he described as the religion
of the majority - in any policymaking, and in
the process subvert the core of Britains
national culture.
Bishop Egan said Britain is a Christian
nation not just because of the number of
adherents to the faith but more importantly
because of the self-evident Christian patri-
mony of our laws, institutions, social mores
and traditions. He said this Christian heritage
was even reflected in the secular values
espoused by the EHRC, such as respect, dig-
nity and freedom of belief.
He warned that Catholics fear the dicta-
torship of relativism that comes when
governments impose ethical guidelines and
patterns of behaviour that are not demon-
strably derived from the natural law and right
reason. We believe that governments and
policymakers ought to foster the traditional
religious identity of our culture our
Christian patrimony, said Bishop Egan. This
will truly assist greater social cohesion, and
the very respect and equality that the EHRC
espouses.
THE CATHOLIC Education Service of
England and Wales (CES) is working with
the Government to find ways for church
schools to provide leadership for failing sec-
ondaries and primaries, writes Sam Adams.
Catholic schools already act as sponsors
for community schools, including academies,
but are prevented from entering into closer
hard federations in which maintained
schools operate under a single governing
body or multi-academy trusts.
Paul Barber, director of the CES, told The
Tablet he wants to give Catholic schools a
greater range of options for entering into
closer partnerships with secular schools.
There are one or two particular arrange-
ments that are more difficult [for Catholic
schools to enter into with secular schools]
and we want to look into minor changes to
facilitate this, he said.
Some of them would only be available if
the [non-faith school] changes into a
Catholic school too. The intention is to
increase the range of options available to
local partners where there is a wish for a
high-performing Catholic school to assist
another local school, but without either the
Catholic school or that other school
losing its identity or changing its existing
character.
The CES is now working with the
Department for Education to find ways of
making this happen.
Catholic schools already provide leadership
for secular schools. An example of this is the
partnership between the high-achieving
Coloma Convent Girls School in Croydon,
south London, and the Quest Academy,
which was created out of the former Selsdon
High School.
Maureen Martin, headteacher of Coloma
Convent Girls School, is executive principal
of the academy, which is overseen by the
Coloma Trust, through the Congregation of
the Daughters of Mary and Joseph.
The Government favours closer partner-
ships between non-faith and Catholic
schools which are significantly more likely
to be ranked as good or outstanding by the
schools inspector, Ofsted.
Martin austerity warning
Children in Ireland are going hungry due to
the Governments austerity measures, the
Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has
warned. In an address to the Fordham Centre
of Religion and Culture in New York, he said
that public spending cuts introduced in
Ireland in response to the economic crisis
were bringing the country to a social breaking
point.
Nichols praises work of order
The Archbishop of Westminster praised the
charitable work of the Order of Malta during
a Mass to celebrate the 900th anniversary of
a papal bull putting the group under the pro-
tection of the Holy See. During a homily at
Westminster Cathedral last Sunday, Vincent
Nichols praised the marvellous work of the
British branch of the order in looking after
the sick and elderly and helping the poor. He
said that despite challenges, setbacks,
vicissitudes, the worldwide order had survived.
Catholics beaten in church debate
Catholic speakers have lost a high-profile
debate on the future of the Church. The the-
ologian Fr James Alison and Catholic
journalist Peter Stanford opposed the motion:
The Catholic Church is Beyond Redemption:
Pope Francis Cannot Save It, in a debate
hosted by Intelligence Squared at Sadlers
Wells Theatre in London, last week. Fifty-
five per cent of voters backed the motion while
30 per cent opposed it. The results were an
improvement on an Intelligence Squared
debate on whether the Church is a force for
good in the world in 2009, in which the
Catholic speakers were overwhelmingly
defeated.
IN BRIEF
Egan attacks totalitarian
concept of equality
Leadership plan for failing secular schools
The Archbishops of
Westminster and Canterbury
have used their frst joint
statement to condemn the
ongoing violence in Syria.
Archbishops Vincent Nichols
and Justin Welby said that
escalating violence had torn
Syria apart.
They condemned in
particular the kidnapping last
week of two Orthodox bishops
of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios
Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul
Yazigi. In a statement, they
said they would continue to
pray for the people of Syria
and for an end to violence.
Brian Morton
In Glasgow
THE ARCHBISHOPof Glasgow met last week
with the prefect of the Congregation for
Bishops in Rome to discuss the future of the
Church in Scotland following the resignation
of Cardinal Keith OBrien.
Archbishop Philip Tartaglia was in Rome
to carry out a routine visitation of the Pontifical
Scots College but while there he met Cardinal
Marc Ouellet, who is in charge of the Vatican
dicastery which oversees the appointments
of bishops.
A church spokesman in Scotland confirmed:
Archbishop Tartaglia did meet Cardinal
Ouellet during the course of his recent visit
to Rome; however, the contents of their con-
versation remain private. It is understood
that they discussed the number of dioceses
in Scotland that need new bishops.
Currently, five out of eight dioceses in
Scotland are either vacant, headed by a bishop
past the age of 75 or, in the case of Dunkeld,
have a bishop whose retirement has been
accepted due to ill health.
Recent press reports suggested the resig-
nation of Cardinal OBrien following
allegations of sexual impropriety, and the sub-
sequent furore, have led to a slowdown in
episcopal appointments. It is understood that
no appointments will be made until the
Vatican is satisfied there are no further alle-
gations against the cardinal, who stepped
down after admitting personal failings and
that his sexual conduct had fallen below that
which was expected of a priest, bishop and
cardinal.
But sources close to the Church in Scotland
have said that there is no ongoing investigation
into Cardinal OBrien, whose situation is sub-
ject to a watching brief .
This week the cardinal was photographed
moving boxes into his planned retirement
home in Dunbar. It is a church-owned prop-
erty close to the parish of Our Lady of the
Waves.
Cardinal OBrien, 75, had his resignation
as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh
accepted early by Pope Benedict XVI in
February. This followed allegations of inap-
propriate sexual conduct made by four men,
three of them priests.
30
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THE TABLET
|
4 May 2013
50 YEARS AGO
Tomorrow (Sunday) sees the consecration
of the Berlin Church of Our Lady, Queen
of Martyrs Regina Martyrum which
has been built on a site close to where the
gallows of Pltzensee Prison once stood.
