Why does Trump seem incapable of apologising or admitting he is using antisemitic language?

‘Shylock and Jessica’ by Maurycy Gottlieb … a copy in the Jewish Museum in the Old Synagogue in Kraków (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

President Donald Trump says he is not aware that the word ‘Shylock’ is antisemitic after he used the term at a rally to decry amoral money lenders. In a speech in Iowa marking the beginning of nationwide celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the United States next year, he used the word ‘Shylock’ when applauded a bill that had been pushed through Congress a few hours earlier.

‘Think of that: no death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from in some cases a fine banker. And in some cases, Shylocks and bad people,’ rump said in Des Moines. ‘They took away a lot of, a lot of family. They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite.’

The Anti-Defamation League condemned Trump’s use of the word, saying. ‘The term ‘Shylock’ evokes a centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed that is extremely offensive and dangerous. President Trump’s use of the term is very troubling and irresponsible,’ the ADL said. ‘It underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country. Words from our leaders matter and we expect more from the President of the United States.’

But instead of acknowledging his antisemitic vocabulary, instead of apologising or retracting, Trump said: ‘I’ve never heard it that way. To me, Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates.’ As he arrived back in Washington, he claimed : ‘I’ve never heard it that way, you view it differently than me. I’ve never heard that.’

Amy Spitalnick of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs responded: ‘Shylock is among the most quintessential antisemitic stereotypes. This is not an accident. It follows years in which Trump has normalised antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories – and it’s deeply dangerous.’

In response to Trump’s use of the word, the Anti-Defamation League said the term ‘evokes a centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed that is extremely offensive and dangerous. President Trump's use of the term is very troubling and irresponsible. It underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country. Words from our leaders matter and we expect more from the President of the United States.’

Some Democrats were quick to criticise Trump’s use of the word. ‘This is blatant and vile antisemitism, and Trump knows exactly what he’s doing,’ Representative Daniel Goldman (New York) said. ‘Anyone who truly opposes antisemitism calls it out wherever it occurs – on both extremes – as I do.’

But Republicans were noticeably silent – as they always are when it comes to Trump’s abominable gaffes and appalling behaviour.

The name ‘Shylock’ comes from the name of the character in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Shylock in the play is a Jew and a ruthless moneylender who demands a ‘pound of flesh’ from the merchant Antonio if he fails to repay a loan. But Shylock is thwarted and forced to convert to Christianity.

The play has generated debates for hundreds of years about whether it is antisemitic. It is classified as one of Shakespeare’s comedies, but much of its tone is more dramatic and often divisive.

The American literary critic Harold Bloom once wrote: ‘One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognise that Shakespeare’s grand, equivocal comedy … is nevertheless a profoundly antisemitic work.’

Shylock has been played in starkly different ways over the years – sometimes as a repulsive character, driven by a desire for revenge, other times as a more sympathetic figure. But many see Shylock as an offensive stereotype about Jewish people and money, and the name has become a slur to describe loan sharks who lend money at extortionate rates.

More than 50 productions of the play were staged in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939. Kevin Madigan, Professor of Christian History at Harvard Divinity School, has pointed out that in one Berlin production of the play, the director ‘planted extras in the audiences to shout and whistle when Shylock appeared, thus cuing the audience to do the same.’

Joe Biden apologised after using the term when he was vice president in 2014. Speaking at a Legal Services Corporation event, he used the word to describe lenders taking advantage of members of the military while they were overseas and needed help to deal with problems back at home. ‘I mean these Shylocks who took advantage of, um, these women and men while overseas,’ he said.

Biden apologised within 24 hours, acknowledging it ‘was a poor choice of words’ and the ADL said he ‘should have been more careful’.

Trump has failed to show the same grace or to acknowledge the way he used the woed was offensive. Instead, flying back to Washington DC on Air Force One, Trump said he had ‘never heard that’ the word was considered antisemitic, and then proceeded to offer his own definition of the term.

