Wild faith Mary Colwell and Austen Ivereigh: Has the pandemic renewed our relationship with nature?
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Peter Hennessy How Keir Starmer has changed the rules of engagement at Westminster
THE INTERNATIONAL 23 MAY 2020 £3.80
CATHOLIC WEEKLY www.thetablet.co.uk Est. 1840
Wild faith
Mary Colwell and Austen Ivereigh:
Has the pandemic renewed our relationship with nature?
John Wilkins on the faith and doubt of Graham Greene
Death at Dunkirk The last days of the first Catholic chaplain to be killed in action
Peter Stanford interviews Ann Patchett • Adrian Chiles celebrates football’s family values
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THE TABLET
THE INTERNATIONAL
CATHOLIC WEEKLY
FOUNDED IN 1840
T
POST-LOCKDOWN he coronavirus lockdown has coincided with and beyond the care it has for everyone whose
MENTAL HEALTH a welcome change in the public perception of vocation requires them to put themselves in harm’s
mental illness. This has in turn highlighted way for the sake of others. There is an excellent
ENDING the likelihood that underneath the
coronavirus pandemic lies a hidden psychiatric one,
Catholic Mental Health Project website supported by
the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, but it
THE which remains largely untreated. Social distancing,
isolation, and the general government message to
does not focus on the emotional wellbeing of priests as
such. More needs to be known about this issue: for
STIGMA people to “stay at home” where possible have
neutralised one of society’s main defences against
instance because parish priests are men who tend to
live alone, are they more resilient when called upon to
mental ill-health, namely the influence of other isolate themselves, or less so? How important to their
people. Being part of a group, whether in the family, emotional and spiritual wellbeing is their weekly
the parish, the local neighbourhood or the workplace, physical encounter with the parish? Without social
provides therapeutic reassurance and support. support, what happens to their prayer life?
Relationships are an essential part of being human, One long-term development, helpful in this area as
and having to conduct them at a distance is bound to in others, has been the “medicalisation” of mental
be detrimental. Social media alternatives fall some illness, which has taken away the former stigma
way short of providing an adequate substitute when a attached to it and placed it alongside other forms of
supportive touch on the hand or arm round the healthcare. But there is a down side to that too. It is a
shoulder is no longer possible. The lockdown itself has false model to suppose that “over there” are a minority
demonstrated how normal everyday activities that of people with mental illness, while “over here” are
people have always taken for granted contribute to normal sane people getting on with their lives. There
maintaining personal wellbeing. Hugs matter. is no such distance between the two. The most
Funerals, for instance, provide a well-honed and common forms of psychological unwellness – chronic
ritualised means for coping with overwhelming loneliness, lack of self-worth, body-image issues and
feelings of grief and loss. There is an immense related feeding disorders, self-harming and
bereavement deficit building up in society, particularly destructive behaviours, insomnia, addictions,
with the loss of elderly parents and grandparents. This irrational fears, obsessions and anxieties, and,
is a specific case of a more general issue, where it is especially at this time, the effects of bereavement and
difficult to make a clear distinction between trauma – are widespread throughout society.
psychological and spiritual needs. The clergy, and well Compassion for the vulnerable dictates that people
trained lay religious leaders, can make a huge must not look away when emotional distress knocks
difference when people are faced with life-changing someone’s life off course. The psychologically
challenges such as the death of someone close to them. wounded are as much the responsibility of the tribe as
An underlying question, true in religious bodies as those whose injuries and illnesses are physical. The
well as other settings, is therefore – who cares for the beginning of wisdom in this area is to realise that the
carers? A body like the Catholic Church has a special distinction is not even a valid one. Health is holistic,
duty of care towards its priests and Religious, above and affects the mind and soul as much as the body.
A
BACK TO t least two thirds of the member states of the parties, sharing every scrap of relevant scientific
SCHOOL European Union have begun to wind down advice, and striven to build a consensus.
their strict lockdown measures and allow The basis for that is there already. Parents and
INFORM, schools to start functioning again. So why
has a modest proposal from Boris Johnson’s
teachers want schools to resume as soon and as safely
as possible. But when teachers’ representatives asked
CONSULT, government for some primary schools to open their
doors from 1 June to pupils in Year One and Year Six –
for the scientific evidence behind the government’s
thinking, they were given hardly any. With this
PERSUADE roughly, five and 10-year-olds – caused such a
kerfuffle? Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as
government, just saying “trust us” does not work.
Scottish and other devolved administrations learnt
well as major local authorities in such places as about the government’s proposals from the media.
Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham, have They were neither asked nor told in advance. Equally,
resisted the move, as have the teachers’ unions and the government’s proposals for making schools safe
bodies representing head teachers. Not surprisingly, places to work were unrealistic and incoherent. A
parents are dismayed by this confusion. group of sixth-formers could have done better.
Blaming bolshie teachers is an option the Fortunately pre-adolescent children are less prone
government should have avoided, but it has allowed to serious illness from coronavirus than their elders,
this polarisation to happen. That makes a resolution though they could be transmitters of infection rather
more difficult. So far the Johnson administration has than sufferers from it. But teachers are just as
failed to cover itself with distinction, as its vulnerable as, say, nurses and doctors, bus drivers and
increasingly muddled and evasive response to the police officers, and deserve equal consideration and
coronavirus crisis has unfolded. Instead of issuing appropriate protection. The government has no
decrees from 10 Downing Street and then having to choice, therefore, but to change tactics. It likes three-
ward off a torrent of criticism – including from its own word slogans, so why not make “inform, consult,
backbenchers – it should have consulted all interested persuade” its motto for the rest of the pandemic?