It was here that many victims of the Nazi
regime were executed and the church is
intended as a memorial to all those who
lost their lives under Hitler for the sake of
freedom of belief and of conscience ... In
front of a modern piet by Fritz Konig there
are three tombstones. The central one bears
the inscription: To all martyrs who were
refused burial. To all martyrs whose graves
are unknown. The tombs to right and left
are for two Berliners chosen to represent
all their fellow-victims. One is Dr Erich
Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action in
the Diocese of Berlin from 1928 until his
death on 30 June, 1934, the night of the
long knives: he was killed on Goerings
orders, and his death was officially described
as suicide. His ashes are being solemnly
transferred to their new resting place
tonight (Saturday). The other is Provost
Bernhard Lichtenberg, a priest who in 1935
had personally protested to Goering as soon
as he heard of the horrors being perpetrated
in the concentration camp at Esterwege
On 23 October, 1941, he was arrested by
the Gestapo, and after his trial he was sen-
tenced to two years imprisonment: when
he had served this term he was regarded
as such a threat to public security that he
was transferred to Dachau, and it was while
he was on his way there that he died.
The Tablet, 4 May 1963
100 YEARS AGO
Mr [Herbert] Samuels annual statement
on the work of the Post Office contained
many items of general interest. The revenue
from the department showed, he said, sat-
isfactory increase, except telegraphs, which
were in a stagnant state, due to the com-
petition of the telephones [Mr Samuel,
the Postmaster General,] announced a
revision of telephone rates in order that
the service might be extended and cheap-
ened. He hoped to develop the Post Office
system of annuities and life insurance by
the issue of small policies. The Post Office
contemplated laying a tube railway through
London for Post Office purposes alone.
The plans of the railway had now been
completed. The railway would run from
Paddington to Whitechapel, a distance of
six miles. The tube would be 9ft in diameter
with two tracks, and the trucks would be
run automatically without drivers. The
mails would be handled to a great extent
by automatic appliances. The capital cost
would be about 1,000,000.
The Tablet, 3 May 1913
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Tartaglia
meets Vatican
bishops chief
The chief executive of the
Irish Churchs safeguarding
body is to take on a similar
role in Australia, writes
Sarah Mac Donald.
Ian Elliott has led the National
Board for Safeguarding
Children in the Catholic Church
in Ireland (NBSCCCI) for six
years and is due to retire at the
end of next month. Mr Elliott
has confrmed that he is to
advise the Church in Australia
on safeguarding.
During his time in ofce in
Ireland, Mr Elliott has conducted
a review of the safeguarding
procedures of a number of
dioceses and religious orders.
His tenure also coincided with
the publishing of government-
commissioned reports giving
harrowing details of clerical
sexual abuse.
In Australia, the Catholic
Church is one of a number of
institutions being investigated
by a Royal Commission
looking into allegations of
sexual abuse of children.
The Archbishop of Dublin,
Diarmuid Martin, has paid
tribute to Mr Elliott, saying he
had made the Church a safer
place for children.
Last week a new tranche of
safeguarding reviews in
Ireland revealed very
encouraging progress in the
dioceses of Ferns, Clogher,
Galway, Elphin, Killala,
Waterford and Lismore and in
the Society of African Missions.
However, the NBSCCCI, which
conducted the audits, said that
risky behaviour was
inadequately dealt with in
Clogher and Ferns in the past.
THE BISHOP of Menevia has issued a plea
for unity to parishioners after the Vaticans
Congregation for Clergy backed his decision
to close their church in Aberystwyth, Wales,
writes Liz Dodd.
The Vaticans intervention is the latest in a
long-running argument between the Diocese
of Menevia, which wants to demolish St
Winefrides Church, and parishioners who want
to refurbish it. The matter was brought to the
attention of the Vatican after a parishioner
appealed to the Congregation for Clergy against
the dioceses decision to close the church. But
the congregation ruled in favour of the Bishop
of Menevias argument that the church building
is unsafe and beyond repair. They said his deci-
sion was reasonable and just.
The Bishop of Menevia communicated the
decision in a pastoral letter to the parishes of
Aberystwyth and Aberaeron, in West Wales.
He said that he understood parishioners
reluctance to leave the building but promised
that they would be involved in the creation
of a new church.
I appeal to all parishioners that, for the
good of the Church and the parish, everyone
looks forward to a more positive future, he
said. He continued: It is a wrench to consider
leaving a much loved St Winefrides after so
long. But I am convinced that you will come
to love your new church [] You will make
it your own. That is right and just.
The decision came as members of the Save
Our St Winefrides Committee said they
planned to submit an alternative planning
application to Ceredigion Council.
Holy See backs plan to close church
4 May 2013
|
THE TABLET
|
31
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ST STEPHENS HOUSE
An Anglican Theological College and Permanent
Private Hall of the University of Oxford
Appointment of Senior Tutor &
Tutor in New Testament Studies
St Stephens House seeks to appoint a
Senior Tutor & Tutor in New Testament Studies
from October 2013.
Closing date for applications: 10 May
Interview date: 21 May
A detailed job description and application form for
the post are available from
The College Secretary, St Stephens House
16 Marston Street, Oxford OX4 1JX
Tel: 01865 613500
Email: enquiries@ssho.ox.ac.uk
LEEDS CHURCH INSTITUTE
DIRECTOR
NJC POINT 42 to 46 - 35,430 to 38,961
We seek a person of vision to work with the Council and lead the staf team
in promoting the interpretation of the gospel for the city of Leeds.
As the Director you will be responsible for:
Managing the Institute including a small staf team and a
multi-purpose building
Developing the work with churches and other faith communities
through educating, training, resourcing and representing
Organising and promoting a programme of educational activities
Working in partnership with others, you will be committed to church
engagement in society, have management and training experience, have
knowledge of recent developments in relation to faith communities and so-
cial inclusion, have some theological training, be a member of a Christian
church and be committed to working ecumenically and with other faiths.
Te Church Institute is a leading Christian foundation in Leeds. It houses
a library, conference/training facility and a range of other organisations in
its newly-refurbished city centre building.
Closing date: 31 May 2013
Interviews: Tursday 27 June 2013 (this date cannot be changed)
For further details contact:
Te Administration & Finance Manager by email:
haydn@leedschurchinstitute.org
Classified 4 May.indd 31 30/04/2013 09:23
32
|
THE TABLET
|
4 May 2013
Volume 267 No. 8996 ISSN: 0039 8837
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CALENDAR
Sunday 5 May:
Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year C)
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WALKING DOWN the
old cart lane and then on
to the fields, I was paying
so little attention to the
world that I almost
stepped on one of its miracles. What else could
you call the yellow wagtail?
