| Editor | Brendan Walsh |
|---|---|
| Categories | Catholicism |
| Frequency | Weekly (except Christmas) |
| Total circulation (2017) | 18,772 (publisher's statement) |
| First issue | 16 May 1840 |
| Company | Tablet Publishing Company |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Website | thetablet.co.uk |
| ISSN | 0039-8837 |
The Tablet is a Catholic international weekly review published in London. [1] Brendan Walsh, previously literary editor and then acting editor, was appointed editor in July 2017. [2]
The Tablet was launched in 1840 by a Quaker convert to Catholicism, Frederick Lucas, 10 years before the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. It is the second-oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain. [3]
For the first 28 years of its life, The Tablet was owned by lay Catholics. Following the death of Lucas in 1855, it was purchased by John Edward Wallis, a Catholic barrister of the Inner Temple. Wallis continued as owner and editor until resigning and putting the newspaper up for sale in 1868.
In 1868, the Rev. Herbert Vaughan (who was later made a cardinal), who had founded the only British Catholic missionary society, the Mill Hill Missionaries, [4] purchased the journal just before the First Vatican Council, which defined papal infallibility. At his death he bequeathed the journal to the Archbishops of Westminster, the profits to be divided between Westminster Cathedral and the Mill Hill Missionaries.[ citation needed ]The Tablet was owned by successive Archbishops of Westminster for 67 years. In 1935, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Arthur Hinsley sold the journal to a group of Catholic laymen. In 1976 ownership passed to the Tablet Trust, a registered charity. [5]
From 1936 to 1967, the review was edited by Douglas Woodruff, formerly of The Times , a historian and reputed wit whose hero was Hilaire Belloc. [6] His wide range of contacts and his knowledge of international affairs made the paper, it was said,[ who? ] essential reading in embassies around the world. He restored the fortunes of The Tablet, which had declined steeply. For many years (1938–1961) he was assisted by Michael Derrick, who after the Second World War was often acting editor. Woodruff was followed as editor by the publisher and, like Woodruff, part-owner Tom Burns, who served from 1967 to 1982. Burns, a conservative in his political views, was a progressive on church matters, firmly in favour of the Vatican II church reforms. A watershed came in 1968, when The Tablet took an editorial stance at odds with Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae , which restated the traditional teaching against artificial contraception. Burns was followed by the BBC producer John Wilkins, who had been Burns's assistant from 1967 to 1971. Under his editorship the journal's political stance was seen as centre-left. The paper continued to have a distinctive voice, consistently advocating further changes in the church's post-Vatican II life and doctrine. Circulation climbed steadily throughout Wilkins's 21-year tenure. He retired at the end of 2003. Catherine Pepinster, [7] formerly executive editor of The Independent on Sunday , became the first female editor of The Tablet in 2004. [8] She said that "the journal will continue to provide a forum for 'progressive, but responsible Catholic thinking, a place where orthodoxy is at home but ideas are welcome'." [3] In 2012 ITV journalist Julie Etchingham became the review's first guest editor, leading a special issue on the CAFOD charity. [9] On succeeding Catherine Pepinster as editor on 12 July 2017, Brendan Walsh said: 'I will do all I can to cherish and protect its values and the quality of its journalism.' [2]
Contributors to The Tablet have included Popes Benedict XVI and Paul VI (while cardinals), the novelists Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, Mark Lawson, Francine Stock, Peter Hennessy, Henry Wansbrough and Bernard Green. [3]
Herbert Alfred Henry Vaughan was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1893. He was the founder in 1866 of St Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society, known best as the Mill Hill Missionaries. He also founded the Catholic Truth Society and St. Bede's College, Manchester. As Archbishop of Westminster, he led the capital campaign and construction of Westminster Cathedral.
Gaetano Alibrandi of the Roman Catholic Church was a senior papal diplomat and former Personal Secretary to Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini.