2 | THE TABLET | 23 MAY 2020
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PHOTO: CNS/VATICAN MEDIA
aiStil
Pope Francis crosses St Peter’s Basilica on his way
28 to celebrate Mass at the tomb of St John Paul II on
the 100th anniversary of the late pope’s birth
COLUMNS B O O K S / PA G E 1 9
CONTENTS Simon Scott
23 MAY 2020 // VOL 274 NO. 9353 Plummer
Putin’s People: How
F E AT U R E S the KGB Took Back
Russia and Then
4 / Back to the soil Took On the West
The fragility of our agriculture has been further exposed by the coronavirus, but CATHERINE BELTON
Melanie the pandemic also brings the chance for real change / BY AUSTEN IVEREIGH
Amanda
McDonagh’s 7 / Listen to our singing planet Hopkinson
Notebook In the silence of the lockdown, city-dwellers have found consolation and
‘The Church Tazmamart: 18
connection in the sound of birdsong / BY MARY COLWELL Years in Morocco’s
has, I think,
contributed to a 8 / ‘A priest has to stay’ Secret Prison
AZIZ BINEBINE
sense of its own Eighty years ago, a Benedictine monk and chaplain to the forces was killed
redundance’ / 5 tending to the wounded and dying on the beaches of Dunkirk / BY JOHN PONTIFEX Anthony Gardner
10 / A foot in the door Sorry For Your
When Graham Greene converted to Catholicism he took Thomas as his baptismal Trouble: Stories
RICHARD FORD
name – specifying it was for Thomas the Doubter / BY JOHN WILKINS
A R T S / PAG E 2 2
12 / The Tablet Interview: Ann Patchett Painting
The novelist on how her Catholic upbringing gave her the greatest gift: the Egbert Modderman
possibility that there is something larger and deeper out there / BY PETER STANFORD JOANNA MOORHEAD
Peter Hennessy’s
The Lion and 14 / Safe passage to eternity
the Unicorn Radio
In lockdown there have been heartrending stories of people dying alone and
‘Already one Heart and Soul:
being buried hurriedly and almost unattended / BY SUE GAISFORD
senses Starmer’s Reflections
question-time on Faith in a
ascendency in Global Crisis
D.J. TAYLOR
the making’ / 6
NEWS
Music
25 / The Church in the World / News briefing I Break Horses;
26 / Vatican finances hit by pandemic Kehlani;
REGULARS Blake Mills
28 / View from Rome BRIAN MORTON
Word from
the Cloisters 16
29 / News from Britain and Ireland / News briefing
Television
Puzzles 16 30 / Plans under way for outdoor Masses I Know This
Letters 17
Much Is True
The Living Spirit 18 COVER IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK/ART_KVA LUCY LETHBRIDGE
23 MAY 2020 | THE TABLET | 3
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FEATURES / Future of agriculture
Five years on, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ is more relevant than ever. The fragility of our
agriculture, already hit by freak weather and Brexit, has been further exposed by the coronavirus,
but the pandemic also brings the chance for real change / By AUSTEN IVEREIGH
Back to the soil
needing more machines and fertilisers to
make it work.
The loss of biodioversity – nature’s inter-
locking cycles of life – is catastrophic for the
future of agriculture, and for the planet.
Rather than heal our environment, our land
(most of it farmed) pollutes it. Diesel-hungry
machinery, methane from cows and sheep
overgrazing the fields, nitrous oxides from
fertilisers – all these mean that agriculture
generates 10 per cent of the UK’s carbon diox-
ide emissions, despite employing less than
two per cent of its workforce.
THIS COULD all be reversed if the soil was
nourished. Organic matter sequesters carbon;
tillage and grazing oxidises it, releasing it
into the atmosphere. In failing to put back
into the soil the organic matter that soaks up
the water but also sequesters carbon, farming
is like a company running down its starting
capital (the land) in order to pay ever higher
dividends (the harvest), and trusting the day
Austen Ivereigh with seed of reckoning will never come. It is a symptom,
potatoes at his smallholding or microcosm, of what Laudato Si’ laments,
that we have not yet managed to adopt “a
B
circular model of production capable of pre-
EFORE THE plague was the flood. and a day with Herefordshire meadow man- serving resources for present and future
Weeks of sheeting rain on Welsh hills agers learning how to summon forth a generations”.
swelled the River Wye in February “species-rich sward” (fields, that is, not just But change is coming, triggered by climate
to its highest-ever levels, deluging of grass, but thrumming with wildflowers emergency and Brexit. The existing model,
Hereford before it crashed out downstream and insects). the result of the post-war fears for food secu-
across villages and farms on its way to Ross, What I found were big questions hovering rity, the technification of agriculture and the
dislodging blanket-clad families from urgently over UK agriculture in the light of EU subsidies, has few defenders. Yet what
washed-out houses, and topsoil from farmers’ climate change. Farming was not just in tran- should replace it is a matter of debate. How
fields. My neighbour, who has hundreds of sition but in crisis from longstanding to continue to produce plentiful cheap food
acres of wheat and potatoes, said he had never problems that the floods had brutally laid for rising populations, while turning farms
seen anything like it. But it bare. The water wasn’t being into part of the solution to the environmental
was the way things had been sucked up and stored by the challenge? And what role should the public
going, he said. The weather Francis’ watershed fields because decades of purse play?
now was ever more extreme intensive farming had
and wild, ever less what the
encyclical had denuded the land of living FROM THE 1970s, European Community sub-
climate said it should be. triggered in me an roots and organic matter that sidies – which reflected postwar national
At the time I was settling ecological conversion make up healthy soil. food security aims, including our own – rein-
with my wife into a 15-acre Decades of clearing trees forced the farming culture of the time: trees
smallholding not far from that began on for heavy machinery and ever vanished under a sea of sheep, and ever more
Hereford, mending fences on an allotment larger doses of chemical fer- land was turned over to arable production.
our own water-logged fields, tiliser to maintain ever bigger When the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
and wondering what to do yields have meant land led to scandals of overproduction and waste,
with them in the light of Laudato Si’. Francis’ stripped of plants and hedgerows, and soil it was eventually reformed in 2003. Since
watershed encyclical, which turns five this bereft of the microorganisms on which good then, through the so-called “Basic Payments
week, had triggered in me an ecological con- agriculture depends. So when the floods Scheme” administered by the British state
version that began with coaxing vegetables come, rather than the soil absorbing and stor- by Defra (the Department for Environment,
from mulched raised beds on an Oxfordshire ing the water, the water sits on the land and Food and Rural Affairs) farmers get subsidies
allotment. Now, with land and choices, I carries off the top soil, compounding the – about £230 per hectare per year – in return
needed a crash course. Driving through problem. Then, when the sun comes up, and for basic good practices. It means big farms
flooded fields, I spent four days in north Wales we have (as now) weeks without rain, the get huge sums, and small farms tiny sums.
discussing “rewilding” with conservationists, land turns to dust that sets hard as rock, Yet the biggest farms, which need subsi-
4 | THE TABLET | 23 MAY 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
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MELANIE McDONAGH’S NOTEBOOK
dising least, are also the biggest polluters –
while employing tiny numbers of people.