Yes, other birds migrate across continents
to get here too, but then theyre built for jour-
neying. The swallow, swift and Arctic tern are
not only a perfection of aerodynamics, but
also they live most of the year on the wing,
virtually their entire lives in the case of the
swift; in contrast, their fellow voyager, the
yellow wagtail, spends the bulk of its life
walking on the ground.
Hunkering down, I watched the little bird
Glimpses of Eden
pottering around me. That long, fluttering
tail and dancers step, which makes it able
to dart under cattle hooves to snatch insects,
can surely only be a hindrance in crossing
oceans? Built for flying in field-sized
undulations, having just arrived from West
Africa no wonder hes so exhausted that he
cant even be bothered to get out of the way
of the human clodhopper. A voyage akin to
you or me crossing open seas in a public-park
rowing boat. At last the new arrival wandered
away to be joined by a pied wagtail. The black-
and-white plumage of the annual resident
deepens the gold of the light-coloured sum-
mer visitor so that the true miracle is
revealed: Africa has arrived.
Jonathan Tulloch
ROSE PRINCE
THE ETHICAL KITCHEN
Jam busters
WHEN THE British use the word jam in the
context of, say, a strawberry preserve, they mean
it. Immoveable, immortal, resolute jam; a boil-
ing of fruit and sugar that sets to a steadfast
jelly. To the British jam maker, all that
seems to matter is the set, wrote Nigel Slater
in Eating for England. We are obsessed with
getting the jam so stiff you could turn the jar
upside down and the contents stay put.
Quite that is my memory of the berry jams
of summers past, and not only is the fruit set
firmly in the sugar, the sugar content is set in
British law that is, if you want to write the
word jam on the pot. One cant help a slight
shrug. Thats the British for you: they have
offices of people who govern the content of
jam jars.
But all of this is to overuse a word set
to change. The Ministry of Jam (Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
would like to lower the sugar content in jam,
which is if you are new to jam-making the
agent responsible for a firm set. The law says
jam is not jam unless it contains 60 per cent
sugar, and the intention is to lower this to 50
per cent.
Less sugar means a runnier jam, which is
also much better for us, says the ministry, con-
scious of the cost of the current obesity
epidemic in Britain. It will put our jams on
a par with continental fruit preserves, which
have a habit of falling disobediently off the
toast.
These jams are also fruitier; more delicious
to some, including myself and also Nigel Slater,
who likes the way French jams slide sexily
off the scone in a cream tea while our jams
are prim. To others they are a disgrace, and
possibly a health-and-safety issue, since less
sugar means moulds can grow. The latter part
I cant worry about. When we were children,
my mother would scoop mould off the sur-
face of jam before spreading it on our toast,
and I do the same. In fact I regard mould as
a good sign.
Lets scroll back a little to understand what
this is really all about, and that is the uncom-
fortable fact that for the bigger players in the
jam business, sugar costs less than fruit.
Increase the fruit content by 10 per cent per
pot and profitability is going to be a problem.
And I am fond of fruity jam. My mother
always made strawberry and raspberry jams
by macerating the fruit with the sugar (50:50
ratio) then giving them a quick boil. This makes
a swifter flowing jam, not the rush-hour, grid-
locked variety.
Do keep it in the fridge, and dont make
hundreds of pots just a few will see you
through.
Quick berry jam
Makes approximately 900g jam to fill two
average jam jars
450g strawberries or other berries
(raspberries, blackcurrants, tayberries etc.)
450g preserving sugar (or granulated with two
tablespoons pectin)
vanilla pod, split
Sterilise the jam jars with boiling water.
Put the berries in a bowl and cover with the
sugar (and pectin if using). Bury the vanilla
pod under the macerating fruit. Leave for
several hours or overnight (the fruit will
become mushy and liquid), then transfer to
a stainless-steel pan. Bring very slowly to the
boil then boil fast for 15 minutes. Transfer to
the jars, place a waxed paper disc on the
surface of the jam, then leave to (nearly) set.
Cover and store.
TABLETCare
INSIDE | Music therapy for the aged | Care decisions | Recording memories
A TABLET SUPPLEMENT ON ELDERLY LIVING CHOICES MAY 2013
4 May 2013
|
TABLET Care
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s1
to the latter group, it has been possible to
build three state-of the-art care homes for
the former. Sr Mary Thomas is the woman
whose bold inspiration brought this mutually
supportive community about, and who
masterminds its continuing development.
A soft-spoken, gentle Irish nun, born into
the middle of a large Tipperary family in the
1940s, she has recently been awarded an MBE.
She had some idea that it might happen,
when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-OConnor
visited to say Mass. He told me I should get
something for all of this, but I said no, no. I
didnt want it. But now, well, its very nice,
not just for me but for the whole community.
I was pleasantly surprised by how everyone
the sisters obviously, but the staff, and
people living in the village, and the care
homes seemed to be delighted.
S
t Georges Park is strangely hard to
leave. High on the South Downs, near
the pretty village of Ditchling, it looks
like a clever childs drawing of an ideal
community. It has an almost magnetic allure.
Drive in, and you realise the scale of the
place. The sweeping grounds, with their
lakes, hills and peaceful farmland, resemble
the demesne of a stately home and, in a way,
thats what it is. But this is not a place for
tourists to visit, nor for landed gentry to
inhabit. It is designed and run for two
different kinds of people: the elderly who
need nursing care, and those for whom a
completely independent life has become just
a little too difficult, but who need
somewhere of their own to call home.
The really inspired thing is that by selling
long leases on comfortable, new apartments
So they should be. This is what honours
should be about, for Sr Thomas is a
remarkable story. Educated by the
Presentation Sisters, she had at first no
notion of becoming a nun. She took a job in
an electrical firm selling records and
televisions, but I found that the social scene
didnt appeal to me much. I got tired of it, and
I happened to say to a priest friend of ours, I
think Ill be a nun. He recommended the
Augustinians, so she went to try it out and
never looked back. Ive always enjoyed
looking after elderly people, she says. Its
stimulating work, and very rewarding. I like
whatever little difference you make to their
life, new ways to make sure that they are
given choices, and care, and dignity. And
that people have a voice: obviously, thats
paramount. Its very important to know
peoples background, what they like and,
more importantly, what they dont like.