‘I’ve never heard it that way,’ he said. ‘The meaning of Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates. You view it differently. I’ve never heard that.’

It was nothing less than a stunning display of wilful historical illiteracy by Trump, even though he was drawing on a 400-year-old play. When he was pressed, he shrugged off questions, insisting: ‘To me, a shylock is just some guy who charges too much interest. Like my old casino creditors!’

This is the same Donald Trump who has a stellar track record when it comes to Jewish stereotypes.

This is the same Donald Trump who in 2015 told the Republican Jewish Coalition ‘you guys love controlling politicians with money, right?’

This is the same Donald Trump who in 2022 hosted a dinner with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who believes the Holocaust was ‘overblown’.

This is the same Donald Trump who in 2023 accused Jewish Democrats of ‘disloyalty’ for criticising Netanyahu.

This is the same Donald Trump who called neo-Nazis ‘very fine people’, who pushed the ‘Jewish space lasers’ conspiracy by proxy, who thinks ‘antisemitism’ is just ‘something liberals accuse me of.’

Either Trump is historically illiterate, or he is calculatingly reckless. Now he also wants us to think he is an expert on Shakespeare and that he can provide new dictionary definitions of the words he uses.

Give me a break, please.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (154) 4 November 2023

Inside the Harvard Chapel in the north transept of Southwark Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

We are still in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday before Advent (5 November 2023).

Before today begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection early this morning.

Throughout this week, with the exceptions of All Saints’ Day on Wednesday (1 November) and All Souls’ Day on Thursday (2 November), my reflections each morning this week have been following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a church or cathedral in Southwark;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The stained glass window by John La Farge in the Harvard Chapel was unveiled in 1905 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Harvard Chapel, Southwark Cathedral:

The Harvard Chapel in the north transept of Southwark Cathedral commemorates John Harvard as a ‘godly gentleman and lover of learning.’ Harvard, who gives his name to Harvard University in Cambridge, near Boston. He was baptised in Saint Saviour’s Church, now Southwark Cathedral, on 29 November 1607, and his father’s signature is in the cathedral register.

John Harvard (1607-1638) was the fourth of nine children of Robert Harvard and his wife Katherine Rogers (1584-1635), originally from Stratford-upon-Avon. Robert Harvard was a prominent businessman with a butcher’s business in Pepper Alley. As a Warden of Saint Saviour’s, he had considerable influence in his community. John Harvard attended Saint Saviour’s Grammar School, where his father was a governor.

Robert Harvard and four of the children in his family died during the plague in Southwark in 1625. His widow Katherine remarried twice, and acquired the Queen’s Head Inn on Borough High Street. The street had been lined with galleried coaching inns since the days of Chaucer’s time, each one a starting point for a different destination.

John Harvard entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1627, and graduated BA (1632) and MA (1635). At Cambridge, he learned of John Winthrop’s plans to establish a Puritan settlement in New England. John married Ann Sadler (1614-1655), a minister’s daughter, in 1636 or 1637.

After the death of John’s mother and elder brother, John and Ann left for Massachusetts in 1637. He died of consumption in 1638 and left half his estate and his library of books to the proposed new college, now known as Harvard University.

He is commemorated by the Harvard Chapel, originally the Chapel of Saint John the Evangelist, in the north transept of Southwark Cathedral. The Harvard Chapel was rebuilt with donations from Harvard graduates and dedicated in 1907.

The Baptism of Christ by Saint John the Baptist depicted in the central panel in the window in the Harvard Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The splendid stained glass window was donated in 1905 by the then US Ambassador to London, Joseph Hodges Choate, a Harvard graduate, and was unveiled on 22 May 1905. The window was designed by the American artist, John La Farge (1835-1910), whose work is scarce in Europe. He was a contemporary and rival of the acclamed designer Louis Comfort Tiffany, and his window in the Harvard Chapel was made in the US under the supervision of the architect Charles F McKim.