Dieter Helm, an Oxford economist who
The Church has, I think,
advises the government on farming policy,
describes British agriculture as a disaster. “No
contributed to a sense of
other economic activity combines such a per-
verse set of incentives, or produces so little
value for its true costs,” he says.
its own redundance
There have been attempts to use the subsidy
scheme to incentivise planet-friendly prac-
tices. Defra offers grants to encourage farmers SOMETIMES atheists put could have taken the same precautions
to put back the hedgerows and orchards their it best. The Times colum- in a church as we have been taking
grandfathers were paid to rip out. But take- nist, Matthew Parris, everywhere else.
up of the Countryside Stewardship Scheme pondering who has had a And now, what? It could be the far side
has been patchy: the grants barely cover the good and bad Covid war, of Christmas before a vaccine is available
costs, while most farmers I have spoken to ranked the Church among the losers. “Its to most people – and there’s no actual
regard the mind-numbing form-filling needed leaders, from [the Archbishop of guarantee we’ll find one. We know
to meet the government’s obsessively pre- Canterbury] down, have been feeble,” he there’s risk in every other activity; we can
scriptive conditions as a major disincentive. wrote. “They should have fought for every- take it on board in church too. Those of
one’s right to enter a tranquil and beautiful us who aren’t especially vulnerable – and
NOW BREXIT has given the government the place of worship to pray or meditate alone. elderly priests surely come into that at-
chance to rethink the whole system. The new Social distancing was always possible. The risk category – have to be allowed to take
Agriculture Bill, which last week was given Church has let down the laity.” our chances like gentlemen.
its third reading by the House of Commons That’s the view from outside and it Whitsun would be a good time to start.
and has now passed to the Lords for their sounds about right to me. He’s not just
consideration, is the biggest shake-up in talking about Anglicans, either. The same IT’LL BE interesting to see what happens
farming for generations. In the future, there goes for the Catholic Church. In defining when churches do reopen. In a brilliant
will no longer be a “basic payment” to farmers itself as a non-essential service, unlike piece in last week’s Tablet, Dr Stephen
simply for farming, but a new principle of off-licences or allotments or even a Bullivant observed that people might not
“public money for public goods”. The CAP is second-order service like garden centres return, at least not in the same numbers
to be replaced over a seven-year phased-in in the hierarchy of priorities, the Church as before. Religion is a habit like any other;
transition by the Environ mental Land has, I think, contributed to a sense of its once it’s lost, it may not be re-acquired.
Management (ELM) scheme, which will fund own redundance. While some churches I’ve got into a pleasant habit of following
landowners and farmers to do planet-friendly in Italy remained open during the crisis Mass online from Farm Street every
things such as improve soil, cut carbon emis- and churches in Germany offered actual Sunday. Recovering the sense of a Sunday
sions and increase biodiversity. services as soon as practically possible, obligation might be tricky for some.
No one I have spoken to – whether farmers those in Britain and Ireland have been
or conservationists, leavers or remainers — content to wait at the back of the queue MEANWHILE, in Bosnia, the Cardinal
disagrees with this shift, and all see it as until the Government gets round to Archbishop of Sarajevo, Vinko Puljic, has
inevitable. But what ELM will look like in saying you can come out now. celebrated Mass for the thousands of
practice, and whether small farms will die or We can’t blame the Government. At members of the Ustasa, the wartime
thrive in the new dispensation, is not yet clear. the outset of the crisis in March, the Croatian Nazi collaborators, and
Either way, farmers are already heading that bishops’ letter to priests made clear that civilians, killed by the Partisans in 1945.
way, aware of the shifts in public opinion. the initiative for closing the churches It was a replacement for the Bleiburg
(When my neighbour tells me how he plans came from them: “[Their adviser] commemorations usually held in Austria.
to protect the curlews now nesting in his fields, Professor Jim McManus [spoke] with a I do know that the Partisans’ victory
his wife laughs: “If only your grandfather senior civil servant and it was quite clear meant the killing of whole classes of
could hear you!”) the government had just not thought people – my Albanian father-in-law, who
through the issues of infection and is not Christian, recalls seeing priests, as
YET ULTIMATELY, changes in farming culture security of churches and when he made well as property owners and intellectuals,
and practice will be dictated less by govern- these points clear, they were appalled hung in the town squares in Kosovo by the
ment than by the market. Farmers produce and agreed they had made a mistake.” victorious Communists. This Mass,
food for people to eat; how people look at So from that point on churches could however, looks like associating the Church
that food, and what they are willing to pay not even remain open for private prayer. again with a movement which massacred
for it, will ultimately determine what is raised And if ever there was a time when people Jews, Serbs and gipsies and was notable
and harvested. If people embrace the kind would have welcomed the chance of even at the time for its barbarity.
of thinking that Laudato Si’ calls “integral sitting before the Blessed Sacrament in In his Mass, Archbishop Puljic
ecology” – one that sees the connection quiet it was then, especially workers at the remembered those killed in the Ustasa
between the food on the table and the pain sharp end of the crisis. We were and are concentration camp at Jasenovac as well
of the planet and its poor – it will shape what allowed exercise; that exercise could have as the Bleiburg victims and others, but
farmers do. “Today I believe we have to slow included making for a church. Most are his observation that “we owe equal
down our rate of production and consump- big enough for people to space themselves respect to every victim” isn’t what the
tion,” Pope Francis told me in our Tablet out; most parishioners are informed German bishops would
interview at Easter, “and to learn to under- enough – God knows, we’ve been told say. Their collective
stand and contemplate the natural world.” often enough – about transmission to be examination of
Will the Covid lockdown lead to a new see- conscious of the dangers of close conscience could usefully
ing, a new way of doing and being? Will we proximity, of viruses surviving on benches. be replicated in Bosnia
continue to demand (and throw away) food Certainly, people might have touched and Croatia.
that is cheap, tasteless, and nutrient-poor? surfaces that others touched, but then
Or will we, in the future, consume less food, the vulnerable, especially the elderly, Melanie McDonagh is senior writer at the
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 have been careful about taking risks. We London Evening Standard.