She came to St Georges when she was 21
and trained first in mental nursing, and then
in general nursing. St Georges was very
different then, a huge institution built in the
1860s for the mentally ill. In those days, such
people were locked away: nobody had any
idea what went on in the big house on the
hill. Change came about gradually. At first
there were enough sisters to do everything:
the laundry, the cooking, the caring. But the
numbers began falling, until today there are
20, and no new vocations. Sr Thomas
explains this as not so much a rejection of
religion as a real change in society: Years ago,
a lot of people entered the priesthood and
the religious life. These days, young people
have so many options available to them:
university, travelling, seeing the world. And
often they give their time and energy for a
year or two, to good causes.
Gradually the sisters started employing
people, not just a gardener or a farmer, but
care assistants and nurses. And that led to
the formation of a management team. The
profile was changing, there were not so
many young residents, far more of the
elderly. The old building was not suited to
these new circumstances. More hoists were
needed, more lifts, more wheelchairs, and it
was not compatible with such changes: parts
were having to be closed down.
In the 1990s, Sr Thomas was appointed
superior. She held a meeting to decide what
was to be done. Should they give up, or
should they carry on in a different way? It
was very clear that the sisters wanted to
continue the work they were doing, to carry
A community of Augustinian nuns once ran a vast care home for the
mentally ill in East Sussex. Now their superior has been awarded the
MBE for transforming the home into a retirement village that can
provide a variety of types of accommodation and care for elderly
people. Sr Mary Thomas told Sue Gaisford how she did it
(Continued on page s2.)
Age of
independence
Sr Mary Thomas poses
behind the controls
of an earth mover at
St Georges Park
8
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TABLET Care
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4 May 2013
TABLET Care
on caring for people. So we began looking at
the land and seeing what could be done with
it. We had the space, 250 acres, but we didnt
have money to build new homes, even for the
people who already lived here. I think we also
felt that we just looked after the elderly, the
frail, the mentally ill at one level. Beyond
that, there were no facilities. So we invited
architects to come, and the concept of the
care village evolved.
This was the big moment. They decided to
offer facilities to more people. The enabling
development transpired, and we went
forward for planning permission to build the
apartments, then to sell the leaseholds, and
then to build the care homes. So, you sell,
then you build, then you sell again.
The idea is that you buy the apartment and
pay a service charge to cover the excellent
restaurant, the library, the shop, the gym,
the hairdresser, and the popular allotments
and a minibus to take you shopping, or to
the theatre or wherever you want to go. You
have security, and stability, but you also have
your freedom. The residents, like those in
the care homes, are funded partly privately,
partly by social services: there is no sense of
it being run solely for the well-heeled. The
oldest buildings are the convent itself, and
the chapel: Quite a few people come to daily
Mass there, and Mass is also celebrated in
the care homes, where people can receive
time goes by, they find that they like a bit of
company after all, and they begin to socialise.
Although you have to be 60-plus to buy an
apartment, and the 180 care-home residents
tend to be even older, there is no lack of
young people about the place. Not just staff,
but children. We have guest apartments, if
families want to stay there, rather than in
their relatives apartments. At weekends, or
in school holidays, there are loads of children
around. The grounds are very attractive,
which is a great advantage. They can take
their relatives out, walking or in a wheelchair;
they can feed the ducks, or go down to the
farm and see the animals. Weve all sorts
here not just sheep, ducks and rabbits but
alpacas, Highland cattle and water buffalo!
Or sometimes they just book a table in the
restaurant and have a day out. The car parks
are full all the time, every time of day.
Sr Thomas is a serene and welcoming
woman, but her energy is undimmed. She
has no thoughts of retirement, and she is
always planning. Last year, we bought these
special raised flower beds. A lot of people
love gardening, and this way they can grow
their own vegetables and flowers. And we
have loads of entertainments. Its good fun,
you know.
It certainly is. No wonder it feels hard to
leave.
ISue Gaisford is a freelance journalist.
Communion on a daily basis. A lot of people
come to us for that reason.
The order runs another care home at
Danehill, East Sussex, and another at Princes
Risborough, in Buckinghamshire. But the
real innovation is the village at St Georges.
We also have our own domiciliary care
agency, run by Sr Miriam. So if people inthe
apartments need assistance with cleaning,
help to get up in the morning or to go to the
restaurant they can stay on in the
apartments. And then, if they need respite
care, or are not feeling well, they have priority
to move into the care home, instead of
having to move off the site. And the husband,
or the wife, can stay on, and visit their
partner easily.
There are no aggressive security barriers,
and the top gate is always open, but there is
a concierge 24 hours a day, based in the
central Maes Court named after the Rev.
Canon Peter John Maes who founded the
Augustinian Order in Bruges, Belgium, in
1842 and devoted his life to caring for the
mentally ill and available if anyone needs
help in the night. The real security is the
comfort of being looked after, in familiar
surroundings. We discussed the fact that
fewer people nowadays are taken in by their
own families, but as Sr Thomas points out,
there is another side to this: Sometimes
people come in, and the family tells us that
they want to be on their own, but often, as
(Continued from page s1.)
M
uriel, 79, listens earnestly when you
ask her questions. Do you live with
your daughter Elizabeth? Yes.
Elizabeth, wearing a pained smile,
intervenes: No, mum.
How many children do you have? Four
or five. Elizabeth clears the matter up: Four.
And how old are you? Umm
Mother and daughter sit in a circle of
bucket chairs in a church hall in St Albans,
attending a session of Singing for the Brain,
a music therapy-style group run by the
Alzheimers Society. Here people with the
condition and their carers can come for an
hour a week to take part and get a break.
The groups leader, Jill Dean, takes the group
of around 30 through vocal exercises, basic
physical exercises and feel-good old
favourites such as Gracie Fields Sing As We
Go. During Singing in the Rain, Dean
reaches out a hand to a woman who is
staring vacantly; she elegantly gets up and
they ballroom-dance the whole number.
Once that ends, the woman carries on
dancing by herself.