The window is composed of six lancet panels in a large traceried frame. The lower register of the lancets depicts the Baptism of Christ by Saint John the Baptist in the central panel, and attendant angels flanking them in separate panels. The baptism scene is modelled on a painting by the French Baroque artist Nicholas Poussin (ca 1658) in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The three panels in the upper register show the coat of arms Harvard to the left, the royal arms in the centre, and the coat of arms of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where Harvard studied, to the right.

Decorative swags fill the inset panels above the three upper lancets.

The window was well received at the time. The Times reported that ‘In obedience to his care for unity in all architectural features, Mr La Farge planned this window in harmony with the style of the great periods – the thirteenth and twelfth centuries. The strong pure reds and blues and the blazing La Farge green glow in the blonde walls with the force of jewels.’

The window was damaged during World War II in a bombing raid, and was reconstructed in 1948. The reconstruction of the faces particularly shows the damage. A modern text panel below the royal arms notes the damage and acknowledges the restoration sponsored by Harvard alumni.

The altar or Communion table in the Harvard Chapel was at one time the High Altar in Saint Saviour’s Church. It is noted for its fine twisted ‘barley legs.’ It was the gift of Joyce Lady Clarke in 1623, the widow of a lawyer-poet, and her memorial in the cathedral was designed in 1626 by Nicholas Stone who worked for Inigo Jones.

The Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the Harvard Chapel in the tabernacle designed for the Great Exhibition by the Gothic Revival architect AWN Pugin in 1851, a year before his death in 1852.

The three panels in the upper register of the Harvard window show the coat of arms Harvard (left), the royal arms (centre), and the coat of arms of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Luke 14: 1, 7-11 (NRSVA):

1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. 8 ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

The altar in the Harvard Chapel was once the High Altar in Saint Saviour’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 4 November 2023):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been inspired by a Reflection – ‘He restores my soul’ – by Revd Dale R Hanson, introduced last Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (4 November 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul. I’ll worship Your holy name.

The tabernacle in the Harvard Chapel was designed by the Gothic Revival architect AWN Pugin in 1851 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Collect:

Blessed Lord,
who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
help us so to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,
we may embrace and for ever hold fast
the hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of all grace,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life
and the word of his kingdom:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘God is Love, God is Light, God is with us’ … a panel in the north ambulatory in Southwark Cathedral, close to the Harvard Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

John Harvard is remembered in the name of Southwark Library on Borough High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Kate Comerford Todd: a Comerford lawyer in the Trump White House

Kate Comerford Todd, born Kathryn Louise Comerford … she missed out being nominated by Donald Trump to the US Supreme Court

Patrick Comerford

Donald Trump’s appearance in court in New York earlier this week reminded me that the former White House associate counsel Kate Comerford Todd was listed by the former president in September 2020 as one of his potential nominees for the seat in Supreme Court seat made vacant by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the White House included Kate Comerford Todd on a list of four potential nominees. Todd (then 45) was the only lawyer mentioned as being on Trump’s shortlist who had not previously held a judicial position. Eventually, however, Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the vacant seat on 26 September 2020.

Kate Comerford Todd teaches law of federal courts at George Washington University Law School, is the Managing Partner of Ellis George Cipollone’s new Washington office, a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and is known for her conservative and libertarian views and her links with the Federalist Society, a right-wing conservative think-tanks. While working in the White House, she helped vet federal judges for nomination and advised Donald Trump and his staff on a wide range of legal and constitutional issues.

As Katherine Comerford, she graduated with distinction with a degree in government, history, and international relations from Cornell University, and received her law degree (JD) magna cum laude at Harvard Law School, where she was also executive editor of the Harvard Law Review.