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 23 MAY 2020 | THE TABLET | 5
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PETER HENNESSY’S THE LION AND THE UNICORN
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
and pay more for it, glad that it is in season,
and grown locally in organic, microbe-rich
Already one senses
soil rather than imported in refrigerated con-
tainers from Kenya or Peru? Will we value
Starmer’s question-time
food more, and waste it less? Will we fear not
just for the health of ill-treated livestock, but
our health, knowing how viruses originate?
ascendency in the making
Will we give up meat, or eat only what we
have seen graze, spurning supermarkets for
smallholders whose methods are organic and In the shadow of the and the senior ministers with whom he
sustainable? Will we join bodies – coopera- pathogen, it feels almost planned the partial easing of the
tives, clubs and campaigns – that support indecent to return to lockdown. Wherever they drew the line
such farming, as Laudato Si’ suggests when crude calculations of there was – is – death either side of it.
it calls for “new forms of cooperation and political advantage. But But in the way the “Stay Alert” policy
community organisation” capable of defending the arrival of Sir Keir Starmer as Leader replaced “Stay at Home”, the manner of
small producers and local ecosystems? No of the Opposition has changed the terms its announcement and the trickling out
one bets on the demise of big-scale farms any- of trade at Westminster. I am writing this of bits of it in the press over several days
time soon, but the growing popularity of just after his second head-to-head with in advance, meant that Mr Johnson let
vegan, vegetarian and organic diets is part of Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s the consensus slip not just with Labour
a shake-up in food production that is likely Questions and already one senses a but also the leaders of the three other
to accelerate in a post-corona world. Starmer’s question-time ascendency in nations of the UK, Nicola Sturgeon
the making. especially.
AT A PRESS conference last Saturday, Fr At issue was the assessment of the risk It also led to public bafflement about
Augusto Zampini-Davies, a Vatican official of the coronavirus ripping through the what was and was not now possible or
at the heart of the Pope’s planning for that nation’s care homes that Public Health desirable for those returning to work and
world, warned of disrupted supply chains England had made in early March and their means of getting there. Mr
leading to higher food prices that will affect later changed. Starmer quoted chapter Johnson’s very serious personal
the poor, leading to more violence and conflict and verse. Johnson said he had got it encounter with Covid-19, I’m sure,
and more poverty. Covid-19 has exposed the wrong (he hadn’t). Starmer asked makes him intensely sensitive to the
fragility of our current food system, he said, Johnson to return to the Commons to dangers of a second wave and he is the
but also brings the chance for change: for rectify his error (he didn’t). recipient of much public goodwill, not
better ways to make more food while pro- PMQs have taken on a very different least for the consensual approach he
tecting ecosystems, for directing resources atmosphere too. Because of the adopted once out of intensive care and
into sustainable agriculture, and to curb food Westminster version of “social back at work. It’s hugely important that
waste and loss. For the Vatican, the choice distancing”, there are no massed ranks he gets it back and does not let it slip
has never been between feeding people and behind the leaders. Starmer is used to again. In circumstances like these, that’s
caring for the planet, but to see that both deploying a QC’s rapier in a quiet what heads of government are for.
aims can be better achieved together. courtroom; Johnson is a club wielder, a What are heads of state for? Exactly
Five years on, Laudato Si’ is even more rel- performer who draws strength from the what the Queen did the evening of Friday
evant now. Corona has ridden in on the back roars of his rank-and-file behind him. 8 May, the seventy-fifth anniversary of
of climate change, showing up the “cracks in It is also a story of two very different VE day, from Windsor Castle. A photo of
the planet we inhabit”, as the encyclical puts formations. Johnson found his niche in a her father on the left of her desk, her old
it. Whatever we do in response to those cracks, particular brand of attack journalism Auxiliary Territorial Service cap on her
our farms are on the frontline. and went on to become a successful right, she linked the two great shared
politician – neither professions in which national experiences in her person and
Austen Ivereigh is the author of Wounded care in the use of the evidence is the the solidarity and cooperation that saw
Shepherd: Pope Francis and His Struggle to main determinant of outcomes; Starmer the country through that wartime trial
Convert the Catholic Church (Henry Holt, lived and rose in a profession that lives and will see it through this one. It was
2019). From next month, he will chart his by it. only five minutes long. It will go down as
adventures putting Laudato Si’ into practice on Their temperaments, demeanours and “the streets are not empty” speech.
his small farm in an occasional Tablet column. use of language reinforce the contrast. This is how I captured my reaction in
One is naturally suited for a national my diary: “I’d been thinking a great deal
emergency with multiple complications about then [1945] and now and the duty
and requiring a mastery of fiendish of care all day. But it was the Queen’s
detail; the other deeply unsuited for it, broadcast at 9 p.m. that did it. When she
which is why it is hard to see how the reached her line on the streets are not
Prime Minister’s team will be able to empty but full of love and care, my tear
Tablet binders. prepare Johnson to be more effective ducts gave way – and I’m
The perfect way to save every Wednesday at high noon. not given to crying.”
and store your issues The second PMQs of the Johnson- It was, I think, the
Starmer era was inevitably tinged with speech of her reign – and
the sombre tragedy we are living it was suffused with
through. It was saddening for another consensus.
To order call: +44 (0)20 8748 8484 reason. It may, when taken with the
or email: plee@thetablet.co.uk Prime Minister’s address from Downing Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of
Street the previous Sunday evening, have Contemporary British History at Queen
WWW.THETABLET.CO.UK marked the end of the political Mary University of London and an
consensus that the two leaders genuinely independent crossbench peer. He is
seemed to have worked hard at. currently writing A Duty of Care: Britain
I have every sympathy with the PM Before and After Corona.