Its the highlight of the week, explains
Elizabeth, a mother of three who works as
cabin crew for an airline. Mum didnt like to
come out but for this shell have a bath, get
dressed and put lipstick on. Muriels
primary carer, her husband, died six days
before we met, yet Elizabeth still prioritised
attending the session. Its nice to have
something positive to share with Mum. In
the rest of the illness I struggle to see
anything positive. Since coming here, weve
started singing more at home even
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Its
therapeutic for everyone. That includes
Elizabeth, her brother and godmother who
all help look after Muriel and argue over
whose turn it is to bring her to the sessions.
I ask Elizabeth what work Muriel used to
do. She got an MBE, later a CBE, for
political and public services, Muriel pipes
up unprompted: The Queen was so nice.
Dean says Singing for the Brain is
designed for people with dementia and their
carers, and aims to boost the confidence of
both: people with dementia, frequently
needing help with the most basic of tasks,
Tunes that
strike a deeper
chord
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find at the session something they can join
in with, and carers see the person (often a
much-loved spouse or a parent) singing all
the words to a song and glimpse them
becoming if temporarily more engaged
with those around them.
Dean points out a woman in a wheelchair
who arrived with a look of panic on her face,
and while the singing goes on around her,
visibly relaxes and joins in. We notice that
people who turn up reluctant to be here
leave in a happier mood, even if theyve
forgotten the session by the time theyre
helped into their car. Most at the session are
over the age of 75 but at least three in the
group are in their late fifties. The Alzheimers
Society says there are 800,000 people with
dementia in the UK (62 per cent with
Alzheimers, 17 per cent with vascular
dementia, and the rest with other forms).
The charity believes one in three people over
65 will develop some form of dementia, which
is a broad term that covers damage to
cognitive ability, normally through disease
or injury.
Since its pilot session in 2003, there are
now about 200 Singing for the Brain
sessions across the country. But the St
Albans group has a waiting list of nearly a
year 17 people and their carers and Dean
admits that nationally, availability of the
groups is hit and miss, largely because the
Alzheimers Society sometimes has to secure
funding from the local authority and the
local NHS. The Governments 2009
dementia strategy noted that the provision
of therapeutic activities within care homes,
such as art therapy, music therapy or drama
therapy, may have a useful role in enabling
a good-quality social environment and the
possibility for self-expression.
One music therapy charity that doesnt
receive government money is Lost Chord,
which exists on grants from organisations
such as the National Lottery, the Esme
Fairbairn Foundation and the Rank
Foundation, and members of the public
donating, sometimes through sponsored
events. In addition, the 130 residential
homes in which it performs make a small
contribution to the charity, or if the session
takes places in a day centre, the Alzheimers
Society will contribute.
Lost Chord pays professional musicians to
give one-hour classical concerts, and
founder Helen Muller says the experience is
often an eye-opener for the performers. I
insist that singers move round their audience
and hold their hands, or that violinists get
down on their knees and serenade them.
The effect, she says, is magical. But, she says,
its not just the people with dementia who
benefit. It really helps the musicians with
their ability to communicate with people,
especially one-to-one. And as a result of
their involvement, some have gone on to
train in music therapy.
When I went to a Lost Chord session at a
care home in Isleworth, west London,
residents went from being subdued to
animated and even raucous. Soprano Jo
McGahon glided from Carmen to musicals
to wartime songs, holding residents hands
and making determined eye contact with
them. As she did so, those who were
hunched over looked up, drooped lips
smiled, feet tapped, hands clapped, some
residents swayed in time and others even
took to the floor to dance, albeit getting
assistance to be able to stand.
Thus far, there hasnt been much research
into why music therapy helps people with
dementia and therefore how to use it in the
most effective way or broaden its availability.
According to Andrea Halpern, visiting
professor of psychology at Queen Mary and
Goldsmiths, University of London, most of
the findings are anecdotal or experiential
research by music therapists rather than
scientific studies.
However, in Halperns work among
people with early-stage Alzheimers she has
noticed some patterns, such as peoples
moods improving even with very simple
tunes. She adds: Theres evidence that
deterioration of memory scores, language
scores, visual-spatial puzzles, these arent
needed for a sense of aesthetic appreciation.
Music can lift anyones mood, but for dementia patients it is
often transformative. Thats why charities are sending
singers into church halls and care homes. Abigail Frymann
has been to see music therapy in action
(Continued on page s4.)
At a session of Lost Chord, feet tapped
and hands clapped
needed for a sense of aesthetic appreciation.
The neuro-circuits that process emotional
response seem to be less vulnerable in
Alzheimers.
Halpern has done research into artistic
appreciation as well, and found that people
would rank objects in the same order of
preference two weeks apart even if they
have no conserved memory of having seen
them before. However, if she played
melodies to them and five minutes later
played some different ones, they wouldnt be
able to say which ones they had just heard.
In his 2007 book on music and neurology,
Musicophilia, neurologist Oliver Sacks
wrote that the aim of music therapy in people
with dementia is to bring to the fore the
emotions, cognitive powers, thoughts and
memories, the surviving self of the patient.
Professor Sacks, who also wrote
Awakenings, which became the inspiration
for the 1990 film, noted: Musical perception,
musical sensibility, musical emotion and
musical memory can survive long after other
forms of memory have disappeared. During
music therapy, torpid patients become alert
and aware; agitated ones become calmer.
Music, he said, can have a power beyond
anything else to restore them to themselves
and to others, at least for a while. Sacks then
goes on to give astonishing case studies of
musically gifted patients who had lost their
short-term memory and yet could still
remember songs or difficult piano pieces,
and who looked more present when they
sang or played.
Back in St Albans, Dean explains how,
after 25 years as a BBC producer, she took a
course in music therapy with the Nordoff
Robbins charity so she could use her singing
to help people with impaired memory. Her
father was reading Musicophilia and told
her: If I ever lose it, sing to me.
Some names in this article have been changed.
For more information, visit
alzheimers.org.uk/singingforthebrain, and
www.lost-chord.org.uk
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(Continued from page s3.)
R
esidential care for older people in the
UK is neither the most popular nor
the best-known of public services.
There was a rare example in February when
residential care edged into the headlines and
public consciousness for a few days with the
Coalition Governments announcement
concerning changes to the amount that
individuals are required to contribute to
their care. It proposes that, from 2015, the
means-tested threshold above which people
have to pay for their own social care will be
raised from 23,250 to 123,000, while a
new cap of 75,000 will be established on
how much would have to be paid over
anyones lifetime. But, for the most part,
when care homes are in the news, it is about
poor and even cruel treatment.