She was a law clerk 2000-2001 to Justice Clarence Thomas – who was nominated by George HW Bush and who was the only black member of the Supreme Court – and for Judge J Michael Luttig of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Clarence Thomas is the most conservative and right-wing justice on the US Spreme Court, and he too was in the news this week with renewed calls for his impeachment after it was revealed that for two decades he has accepted undisclosed luxury gifts from Harlan Crow, a Republican megadonor and property billionaire.

She is the former senior vice-president and chief counsel of the United States Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the US Chamber of Commerce. She was a partner in the appellate, litigation, and communications practices of Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington DC, where she represented businesses in federal and state litigation and regulatory matters.

She also teaches the law of federal courts at the George Washington University Law School, and was also an adjunct assistant professor of Constitutional law at Cornell-in-Washington, a residential multidisciplinary programme that is part of Cornell University.

Trump appointed Kate Comerford Todd deputy assistant and deputy counsel to the president in 2019, and she helped navigate Trump’s White House through a thicket of legal issues.

Kate Comerford Todd was born Kathryn Louise Comerford, a daughter of Louise and James Comerford, who live in Peru, Indiana. Her father retired as an assistant chief of the Peru Fire Department later became the director of the Miami County 911 Services. Her mother Louise has worked in the Peru Township Trustee’s Office, where she helped determine eligibility for public assistance.

James Comerford traces his ancestry back to Ireland and to his great-great-grandfather, John Joseph Comerford (1826-1896), who married Ann Lawlor (1828-1917). They were the parents of John Lawrence Comerford (1860–1915), who married Rose McKendry (1863-1933).

Their son, Clarence Joseph Comerford (1890-1947), was born on 2 January 1890, in Deer Creek Township, Miami, Indiana. He married Ethel Fern Lesh on 25 April 1911, in Miami, Indiana, and they were the parents of four sons and two daughters. They lived in Miami, Indiana, United States in 1940. He died in 1947, and was buried in Saint Charles Catholic Cemetery, Peru, Indiana.

Those four sons included J Paul Comerford (1922-2012). He was born on 22 June 1922 in Bunker Hill, Miami County, Indiana. He married Jean (Shepler) Comerford in 1942 and they celebrated 51 years of marriage before she died in 1993. He married his second wife, Mary Lou (Landrum), in 1997. J Paul Comerford died on 17 March 2012, aged 89, in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, and was buried in Springdale Cemetery, Bunker Hill, Indiana.

Paul Comerford was educated at Bunker Hill High School and during World War II he was in the US Army Air Corps and the Eighth Air Force. He was a farmer and also worked at the Bunker Hill Elevator and Lumber Company, including many years as manager. He was an Emergency Medical Technician for the Bunker Hill EMS. He was a member of the Bunker Hill Town Board and Board President for many years. He also active in the Republican Party and attended the First Church of the Nazarene in Peru. His sisters included was Sister Jane Ann Comerford of Clarksville.

Paul Comerford’s grand-daughter, Kathryn Louise Comerford, married Gordon Dwyer Todd, also a lawyer in Washington, on 13 March 2004 by the Revd Franklyn M McAfee at Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Great Falls, Virginia.

Gordon Todd has worked at the Justice Department as the counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights. He graduated cum laude from Princeton and received his law degree from the University of Virginia. His parents, Janice and William Todd, lived in Houston, Texas. His father was a financial manager in the treasury department at ExxonMobil and his mother chaired the docent programme at the Rienzi Centre for European Decorative Arts at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

Lawyers who were close to Kate Comerford Todd and familiar with her work describe her as exceptionally smart and hard-working, a principled and independent-minded attorney whose originalist view of the Constitution are in line with other conservative jurists who have served on the court.

‘When I went to Kate with a question, I always found that I got really good advice, really thoughtful advice. She’s just really smart,’ said Will Consovoy, who worked at the same law firm as Todd. When he would give her his work to review, ‘It always came back much better than when I gave it to her. She was such a great sounding board.’

