Editor's Message

Looking To Our Future

New Year is always a good time for reflection: for learning from the past and looking to the future. So too is the start of a new editorship. Under its previous steward this paper has been a lodestar for many in the Catholic Church - explaining, interpreting and illuminating their journey. We are committed to continuing that service. Readers can be confident that The Tablet will be a paper of progressive, but responsible Catholic thinking, a place where orthodoxy is at home but ideas are welcome. The Tablet is not controlled by the church hierarchy, which allows it a privileged perspective. Such a privilege must not be abused, but cherished. The Catholic Church represents an extraordinary number of people - one-sixth of the human race - and inevitably there are different approaches and styles, which has given it its capacity for renewal. The ressourcement, the refreshing of Catholic thinking, is as desirable today as it was 40 years ago at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and we not only hope to report on it, but to be part of it.

While the Catholic Church remains a force in the world, it is a world which can be hostile to its values. To respond by closing the shutters is too easy a temptation. The Church must still bear witness to the truth, but must do so in dialogue with the world, not without it. Since 11 September 2001, it has been essential that the Church speaks out as a force for peace, and helps forge a path to better relations with other faiths. Under Pope John Paul II's courageous leadership, it has risen to the challenge, with its critique of the war with Iraq, and the progress made in inter-religious dialogue. But the Church must also be similarly engaged in conversation within its own walls. The laity, in a church becoming more controlled by the Curia, is in danger of being disheartened.

Catholics are already reeling from the discovery that the Church has not always been honest in its dealings over sexual abuse by its priests. But honesty must be the watchword of our pilgrim Church. We urge similar openness in the Church over other difficult issues: birth control, sexual behaviour, celibate priests, the role of women. In our pages this week, we print extracts from Cherie Booth QC's Tablet lecture on Catholicism and human rights. Ms Booth is right: women need to be seen and appreciated as thinkers in our Church.

Karl Rahner argued nearly 15 years ago that the Church is no longer just an institution of European thought and culture but a world church. That role brings new challenges affecting all it does, from its forms of liturgical expression to its responsibilities to the poor, particularly the developing South.

This paper will seek to respond to these issues with sensitivity, and imagination. Lumen Gentium spoke of God's people on the move through history. This paper's task is to report on that journey, with all its accomplishments, and all its pitfalls. But we will always be mindful that without the example of the one who was crucified, and who rose again, we shall perish on the way.


Catherine Pepinster

© The Tablet Publishing Company