To this should be added the potential for
instability highlighted in 2011 when
Southern Cross then the largest private
provider of residential care for older
people collapsed as its complex but not
unusual financial arrangements unravelled.
Such stories augur ill for the certainty to
which people are entitled in old age. They
also seem to bolster popular and media
prejudice about hoping never to have to go
into an old peoples home.
For 30 years, politicians have watched the
residential sector change beyond recognition,
as local authorities have progressively
withdrawn from providing homes in favour
of purchasing that care from small
care-home owners, large private companies
and charities. Parallel to this, the real thrust
of preferred policy has been that, where
Care home or home care?
The conventional wisdom is that
elderly people who need care are
better off getting it in their own
homes. But Terry Philpot, an
expert on social care, says the
evidence suggests otherwise
possible, older people should be given
support in their own homes through
domiciliary care. Again, local authorities
play an increasingly small part in such
provision, turning here, too, mainly to the
private sector. This emphasis on care in ones
own home in old age also fuels the assumption
that the alternative is to be avoided at all costs.
One of the myths about residential care is
that the supposed breakdown of the family
unit, social mobility and a general loss of
community have consigned many older
people to care homes when in the past they
would have been living with their families.
In fact, the number of older people in some
kind of institutional care has been consistent
for decades: today, 4 per cent of the older
population live in long-term residential care,
a proportion roughly the same as that of
older people living in workhouses in 1892.
But who enters a care home and when
have changed. People enter at a later age
with the time of their stay falling to an
average of three years and they are far
more dependent than in the past. Half of
people with dementia are in care homes and
80 per cent of residents have dementia. A
survey of homes run by Bupa, carried out in
2011 by the Centre for Policy on Ageing,
showed that 90 per cent of residents had
high support needs, 70 per cent suffered
from incontinence and nearly half (47.6 per
cent) had severe mobility problems.
Such residential care is attractive to many,
as shown by the numbers who choose to pay
for their own care. These so-called
self-funders amounted to 43.4 per cent
(175,000 residents) paying the full costs of
their long-term care fees in 2012. But
another 14 per cent (56,000), while being
supported by councils, relied on top-ups
from family or friends. Thus, 231,000 older
residents choose to pay in full or in part from
their own or their families resources for
something that local authorities deny them.
In 1980, local authorities provided 63 per
cent of care-home places and the private
sector 17 per cent. By 2002, the positions had
been reversed and the gap widened. While
nearly half the market is composed of small
care-home owners, the largest 10 providers
have 20 per cent of that market and the
largest 20 have 28 per cent. These providers
are overwhelmingly very large private
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companies that have got larger by takeover
and merger. Beside them, even the largest
charities Anchor Trust and St John of God
lag behind in terms of both the numbers of
beds and homes, and market share.
Three decades of change have also
affected domiciliary care. There are 5,400
home-care agencies in England and Wales,
overwhelmingly in the private sector, in a
market worth 5.5 billion a year.
Domiciliary care is often perceived as the
preferable option to residential care, one
that ensures the recipient has a full and
active life. While this is undoubtedly true
for some, many people receiving this kind of
care are also severely disabled. Gone are the
days when domiciliary care staff could
provide companionship, as well as practical
assistance. What we have now is time-sheet
care: domiciliary care assistants are
allocated often tight time slots to carry out
their tasks before moving on to their next
job. Someone woken for bathing, dressing
and breakfast at 8 a.m. may have an hour
with a carer and not see another person
until that worker returns at 6 p.m. to
prepare an evening meal and put them to
bed. This leaves too many older people on
their own for most of the day. But anyway,
many of them do not even qualify for this
help because councils have progressively
raised the thresholds at which they become
eligible.
Domiciliary care also has its own
instabilities. This was illustrated last
February when 81-year-old Gloria Foster was
left at home in Surrey without medication,
food or water for nine days and later died in
hospital. Carefirst24, her care provider, was
shut down after a raid by the UK Border
Agency and she slipped through any safety
net that Surrey County Council might have
had in place. Yet local authorities actively
discourage residential care. What they are
prepared to pay to providers in fees is
notoriously low: on average, councils in
England paid 480 per week for residential
care in 2012/13, plus nursing-care fees of
about 150 a week. These rates are so low
that they threaten the livelihood of the small
businesses that make up 48 per cent of the
market. Independent research has found,
too, that average weekly fees are not enough
to meet the standards of care laid down by
the regulator, the Care Quality Commission.
This would not pay for a bed for a week in
most budget hotels.
Despite the billions spent by local
authorities keeping people in their own
homes, the results of domiciliary care,
according to Oxford Brookes Universitys
Institute of Public Care, are not easy to
define or, as it puts it, home care is poorly
served by evaluation of impact. Ironically,
for all successive governments talk of
choice for those who use social care, direct
payments money paid directly by local
councils to those who use their services so
that they can purchase their own care
cannot at present be used to pay for
residential care. But such payments can be
used to pay for domiciliary care.
For those who require it, the best
residential home offers companionship,
meals, accommodation, activities,
stimulation and care on tap, 24 hours a day.
So why is residential care viewed so
negatively when all kinds of positive but
often unrealistic expectations are placed on
domiciliary care? Des Kelly, director of the
National Care Forum, the umbrella group
for care homes run by charities, says: We
have set up a kind of false dichotomy. We
have put forward the idea of residential care
bad; care in the community good.
Whereas I see residential care as a part of
community care, providing support to
people when they need it.
Residential care for older people faces a
lack of public appreciation, media
indifference,insufficient funding, growing
demand and escalating costs, government
cuts, and the active hostility of too many
local councils. And behind this lies the
welfare of some of the countrys most
vulnerable citizens.
ITerry Philpot is the author or editor of
more than a dozen books on social care.
G
et me out of here,my mother would
often plead during her last
three-month stay in hospital. It
washer second stint during the past 12 months.
This time she went in with a chest infection and
mobility problems. At times, we wondered if she
would ever come out, writes Paul Donovan.