Donald Trump and Melania Trump with Kate Comerford Todd (left), Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, her husband Jesse Barrett, and Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House in 2020 after attending Barrett’s swearing-in ceremony as Supreme Court Associate Justice (Photograph: White House)

Adam Mortara, a lawyer and conservative legal activist who has known Todd for more than 20 years and also clerked for Clarence Thomas, recalled how Todd seemed to take to heart the justice’s admonition that backing down on an issue of principle is a ‘pathway to personal destruction.’

‘I think the first person that I ever met, other than Justice Thomas, who I realized fully embodied that principle is Kate,’ he said ‘I’ve never seen her back down on an issue of principle. I’ve never seen her compromise her principles.’ He added, ‘On issues of right or wrong, or on issues of what the law is or isn’t, there is no moving her.’

He described one conversation early in which she explained to him the intricacies of a legal doctrine in which courts afford deference to federal agency interpretation of statutes. After Mortara said it sounded like a silly, wrong-headed principle, Todd told him the doctrine was supported by Justice Antonin Scalia – a conservative stalwart on the court for decades – and asked whether that would make a difference.

It was effectively a test, Mortara said, to see if his instincts could be rattled by the ‘800-pound gorilla of Justice Scalia not agreeing with me.’

‘I remember her teaching me in that moment, by example, and by her words, that you have to figure things out for yourself,’ Mortara said. ‘One thing I learned from that, and it’s not even specific to any issue, is she’s an independent thinker who will figure things out for herself.’

‘She is absolutely brilliant,’ said Helgi Walker, a partner at the Gibson Dunn law firm who also served as a Thomas law clerk and as an associate White House counsel to Bush. ‘She is thoughtful, caring, considerate. She always tries to get it right, no matter what she’s doing.’

Todd was viewed as the favourite of White House lawyers, but there were concerns that the confirmation process would not be as smooth for a first-time jurist, according to people familiar with the situation.

Her lack of prior experience as a judge could have been a point of contention during any confirmation process. Her career, though a diverse blend of private practice and government work, had probably not produced some of the high-profile moments of the other Supreme Court contenders. At the White House, for instance, she helped vet federal judges but much of her work took place out of public view and behind the headlines.

She moves in conservative legal circles, participating in conferences hosted by the Federalist Society and writing an enthusiastic letter on Kavanaugh’s behalf when he was being considered for a seat on the Washington-based federal appeals court.

She has condemned what she regards as excessive regulation of businesses, including government overreach during the Obama administration that she described at one Federalist Society event in 2017 as ‘deliciously terrible.’

More than a decade earlier, she submitted a friend-of-the-court brief challenging the constitutionality of a board that was created by Congress to regulate the auditing of public companies in the wake of corporate accounting scandals.

Her position in that brief, and her work on behalf of the US Chamber Litigation Center, reflects a decidedly pro-business bent, though lawyers familiar with her career say that, like any attorney, she was tasked with advocating the interests of her clients.

‘Kate’s just always all about getting the right answer, even if it takes all night,’ said Helgi Walker, her friend and former colleague.

Kate Comerford Todd lives in Virginia with her husband Gordon and their five children.

Kate Comerford Todd, born Kathryn Louise Comerford, traces her ancestry back to Ireland and to John Joseph Comerford (1826-1896)

Updated: 10 April 2023

Two novel ways of approaching God

Patrick Comerford

AT Harvard Divinity School, Prof Guy Martin once offered two courses on the writer as theologian. The first course focused on a few major literary artists and theologians who have confronted theological issues in their writing, and compared the role of creative expression with that of theological expression, and the truths of fiction with the truths of religion. The authors under consideration included Tolstoy, Kirkegaard, Karl Barth, Flannery O’Connor and Toni Morrison.

Prof Martin’s second course focused on the poetry and prose of T.S. Eliot, examining the way he contributed to the relationship between religion and literature. As part of their final examination, the members of the class produced Eliot’s play, The Cocktail Party.