6 | THE TABLET | 23 MAY 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
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FEATURES / Urban tweeting
PHOTOS: PA/SULUPRESS.DE, TORSTEN SUKRO
In the middle of the sadness of the coronavirus pandemic and
the silence of the lockdown, city-dwellers have found consolation
and connection in the sound of birdsong / By MARY COLWELL
Listen to our
singing planet
T
HE DAWN chorus of the lockdown turn heavenwards. This workhorse of the skies
flows in through open windows. tells us a very different story. Its tale is of
Suddenly, an atmosphere that is usu- abundance, then loss and now recovery. To
ally dulled by the humdrum of hear and savour its soul cries is to be reminded
working life is vibrating with cadences of joy. of our hold over the planet. Once common
The liquid-gold song of a blackbird is a across Britain it was persecuted to virtual
warm bed of thoughtful phrases; he is a black- extinction by the beginning of the twentieth
frocked preacher with the voice of an angel. century. With protection, it is returning to
A wren provides the power, a trilling, a pul- reclaim the fresh winds over farmland and
sating aria that cannot be ignored. It contrasts copse. It is a privilege to hear it without the
sharply with the self-consciously pretty song roar of motorway traffic.
of the dunnock, who seems too shy to take Our enforced slowing down has left us with
centre stage, and, anyway, has forgotten the these fellow travellers as singing companions A blackbird “with the voice of an angel”; inset,
words. “Goodbye my mother-in-law. Goodbye to cheer us through the days. Each has a story the high-pitched whistling goldcrest
my-mother-in-law” chant the irascible blue to tell about finding its place in our human-
tits, too busy with greenfly to waste time with made world. Out there, among the rose bushes love with someone, whenever he would gaze
lyricism. Then, like a sprinkling of sugar, and the hawthorn, singing storytellers ask us at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals,
goldfinches flutter into the trees and tinkle. to listen to their tales. he burst into song, drawing all other creatures
No choir of seraphims could sound so sweet. Many are finding it restful to be treated to into his praise.” And when we are in love we
All these characters have lived in my city gar- this natural music every day. On Twitter meld our lives to the other, bringing out the
den for years, but now I can hear them. Now recently I came across this moving post: “I goodness of ourselves and of that which is
at last I have the time to listen. wake to the first birdsong every morning and loved – and that includes the earth.
Further out, in the woods that fringe the am so thrilled to hear it and know I’m still
city, I walk my dog to music that is developing alive. I could weep to think it’s taken terminal ST FRANCIS understood that all beings sing
in complexity as more musicians join the illness to make me so aware of this beauty. to God; that we are part of a massed choir
orchestra. Nuthatches send an urgent piping What a waste it’s been, waking to the alarm whose notes reach heaven. This global orches-
through the leaves, which is more assured for work all my life.” tra can only be heard in its entirety by the
than the scratchy wail of a treecreeper, or the A bird singing in the garden had produced creator. Each of us in our own section only
tiny, high-pitched whistle of a goldcrest. an intense connection to what it is to be perceives the immediate music around us,
human. The music of nature can prompt us but this is just one small part of a vastly greater
CHIFFCHAFFS, unfazed by their exhausting to question ourselves; it draws us to a reality whole that stretches to infinity. We hear the
migration over desert and ocean, announce that does not need our participation, or even birdsong, the wind, the sound of rain on leaves
their arrival from Africa with their rhythmic our presence. We are a sideshow to their world. in our own patch of the earth, oblivious to
tick-tocking. Their lives beat to a different Birdsong existed before we hunted and gath- the rest. Some songs may seem discordant to
rhythm to ours, one dictated by subtle changes ered, before we lived in cities, before we our ears, but they are one part of the perfect
in day length and heat, and barely discernible created gardens. The music of the birds has and harmonious score of the planet.
alterations in the breeze. So small, so light, enlivened our planet for many millions of God hears the endless symphony of the
so tough, these little beings feel the yearly years; it is humbling to have come so late to universe in its entirety. What it is to be one
changes and take to the air. Chiff-chaff, chiff- the journey of this singing planet. phrase of that music, to be just one element
chaff. This simple song brings the heat of the St Francis knew this, of course. His life that is broadcasting our sacred presence
Sahara and rolling ocean waves to a beech danced to the music of among a countless throng, is a privilege we
tree in Bristol. nature and its sacred must never forget.
They keep rhythm connection to God. A scientist friend wrote to me from America
for the maestros of com- In Laudato Si’, this week. “For me,” she says, “lockdown has
plexity, the blackcaps and Pope Francis made me more aware and more connected
garden warblers, who tell of their turns our gaze from the in many ways, especially this morning. It is
migration journeys in tumbling songs concerns of modern life to in these gentle moments that I feel the closest
that transform the woodland into a con- the insights of this holy man to nature and I can truly breathe. I just now
cert hall. If you are lucky, you may live of the earth. We are asked to feel like I am breathing much deeper.”
in a square where nightingales sing. share in the awe and wonder that the
Above them all, sailing on saint experienced every Mary Colwell is a producer and writer.
powerful wings, a buzzard’s day. “Just as happens Her latest book is Curlew Moon
mewing makes our eyes when we fall in (HarperCollins, 2018).
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 23 MAY 2020 | THE TABLET | 7
08-09_Tablet23May20 Pontifex.qxp_Tablet features spread 19/05/2020 15:18 Page 10
FEATURES / 80th anniversary of Dunkirk
Eighty years ago, a Benedictine monk and chaplain to the forces was killed tending to the wounded and
dying on the beaches of Dunkirk. His great-nephew tells the dramatic story of Dom Gervase Hobson
Matthews’ last days, drawing on his letters and his recently recovered diary / BY JOHN PONTIFEX
‘A priest has
returned to Downside about five years ago.
The diary, found with his priest’s stole on the
beaches at Dunkirk, and the letters to family
and friends, convey both the unflappable spirit
to stay’
of wartime and Gervase’s warmth and human-
ity; he is as ready and willing to spot
something faintly ridiculous as he is to recount
the horrors of war.