While in hospital she caught norovirus as well
as other infections. Then early this year when
she was due to come home, there was another
infection linked to a gall-bladder problem. In
February, Mum came out of hospital unable to
walk. It has been a steady progression downhill
over recent years. Just 18 months ago she was
reasonably self-sufficient, able to get up and
down the stairs and look after herself. Mums
health experience has almost been the opposite
of Dads: he died in 2008, after years of
dementia, and spent the last two and a half
years of his life in homes, getting specialist care.
Mentally, Mum is bright as a button, but
physically it is as though everything is shutting
down. For the rest of the family it is difficult to
know whether mental or physical deterioration
is worse. The physical problems cause Mum
incredible frustration. She has a glass
half-empty approach and does not cherish her
truly remarkable memory. A passionate
historian, at the age of 88 she can still recall dates,
places, battles and people from past centuries.
However, her physical decline has tended to
dominate her thoughts. She has lost most of her
sight and hearing in recent years. One of the big
loves of her life has been reading, so the loss of
sight remains particularly acute. Her legs are shot
through with arthritis which makes movement
difficult. She suffers from incontinence, another
annoyance for a proud lady.
Mums ability to do the most basic tasks has
reduced. When a little while ago she could make
a cup of tea and some food and put herself to
bed, now she is reduced to being hoisted from
her chair Eventually she will need 24-hour care
either at home or in a residential home.
All of these changes have meant buying in
more and more care. With Dad, the battle when
he was in residential care was to ensure he was
being treated properly, not drugged or
exploited. For Mum it has been about bringing
care into the home. This began three years ago,
with a carer coming in each morning to get her
up. She helped Mum wash, fixed breakfast, did
the washing and helped set up the day. Mum
established a good relationship with the carer
and all went well for a couple of years. However,
as Mums physical condition deteriorated, more
care was needed. When she came out after her
first stay in hospital last year, the care visits were
increased, so that a carer came in during the
afternoon and at night to help her get to bed.
As the care requirement expanded, so the
care company seemed to provide ever
less-competent staff. I spoke to one new carer
about what she did before and she explained
that two weeks earlier she had been working as
a PA. The trainingshe had received was to go
out with one of the experienced carers a couple
of times and then she was off on her own. Care
requirements of course vary, from on the one
hand getting the shopping for an elderly person
to the whole personal-care requirements of
washing, feeding and so on. The qualifications
of many carers are lacking and the regulation is
virtually non-existent. The whole experience has
taught me that commerce and care simply
cannot mix. The latest care company provides
eight carers a day, coming in four times in pairs
to see to Mums needs.
I have spent more and more time looking
after Mum. My own life has become subsumed
by the caring role. I am still managing to keep all
the different balls in the air, but around a million
people in this country have given up careers in
order to care for relatives.
Mum sees her life as going into an
ever-darker tunnel with more illnesses, more
hospital stays and eventually the end. What is
making this situation much worse for her and
her children are the shortcomings in the care
services. The danger is that the state, in seeking
to make savings across the sector, will end up
leavingthe care role increasingly to the
unsupported family of the elderly person. While
no one should resent caring for a parent who,
after all, once cared for them it would be
negligent to deny to carers the support that
they need to keep their own mind, body and
financial well-being together.
IPaul Donovan is a freelance journalist.
As the care requirement expanded, so the care
company seemed to provide ever less-competent staff
s6
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I
have just spent three years in the
company of some of the most remarkable
people in Britain. Often they are treated
by society with indifference or even
contempt all the more appalling since they,
along with their rare human qualities, are
rapidly passing from us.
I got close to a large number of them as
part of a quest to document the experiences
of the last survivors of the generation who
served Britain during the Second World
War. Far from the jaundiced stereotype often
projected by society, my encounters yielded a
life-affirming picture of the rare and mostly
unsung qualities of the oldest generation of
British people. More than 100 of them
reminisced about their experiences,
achievements, aspirations and
disappointments for a new book as the close
of their very long lives draws near.
It is astonishing to think that those who
had direct involvement with the 1939-45
conflict will soon be gone. Many of them are
quiet heroes and heroines, but the signature
modesty of their generation would forbid
them from ever proclaiming it. These
wartime survivors are at least octogenarians,
and, if they were serving adults in 1939-45,
are now well into their nineties. Soon those
who are left will be dead, and their
memories departed with them.
Great old age makes this generation rare
All their
yesterdays
in another sense, too. In his book The View
in Winter, Ronald Blythe remarks that if the
folk of Renaissance or Georgian times could
return they would be as astonished by the
number of old people in Britain as they
would by a television. In those times, not many generations ago, wrote Blythe, it was
the exception to go grey, to reach the
menopause, to retire, to become senile and
to acquire that subtle blend of voice, skin
and behavioural changes which features so
largely in our long-lived times.
Long-lived and in the case of many of
my interviewees vibrant and full of energy,
too. Among those I met, there was also
seemingly little resentment of a society that
no longer venerates the old. When I went to
see 88-year-old Richard, one of the most
distinguished railwaymen of his generation,
he met me at the station in his own car and
cooked me lunch in his neatly kept house
with well-trimmed lawns while we talked
without sentimentality about how he helped
keep the trains running during the Blitz. Yes,
his wife had died and, no, his children did
not live nearby. But he was proud of his
independence, and if he was lonely, dignity
would not permit him to let on.
Then there was Reg, 89, a former
engineer, who had witnessed the bombing of
Coventry from his back garden in 1941
before heading out fearlessly the next
morning to help get the city moving again.
He was now confined to his small modern
house on the outskirts of a Midlands new
town, where I suspect too few people
dropped by. But he still kept up with
developments in his industry and ever the
engineer delighted in showing off the
intricacies of his stair lift.
Housebound, too, was Kathleen, who still
lived in her girlhood home near
Stratford-upon-Avon. Now at 88 almost
totally blind, with her only relative more
than 100 miles away and seriously ill
himself, she could still giggle about her
The generation that
experienced the Second
World War is fast
slipping away. Here
Michael Williams, who
gathered their
memories for a new
book, pays tribute to the
remarkable men and
women he interviewed
Women cleaners at an engine shed on the
LNER during the Second World War.
Many of those who served in the war are
now well into their nineties
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wartime role as the first woman porter on
the railways in a world dominated by men.
For some, mental frailty meant the shutters
were coming down on what remained of
memory. But when you talk to Mum, you
might be surprised at what comes back, the
daughter of 92-year-old Audrey told me.
And sure enough, recollections of fearless
years as a wartime nurse came tumbling out
with astonishing vividness.