The Archbishop of Westminster heads the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster, in England. The incumbent is the metropolitan of the Province of Westminster, chief metropolitan of England and Wales and, as a matter of custom, is elected president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, and therefore de facto spokesman of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. All previous archbishops of Westminster have become cardinals. Although all the bishops of the restored diocesan episcopacy took new titles, like that of Westminster, they saw themselves in continuity with the pre-Reformation Church and post-Reformation vicars apostolic and titular bishops. Westminster, in particular, saw itself as the continuity of Canterbury, hence the similarity of the coats of arms of the two sees, with Westminster believing it has more right to it since it features the pallium, a distinctly Catholic symbol of communion with the Holy See.
Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster.
Paul-Émile Léger was a Canadian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Montreal from 1950 to 1967, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1953 by Pope Pius XII.
John Carmel Heenan was an English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1963 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1965.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster is an archdiocese of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in England. The diocese consists of all of London north of the River Thames and west of the River Lea, the borough of Spelthorne, and the county of Hertfordshire, which lies immediately to London's north.
Vincent Gerard Nichols is an English cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He previously served as Archbishop of Birmingham from 2000 to 2009. On 22 February 2014, Pope Francis admitted Archbishop Nichols to the Sacred College of Cardinals at a general consistory.
The Catholic Church in the United Kingdom is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope. While there is no ecclesiastical jurisdiction corresponding to the political union, this article refers to the Catholic Church's geographical representation in mainland Britain as well as Northern Ireland, ever since the establishment of the UK's predecessor Kingdom of Great Britain by the Union of the Crowns in 1707.
The Catholic Church in England and Wales is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See. Its origins date from the 6th century, when Pope Gregory I through the Benedictine missionary, Augustine of Canterbury, intensified the evangelization of the Kingdom of Kent linking it to the Holy See in 597 AD. This unbroken communion with the Holy See lasted until King Henry VIII ended it in 1534.
The legal code regarding LGBT rights in Vatican City is based on the Italian penal code of 1929, the time of the founding of the sovereign state of the Vatican City. From 1929 to 2008, the Vatican City automatically adopted most Italian laws; however, it was announced in late 2008 that Vatican City would no longer automatically adopt new Italian laws as its own.
Austen Ivereigh is a UK-based Roman Catholic journalist, author, commentator and biographer of Pope Francis. A former deputy editor of The Tablet and later director for public affairs of the former archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, he frequently appears on radio and TV programmes to comment in stories involving the Church. He is Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, Oxford.
James Robert Knox GCC was an Australian Roman Catholic cardinal. He was the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family (1981–1983), a prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and the fifth Archbishop of Melbourne, serving from 1967 to 1974.
Michael Seed is a Latin Rite Catholic priest, a Franciscan friar, author, and former ecumenical advisor for over twenty-five years to the former archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Basil Hume then to Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Seed is known for his involvement in helping several British celebrities, politicians, and a member of the Royal Family to decide whether to convert to Catholicism.
Tina Beattie is a British Christian theologian, writer and broadcaster.
Emanuele Gerada KC*HS was a Maltese prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, a Vatican diplomat and titular Archbishop of Nomentum. One Maltese obituary recalled him as "a generous, well-read and intelligent man."
Catholic laity are the ordinary members of the Catholic Church who are neither clergy nor recipients of Holy Orders or vowed to life in a religious order or congregation. Their mission, according to the Second Vatican Council, is to "sanctify the world".
Secrets of the Vatican is an American television documentary film. It was first aired on the PBS Channel on 25 February 2014 as an episode of PBS' Frontline TV series.
Mark Anthony Edmund Langham was a Catholic priest who served in parishes in his native London, in the Vatican as an official working on inter-church relations and latterly as chaplain at the University of Cambridge.
Catherine Pepinster is an English editor, historian, commentator and writer with a focus on theology, Catholic and Anglican ecumenism, church history, and religion and politics. She was the first female editor of The Tablet in the newspaper's 176-year history. In 2017 she published the book The Keys and the Kingdom: The British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis.