The diary, a small, nondescript ring binder,
with pages covered from top to bottom with
tiny, neat handwriting, loosely divides into
two parts. The first covers the period from 1
September 1939, the outbreak of war and his
I
official appointment as war chaplain to the
T WAS A moment that would represent Dunkirk was but four days away. Turning Royal Artillery HQ 1st Division, to 8 May
the decision of a lifetime. Having fulfilled back into the direct line of fire – almost literally 1940, when he returns to England on leave.
the task set before him to escort a group – Dom Gervase was under no illusion about The diary gives a clipped account of the
of nursing sisters to the coast – risking the risk he was taking. Phoney War, and offers a glimpse of the sense
gunfire and aerial bombardment in the pro- That we should know so much about Dom of suspended animation characteristic of the
cess – Dom Gervase had the option of joining Gervase’s experiences as a chaplain with the time. Gervase is not slow to pick up on the
them on the boat with the promise of swift British Expeditionary Force in northern faintly absurd situations in which he finds
and safe passage to England. A pass to go France is thanks to the meticulous record the himself. On 26 November 1939 he recalls
aboard had been made out for him. Would 36-year-old Benedictine monk kept of this saying Mass “in a barn ’mid hens, hay and
he stay or would he go? momentous chapter in his life. For decades, field guns”.
Father Gervase decided he would go back his family and his monastery – Downside
to rejoin his military unit. It was late on the Abbey, in Somerset – had believed that his IN THE SECOND part of the diary the drama
evening of 22 May 1940 and the Battle of wartime diary had been lost … until it was suddenly hots up. On 10 May 1940 he records
the German invasion of Holland, Belgium
and Luxembourg. Cutting short his leave,
Gervase heads back to France. He was return-
ing to a country under imminent threat of
invasion. On arrival in Boulogne, however,
he faces a more immediate crisis; his military
division could not be traced, or as he puts it,
“no one has any idea where [the] units are”.
in association with
Reporting that “all officers [were] told to
await instructions”, almost in the same breath
he writes that he has “decided to make his
own way forward”. Taking a train to Arras,
he finds the city deserted and sleeps in an
empty hotel. Returning to the train station
the next morning – 19 May – he describes an
air raid.
The diary’s account is not as detailed as the
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suggesting it.”
Instead of returning to the safety of
8 | THE TABLET | 23 MAY 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk
08-09_Tablet23May20 Pontifex.qxp_Tablet features spread 19/05/2020 15:18 Page 11
PHOTO © DOWNSIDE ABBEY GENERAL TRUST
Boulogne, Gervase clambers on to an ammu- wounded from 3 a.m. to 6.30. I buried [a
nition lorry bound for Béthune, where he man] in the improvised military cemetery.
hopes to meet up with his unit. In the diary, We had to throw ourselves to the ground
he tells how, barely 30 minutes after leaving during the burial to avoid fire from the
Arras, the city “was bombed to bits”. Arriving enemy planes.”
in Lillers, he finally catches up with his division With the evacuation gathering momentum,
of the Royal Artillery. “[They] were actually Gervase describes how he and a group of other
passing through [the town] at that moment,” chaplains cast lots to decide which one of
he writes. It is midnight by the time they reach them would stay behind. He gives the result:
their next destination – Bavinchove. Unable “Fr Callaghan to remain.”
to find a billet, Gervase sleeps “under a The diary comes to an abrupt halt at this
haystack”. point. Whatever happened next, Gervase him-
self never got away. His final words, used in
ON THE SECOND day in Bavinchove – 21 May reference to Fr Callaghan, in the event applied
– he describes hearing “the enemy machine- as much, if not more, to himself: “A priest
gunning the people (mostly Belgian refugees) certainly has to stay.”
in the streets. The plight of the refugees is After he was reported missing, many con-
beyond description. I gave the Last tinued to cling to the hope that he had
Sacraments to one man (making his way to somehow survived. On 22 June 1940, fellow
the coast with his wife) who was dying by the Downside monk and wartime chaplain Dom
roadside.” Again unable to find a place for the Clement Hayes wrote: “He will probably turn
night, Gervase “slept (or tried to) on the top up in an aeroplane later on in this war when
deck of an ambulance”. he has told Hitler and Mussolini what he
It was early the next morning – 22 May thinks of them. Nothing daunts Dom Gervase.”
1940 – that his commanding officer tasked But just over a year later, the War Office
him with escorting the nursing sisters to Dom Gervase in Army uniform. Below, his confirmed that his grave had been identified.
Dunkirk. The journey, by ambulance, is diary entry for the German invasion of Belgium His body was laid in its final resting place in
fraught with danger: “At one point, I hoicked Dunkirk Town Cemetery; an inscription was
the sisters out of the [vehicle] and made them The enemy is closing in; the only way out, placed at the base of his gravestone. The words
take cover in a ditch.” With Dunkirk under Gervase writes, is due north, towards the immortalise that fateful moment when he
bombardment, they make their way by a very coast: “Shortly before leaving [Steenvoorde], made the decision of a lifetime: “This monk
circuitous route to Calais. In his 24 May letter the Boche flew over in greater numbers than and priest of Downside Abbey stayed with
to Honor he writes: “We reached Calais at ever before and our convoy was bombed and the wounded at Dunkirk.” Mentioned in
last at 6 p.m. to find that it had been having machine-gunned. We jumped from our lorries Despatches, Dom Gervase is recorded as the
a good old bombing just before. The harbour and cars and flung ourselves into roadside first Catholic military chaplain to be killed in
station had been hit and big fires were blazing ditches as the enemy planes power-dived the war.
all round the docks. A boat was expected to upon us. Tremendous roar of the planes’
leave for England in the morning so I parked engines, the whistle of the bombs and the BEFORE THE WAR, Dom Gervase had given
the sisters on the Area Commandant, a deafening explosions. We all thought we were more than a decade of service at what was
Colonel Holland, and bade them a tender finished but there were no direct hits.” then Ealing Priory and the attached St
farewell – to my enormous relief.” He spends the night sleeping “by the side Benedict’s School. The chalice given to him
The evacuation pass that would have of a pond, sheltered a bit by one of our lorries”. on his ordination day is still in daily use at
enabled him to get on board the boat with The next day his vehicle is twice separated Ealing Abbey. He was master of ceremonies
the nursing sisters gets a passing mention. from the convoy: “Several times [we] had to in the church, housemaster in the school,
Gervase quickly moves on to describe his tor- avoid bombs – one of which fell and exploded, preacher and teacher. Of all his qualities, a
tuous journey back to his unit. Still travelling on soft earth, about 20 yards from me as I gift for friendship perhaps stands out most
in the ambulance, somehow they make it that lay on the bank of a canal.” strongly in his obituary in the school magazine,
same evening to Steenvoorde, close to the Finally, they get to the coast. Gervase aban- The Priorian.
