PHOTO: ALAMY, MICHAEL DAVID MURPHY

Cailleach Beara in West Cork is an ancient rock representing an old Irish female deity 6

COLUMNS

Melanie McDonagh’s Notebook ‘Benedict grasped the sheer scale of the crisis of faith in the West’ / 7

Shelagh Fogarty ‘A quiet voice told these schoolchildren that they could be saints in their lives’ / 10

REGULARS Letters 14 The Living Spirit 15 Word from the Cloisters 16 Puzzles 16 Ethical Kitchen 30 Glimpses of Eden 30

CONTENTS 14 JANUARY 2023 // VOL 277 NO. 9485

THE YEAR AHEAD

4 / The year of Storm Francis The next twelve months are shaping up to be an intense and dramatic period for the Church, both globally and in England and Wales / BY CHRISTOPHER LAMB

6 / A welcome at the edge of the world Dorothy Day’s granddaughter explores the idea of creating a “house of hospitality”

by the wild Atlantic Ocean / BY KATE HENNESSY

8 / Will we wave goodbye to a sustainable future? The real action on implementing solutions to climate change will increasingly happen away from the big global summits / BY CARMODY GREY

9 / More mayhem is yet to come Our lobby correspondent offers her annual reflection on the current state of

UK politics and her predictions for 2023 / BY JULIA LANGDON

FEATURES

11/ Monastery of unity

Ahead of the week of prayer for Christian unity an Anglican priest celebrates the role of the ecumenical monks of Chevetogne / BY NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

13 / Why wasn’t the big day as jolly as we hoped? This week’s dispatch from the happiness front line considers how we should try to manage our expectations / BY RACHEL KELLY

NEWS

23 / The Church in the World / News briefing 24 / Uproar over President’s asylum policy extension

26 / View from Rome 27 / News from Britain and Ireland / News briefing

28 / Invitations to celebrate World Peace Day

COVER: VATICAN MEDIA

BOOKS / PAGE 17

Michael Glover The Translations of Seamus Heaney ED. MARCO SONZOGNI Madoc Cairns All Sorts of Life: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything CLAIRE HARMAN Lucy Beckett We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir RAJA SHEHADEH Patrick Hudson The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland: 1560c.1760 ED. BRIAN MAC CUARTA SJ AND MARY ANN LYONS

ARTS / PAGE 20 Exhibition Vermeer GREGOR J.M. WEBER Theatre Kerry Jackson MARK LAWSON Television Colosseum LUCY LETHBRIDGE Radio The Confessional D.J. TAYLOR

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk

14 JANUARY 2023 | THE TABLET | 3