One of youngest I interviewed 82-year-old
Alf Norris defied every stereotype of the
elderly. As a boy, he was the last to be pulled
alive from the scene of the worst single
civilian disaster of the war, in which 173 died
in a crush on the steps to Bethnal Green
Tube station on 3 March 1943. He wept as
he told me the story, as vivid now as it was to
him 70 years ago. But there was no self-pity
here Alf was busy campaigning for the
erection of a memorial to the victims, and he
wasnt going to let go until it was built.
Yet people such as Alf often fail to get the
honour they deserve. Maybe this is because,
as Blythe remarks, unable to love the old,
we approach them via sentiment, duty and
an eye to our own eventual decline. We care
for them without real interest and believe
they must be unhappy because we would not
be happy to be old. Yet, contrary to the
stereotype of grumpy old men and women, a
major survey of 10,000 people carried out by
Warwick University in 2012 found that we
actually get happier when we get older,
despite a decrease in our physical abilities.
One of the happiest I encountered was
92-year-old Dick Sheen. Having trouble
locating a Dunkirk survivor, I approached
the Forces charities in vain. One breezy PR
woman told me Oh, the Dunkirk lot packed
up long ago. Then a BBC colleague
remembered Dick, a retired printer from
west Wales, who had just published his own
book of Dunkirk memories, travelling the
hundreds of miles to his old stamping
ground at Dover in the process, not seeming
to have paused for breath in a life of more
than nine decades.
I
n the course of their marriage, Alice Holt
would talk to her husband, Ken, about her
experience of the Second World War and her
terror of air raids, writes Polly Kaiser. She would
describe how she would often stay dressed at
night in case she had to make a quick dash to
the air-raid shelter. When, in later life, she
developed dementia, these fears came back
with a vengeance. When she went to live in a
care home, she would often insist on remaining
dressed at night and ready for the air-raid siren.
But her husband had alerted the care-home
staff of what to expect because he gave them
an account of Alices life including her experience
of the war and her night-time fears. If they
hadnt known the history, the staff might have
prescribed unnecessary tranquilisers to calm
Alice down.
This experience gave Ken Holt an insight:
stories can have a therapeutic value for us when
they give us an insight into ourselves, our
hopes, our fears and our dreams and we can
communicate this to others. Of course we have
been doing this for aeons. We have been
putting our prized memories into photograph
albums, or today we continue to do this using
CDs, DVDs or Facebook. But stories need to be
heard as well as told.
There is increasing evidence that we are not
alert to some of the most pressing needs of
older people. Recent reports, such as the Francis
Report into the shortcomings in care
experienced by older patients of the Mid
Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, illustrate
this all too shockingly. In her 2011 Care and
Compassionreport, Anne Abrahams, former
Health Service Ombudsman for England, reported
that there were twice as many complaints
regarding older people than there were for the
other care groups put together. According to
Abrahams, staff focused too much on clinical
conditions and too little on the person. Above
all, care for older people should be shaped not
just by their illness, but by the wider context of
their lives and relationships,she wrote.
About 800,000 people in the UK have
dementia and this number is expected to
double in the next 30 years. The Alzheimers
Society estimates that 21 million of us in the UK
know someone with dementia. This is an illness
that impairs our cognitive abilities, not just our
memory, and can gradually erode our sense of
self-esteem. In its later stages, dementia may
make it difficult for us to make sense of
ourselves and our surroundings. Ken Holts
experience with Alice brought home to him
how telling our life stories can help.
In 2004, Mr Holt and others formed an
experimental local life story network in Oldham
to promote the use of life stories in care settings.
Five years later, at a conference in York, he
shared his vision for a national network to
promote this approach. The challenge was
grasped and Mr Holt lived to see the National
Life Story Network (LSN) launched in Leeds in
2010. This is a now a network of 900 individuals
and organisations dedicated to gathering and
sharing the life stories of residents in care
homes, older hospital patients or any other an
older person being cared for in the community.
As part of its National Dementia Strategy
workforce plan, the Department of Health
launched a national training project developed
by LSN. Entitled Your Story Matters (YSM), the
programme trained 500 individuals in life story
work across the country. Demand far
outstripped the supply of places, which could
have been filled four times over. The
programme focuses on building rapport as the
basis for compassionate care, urging
participants to engage in a different quality of
conversation, one that can promote human
rights. It encourages carers to seek out
opportunities for an older person to relate their
story in the course of their everyday care.
According to Michelle Hacking of the
Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, hospital
patients have benefited hugely from the hours
spent interacting on their expert subject their
life story.Her proof? Their joy, their smiles
and their animation, when they can tell their
stories.The success of our approach is
evidenced by more trusts and organisations
commissioning our programmes. Although the
LSNs rapid development is grounded in our
work with people with dementia, it can be
applied across many settings and ages.
Not satisfied with merely anecdotal evidence,
the LSN is working with the Social Policy
Research Unit at York University as part of a
national research programme on the benefits of
life story work. We were heartened, moreover,
by this tribute given by Baroness Sally
Greengross, at the YSM celebration in the House
of Lords in November 2012: Life goes on full of
value because we understand what peoples
lives are, have been and still will be.
IPolly Kaiser is a consultant clinical
psychologist for older people in Pennine
Care NHS Foundation Trust. For more
information about the Life Story Network,
visit www.lifestorynetwork.org.uk
But this is not to pretend everyone was
full of relish. Michael, a retired solicitor, had
spent a lifetime of spare moments
cataloguing an archive of books and
documents. It was a magnificent collection,
much consulted by historians. But it had
brought him sadness, too, since his
grown-up sons were not interested, and he
planned to dispose of it bit by bit. You cant
even trust libraries to care for whole
collections these days, he told me. Better
for me to sell individual items before I die.
At least I know their value.
But this was an exception. I came away
from my journey into the country of old age,
not dispirited, but with a sense of wonder
and humility the closing words of
Shakespeares King Lear ringing in my ears:
We that are young shall never see so much.
ISteaming to Victory: how Britains railways
won the war by Michael Williams is published
by Preface Publishing, a division of Random
House, on 13 May (25).
Care for older people
should be shaped not just
by their illness, but by the
wider context of their lives
and relationships
Michelle Hacking (left) with the Life Story
Network team at the House of Lords
s8
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TABLET Care
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4 May 2013