Belgian border, but not before having “to zig- dons his belongings and leads a marching Recalling “the Gentle Gervase” that many
zag our way between barrels of gunpowder”. column to the sand dunes, arriving in Coxyde, people remembered when he was guest master
close to Dunkirk, but across the Belgian bor- at Downside Abbey soon after his ordination
IN HIS DIARY Gervase describes an air raid der. The evacuation by now was well in 1928, The Downside Review comes closest
that involves a direct hit on the parish church underway and, from the house where he was to accounting for his undoubted bravery. Its
in Steenvoorde where, that very morning, billeted, he could see “men wading waist- obituary records that, “during his last leave,
he had said Mass. “I found the tabernacle deep to boats to take them to destroyers and [Dom Gervase] confessed that [becoming a
door blown open, the lid blown off the cibo- troop ships … Intense anti-aircraft fire from military chaplain] had been a big sacrifice
rium … and the hosts covered with dust and innumerable guns on the shore, as German but he had made it because so many of the
plaster. [I] climbed over the debris, which planes flew overhead. Incredible noise. Shells boys he had taught had given up everything
was beginning to smoulder, and took the and bullets whizzing in all directions! Tracer to serve their country”.
Blessed Sacrament to a nearby house – for bullets at night.” Dom Gervase Hobson Matthews is remem-
which I was patted on the back by some The diary’s last entry – 31 May 1940 – is bered by the English Benedictine Congregation
French soldiers!” perhaps the most poignant: “Was with the as a Martyr of Charity.
Downside is reproducing Dom Gervase’s
diary as a booklet, with a launch date due to
be announced soon. https://www.downside
abbey.co.uk/downside-library/
John Pontifex, writer and journalist, is Head
of Press and Information, Aid to the Church
in Need (UK).
For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk 23 MAY 2020 | THE TABLET | 9
10-11_Tablet23May20 WilkinsNEW.qxp_Tablet features spread 19/05/2020 15:40 Page 10
FEATURES / Faith and belief
When Graham Greene converted to Catholicism he took Thomas as
his baptismal name –specifying it was for Thomas the Doubter, not
Thomas Aquinas. The tension between unbelief and faith that would
animate many of his novels lasted to the very end / By JOHN WILKINS
A foot in
the door
G
RAHAM GREENE died in 1991 on unbreakable bond that the two men formed,
Easter Wednesday. I had been able based on their vastly different approaches to
to get to know him a little while I the one Catholic faith. What could be the
was editing The Tablet because of implications for those of us who sought to
his longstanding close friendship with my observe an Eastertide so seriously disrupted he pointed to Durán. One example, he sug-
predecessor, Tom Burns. If Greene was staying by the tiny pathogens that have brought the gested, was when “one comes across people
in London at the Ritz in Piccadilly, his modern world to its knees? endowed with a strange aura. I’m thinking
favourite venue, at the same time that the Durán’s first letter from Greene was dated of a friend of mine, a Spanish priest with
Tablet Trust was holding its annual dinner at 31 June 1964, and they met at the Ritz in whom I go travelling every year. He has a fac-
the Garrick, he would come, since he was a 1973. From the start of their personal contact ulty for bringing people to life. He is not a
member, and I would be placed next to him. they trusted and confided in each other. conventionally pious man, but he is possessed
He liked the paper and was heard to observe Greene told Durán he wanted him to be at by an absolute faith.”
that he got his theology from it. This remark his side in his final moments. It was an affir- Another such manifestation was Greene’s
raised some eyebrows, because in England, mation of the faith he saw in the priest. Durán experience of Padre Pio, the Capuchin friar
as he acknowledged, he was regarded as “a had lectured at the University of Madrid, and from the south of Italy who sought to conceal
bit of a heretic”. Greene had become a Catholic held doctorates in theology, philosophy and the stigmata he bore, following in the steps
in 1926 after his engagement to be married English literature, but it was not these qual- of St Francis. When Greene attended an early-
to a young convert, who was to become Vivien ifications that Greene was looking for. morning Mass celebrated by Fr Pio, he had
Greene. Out of a sense of duty and loyalty to They talked often about faith and belief. thought it lasted for the expected 35 minutes,
her, he decided to take instruction. Greene distinguished between the two. Every but when he looked at his watch, he found
At first he had no intention of following day, he would say, he had less belief and more he had been there for an hour-and-a-half or
her. He argued every inch of the way with Fr faith. A long conversation in Spain over the two hours. He kept two photographs of Fr
Trollope, his instructor. He began with a clean breakfast table drew a confession from Greene, Pio in his wallet.
slate, lacking any belief at all, which Durán characterised as The Capuchin was highly sought after as a
but ended with a provisional “the most perfect remark” on confessor yet also alarming, because he had
respect for the Catholic case
‘The trouble this subject. “The trouble is,” an insight into what was really at the bottom
which made him decide he is,’ Greene Greene told him, “I don’t of his penitents’ hearts which they ought to
must always “keep a foot in told Fr Leopoldo believe my unbelief.” Durán confess. Greene got as far as the church door,
the door” of the Church. After took this to be his friend’s “life having waited for four hours, but then could
his conversion, he took Durán,‘I formula”. “Do you mind writ- not face it and turned tail.
