FROM THE ARCHIVE 50 YEARS AGO


The Bishop of Salford being an historian, set out to satisfy the most sceptical of relic questioners. He gave numerous con- verging proofs that the skull in his residence at Wardley Hall is a true relic, the impaled skull of Blessed Ambrose Barlow, martyred in the last year of Charles I’s personal rule, 1641. One of the proofs, many of which are anatomical, is that his martyrdom occurred during the only period of 10 years when Wardley Hall was in Catholic hands, and the owners were kinsmen. The Barlows were a notable family; the martyr had a brother with the unusual name of Rudesind, also a Monk of Douai, where he engaged in vigorous controversy with Richard Smith, the Bishop of Chalcedon, challenging his jurisdiction, and when this Barlow died, another bishop offered to create a foun- dation for the monks, if they would give him the said Father’s writings. But when the monks went to look for the writings, an enemy had destroyed them. The Tablet, 23 September 1961


100 YEARS AGO


On February 3, 1414, amid the pealing of bells, Henry Ogilvy MA of Paris arrived in the little city of St Andrews bearing six Bulls from the Antipope Benedict XIII, confirming the Charter with which Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews, had in 1411 founded the first Scottish University. “No Papal Bulls,” said Dr Mait land Anderson, the learned Librarian of the University, “were ever received with greater joy that those brought by Henry Ogilvy from the Court of Benedict XIII.” They were presented to the Bishop as Chancellor with solemn pomp and ceremony. Four hundred clergy formed a procession to the high altar, where the Holy Ghost was invoked and the “Te Deum” was chanted in a loud voice. The inhabitants gave themselves up to unrestrained rejoicings, bonfires blazed in the streets, and wine flowed like water.


It is the 500th anniversary of this, the lighting of the first torch of university edu- cation in Scotland, that St Andrews was celebrating with much splendour last week. The quaint old place … was thronged with representatives of universities and learned societies … . Amongst these … was the del- egate from the Vatican and the Scots College, Rome, Mgr Fraser. “It is specially gratifying to find,” said Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the Chancellor, in his sympathetic reference to the connection of the Catholic Church with the university, “that, after the lapse of 500 years, we have with us today a specially appointed representative of the present occupant of the Papal Chair.” The Tablet, 23 September 1911


32 | THE TABLET | 24 September 2011


Sacks hails Pope a fellow prophet


James Roberts


THE CHIEF Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has accused the Government of riding roughshod over the wishes of parents of all faiths by excluding religious education from the English Baccalaureate (Ebacc). Delivering the inaugural Pope Benedict


XVI lecture at St Mary’s University College, Twicken ham, last week, Lord Sacks said that the implied downgrading of religious studies was making “every Jewish parent” that he knew “want to send their kids to a Jewish school”. “Parents don’t want [the


exclusion of religious education],” he said, and this did not mean Jewish parents only. Pupils attain the Ebacc by gaining grade C at GCSEs in English, maths, two sciences, a language and history or geography. Lord Sacks was answering questions


during last year’s papal visit. Banishment of the Judaeo-Christian faith to the private sphere, a general fear of teaching our children right from wrong because we do not believe anything is objectively right or wrong, and a determination to place the blame for individual transgressions on society rather than the individual transgressor were all factors at the root of our present ills, he said. Prophecy – that is warning the surrounding


culture of where it is heading – can be a lonely business, he went on, but he felt he had met a fellow prophet in Pope Benedict. Meanwhile the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, last week declared Lord Sacks to be “the outstanding religious leader in Britain today”, in an article acclaiming the rabbi’s analysis of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. The cardinal, in his weekly column in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, wrote that Lord Sacks’ “thought-provoking” analysis was that al-Qaeda attacked the West because Osama bin Laden believed the US was past its prime.


Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi. Photo: Mazur/ catholic-church.org.uk


after a lecture in which he said he had found much common ground with Pope Benedict XVI even before their meeting in the Waldegrave Room at St Mary’s


“Sacks loves our Western


way of life, but believes the Islamist terrorists are correct in sensing weakness,” he


wrote. “Important Western thinkers also believe we have entered a period of cultural decline. The barbarians are not all outside,” wrote Cardinal Pell. (To listen to Lord Sacks’ lecture visit www.thetablet.co.uk)


Bishop praises Africans’ community spirit


AFRICANS LIVING in Britain were warned against becoming shy and reserved “like the English” in a homily delivered by Southwark auxiliary Bishop Paul Hendricks at a special Mass, writes Paul Donovan. Bishop Hendricks fondly recalled the warmth, hospitality and witness of the “wonderful” African parishioners he got to know when he was a parish priest in Peckham in south-east London for seven years. They were, he said, readier than most


people to respond to being greeted by a stranger in the street and more likely to offer help to a person walking unsteadily while “an English person would typically assume they were drunk and would pretend not to notice”. “I always hoped that the Africans wouldn’t lose those qualities and become more shy and reserved like the English. And I’m glad to say that those good qualities are still very evident amongst all the Africans I’ve met since that time,” said the bishop at the Pan-African annual Mass at St George’s Church, Walthamstow.


Bishop Hendricks subsequently told The


Tablet that he went “a bit too far” in characterising the English as “shy and reserved”. In another part of his homily the bishop said he was sometimes concerned about the influence on Africans of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel”, which originated in America and which preaches that time and money given to churches leads to material reward. “The Prosperity Gospel not only gives rise to false expectations, it also gives us a very limited vision of what God has to offer us. Also, it implies that we have to earn God’s favour, although in fact there is nothing we can do to earn God’s love. He loves us despite the fact that we are unworthy,” said Bishop Hendricks. The Pan-African Mass returned to east


London after moving to Southwark last year. Among the countries represented at the vibrant Mass were Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Rwanda, Eritrea, Tanzania, Togo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Uganda.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36