Thomas as his new baptismal don’t believe ing down that wonderful
name – not Thomas Aquinas, phrase for me?” he asked. But AS HE RECOUNTED to Allain, he had
he specified, but Thomas the
my unbelief’ Greene demurred. Best not, explained to the friends who had brought him
Doubter. he thought. It should remain along the reason he had refused an encounter:
as a private remark between themselves. It “I was too afraid that it might upset my entire
AFTER I BECAME editor of The Tablet in 1982, became, however, the quote on the frontispiece life.” He had feared that Padre Pio would have
I was also in touch with Fr Leopoldo Durán, of Durán’s subsequent memoir, Graham told him to end his consuming relationship
the Spanish Catholic priest with whom Greene Greene: Friend and Brother. with Catherine Walston, American wife of
would go on holiday every year in Spain or Greene was equally struck by Durán’s Harry Walston, a rich landowner of left-wing
Portugal, often for a fortnight or so. I made response during their first conversation when tendency. Greene wanted to marry Catherine,
sure Fr Durán saw The Tablet , which he val- he asked him openly about the sources of his but she never consented.
ued, regularly. The trips he took with Greene faith. “I do not ‘believe in’ God,” Durán replied. It could be argued that Tom Burns had
followed a formula. The two companions “I touch him.” Greene referred to this exchange helped to launch Greene’s career as a novelist.
would map out an itinerary, and off they would in the conversations he had with the young His own first impressions of the writer are
go. For lunch they would look for a special French writer Marie-Françoise Allain, pub- set down in his memoir, The Use of Memory.
spot for a “picnic”, as Greene called them, lished in 1983 in English translation as The He characterised Greene as “an incurable
beside a stream or river where they could cool Other Man. “I like the so-called ‘primitive’ eccentric … impatient and insatiably curious”.
the white wine they always brought. manifestations of the faith,” Greene told her. He seemed to leap into Tom’s landscape “like
I have found myself thinking about the She asked him what these were. For an answer a leprechaun: witty, evasive, nervous, sardonic,
10 | THE TABLET | 23 MAY 2020 For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk10-11_Tablet23May20 WilkinsNEW.qxp_Tablet features spread 19/05/2020 15:40 Page 11
Graham Greene (right) and Fr Leopoldo had laid on the other side of the argument
Durán in Antibes in the early 1980s. “You are his favourite passage in John’s Gospel, of how
Quixote and I am Sancho,” Greene told him Peter and John had raced to the tomb when
they first heard the rumour that Jesus Christ
told Durán, “You are Quixote and I am was not there. John gets there first and looks,
Sancho.” Greene offered Burns a chapter of but does not go in. Peter does, and sees how
the work in progress for the Christmas 1978 the linen cloths are lying. Greene, once a sub-
issue of The Tablet. Two years later Greene editor for The Times, believed his journalistic
added another contribution, but now told experience showed him the biblical account
Burns that that must suffice. Burns pleaded was true reporting – the race to the tomb had
with him. He was approaching retirement: surely happened just like that, he thought.
could Greene not help him with a finale?
Greene sat down and wrote a third episode, PART OF GREENE’S reason for writing
published in The Tablet for Christmas 1981. Monsignor Quixote was to pin down some
Monsignor Quixote was published the fol- thoughts about doubt. In the novel, Quixote
lowing September. has a “terrible dream” during a siesta. He
The climax of the story comes after Fr imagines that Christ has been saved from the
Quixote and his companion, the Communist cross by the legion of angels to which he can
ex-mayor of the same village, are pursued by appeal. There is universal joy at the deliver-
the authorities and crash their car against the ance. “There was no room for doubt and no
wall of the nearby Trappist monastery, where room for faith at all. The whole world knew
they take refuge. Quixote is in a coma and is that Christ was the Son of God.”
wandering in his mind. He sleepwalks through Quixote had felt on waking from the dream
the church to the altar, where, witnessed only that to live like that would be to inhabit “a
by a sceptical visiting American academic, kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith,
one of the friars and his friend the mayor, he when everyone is certain that the same belief
by turns”. In 1938, Greene wanted to visit proceeds steadily to consecrate the non-exis- is true”. He had found himself whispering,
Mexico to write about the persecution of the tent bread in the non-existent paten and the “God save me from such a belief.”
Catholic Church there. Publishers looked non-existent wine in the non-existent chalice. As he neared the close of his life, Greene’s
askance: Greene had so far written three nov- Will the mayor take communion? health deteriorated. Suffering from a blood
els, of which one had been noted but the other disease, he needed regular transfusions and
two had failed to make an impact. WE CAN’T BUT read this episode in the con- vitamin injections, which exhausted him.
Burns was then on the board of Longmans text of churches closed because of the When Durán heard the latest news of his con-
Green and lobbied his fellow directors on coronavirus, where the congregation can par- dition, he rushed to catch a plane which took
Greene’s behalf. Eventually they agreed. Out ticipate in the sacraments only remotely. After him from Spain to Switzerland, arriving just
of the journey came two books. One, entitled Quixote collapses and dies, the tiny group of in time to give Greene the last rites and
The Lawless Roads, a record of Greene’s trav- observers talk among themselves. “What we absolution.
els; the other was a novel, The Power and the listened to last night could hardly be described Durán’s book concludes with a valedictory
Glory, about a “whisky-priest” on the run for as a Mass”, says the Notre Dame professor. comment by Dr Morandi, who had attended
his life, which was recognised at once as a “Are you sure of that?” asks the friar. Greene in his last days. Morandi testified that
classic. Greene never forgot what Tom had “Of course I’m sure. There was no Host and he had never seen anyone respond in the cir-
done, and this was one of the reasons why he no wine.” cumstances with such “greatness of heart”.
agreed to join the Tablet Trust. which Tom “But Monsignor Quixote quite obviously He credited “the exceptional clarity of his
was setting up, and allowed the author and believed in the presence of the bread and mind which enlightened him up until the very
journalist John Cornwell to interview him in wine. Which of us was right? … Can our lim- end”. In his view, “only a faith free of any doubt
Antibes for The Tablet. ited senses decide a thing like that?” can explain such complete serenity at the
Having helped Greene at the start of his As Greene had told Cornwell at the end of moment of death”.
career, Tom Burns acted as midwife to one their conversation in Antibes, “I think it’s a Thomas the Doubter had completed his
of his last novels, Monsignor Quixote. This mystery.” Then, mischievously: “It’s a mystery journey.
was a pastiche of the great Spanish classic which can’t be destroyed … even by the
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Alluding Church.” John Wilkins edited The Tablet between 1982
to the chief characters in the original, Greene Earlier in their discussion, however, Greene and 2003.
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