The traditional forms in which the arts meet theology have included music, painting, architecture and sculpture. Writers who have touched theology at its deeper levels have tended to be poets, while the key narrative mode for theology is autobiography. But few theologians have earned a reputation as popular writers.

In America, the church has provided settings and characters for writers such as Graham Greene. But some writers of fiction have been taken seriously as moral and pastoral theologians too. Last year, at the Glenstal Ecumenical Conference, the American theologian Dr Alexandra Brown used Ruby Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s Revelation to stress the uniqueness of Christian morality. In Canada, Margaret Craven’s novel, I Heard The Owl Call My Name, has become established as a sensitive and deeply spiritual work of pastoral theology.

On this side of the Atlantic, Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles in the last century and Joanna Trollope in this century have used church in-fighting and cathedral politics as backdrops and settings. But since John Bunyan published his Pilgrim’s Progress, few novelists have emerged as respected theologians and few theologians have been popular novelists.

However, a new generation includes serious theologians who have become serious novelists and popular novelists who are being taken seriously by theologians. Novelists being lauded by academic theologians includes two best-selling English writers, Susan Howatch and Catherine Fox.

Susan Howatch has won wide acclaim among academic theologians for her two trilogies on the Church of England. The trilogies were written after she returned to England after a spell in Dalkey, Co Dublin; she has since lived within sight of both Salisbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The first three novels – Glittering Images (1987), Glamorous Powers (1988) and Ultimate Prizes (1989) – drew on the theology and writings of Herbert Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham; William Ralph Inge, Lady Margaret, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and later Dean of St Paul’s; and Charles Raven, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.

In the second trilogy – Scandalous Risks (1991), Mystical Paths (1992) and Absolute Truths (1995) – she draws on the writings and thoughts of Bishop John Robinson, the Cambridge theologian and author of Honest To God (1963); Christopher Bryant, an Anglican monk and spiritual director; the Oxford theologian Austin Farrar; and the great spiritual director, Reginald Somerset Ward.

The popularity of her blockbusters has enabled her to endow the Starbridge Chair in Theology at Cambridge.

She has been compared by Andrew Greeley in the Washington Post and in reviews in the Church of England Newspaper to Anthony Trollope.

Meanwhile, she also became the subject of analytical profiles in the Church Times and received serious reviews in journals such as Theology. The Catholic Herald said Mystical Paths was profoundly theological. Howatch’s respectability in the world of academic theology was reinforced when she was invited to edit and introduce Mowbray’s four part Library Of Anglican Spirituality, bringing the works of Austin Farrar, Somerset Ward, Dorothy Sayers and H.A. Williams to the attention of a new generation.

* * *

CATHERINE Fox, meanwhile, has a doctorate in church history and is married to a vicar in Gateshead.

Like Howatch, she likes to write her novels in groups of three. Angels And Men was published in 1995 to critical acclaim and looks likely to become a best seller in Penguin this year. Her publisher, Hamish Hamilton, meanwhile have another success on their hands with her second novel, The Benefits Of Passion, due in paperback next year; two of the main characters from Angels and Men reappear in this. In her third novel, she promises a central figure will be Isobel, a minor, character from The Benefits Of Passion.

A graduate in English literature from Durham, Catherine Fox switched to post-graduate theology at King's College, London, doing a doctoral thesis on women and early Quakerism. Her experiences at Durham and her Ph.D. topic delivered obvious settings and character formation for both Angels And Men and Benefits Of Passion.

Mara Johns, the heroine of Angels And Men, is an English graduate who has moved to Durham for postgraduate research in church history, on women and religious fanaticism in the 17th century. In Benefits Of Passion, meanwhile, Annie Brown is a novelist training for ordination at Durham.

While writing, Fox has consulted closely with a leading dogmatic theologian, the Dean of Lichfield the Very Rev Tom Wright. Despite their strong language and graphic sex, her novels wrestle with the deepest theological questions, including the existence of God, the nature of sin, religious obsession and psychological health, call and vocation, self-sacrifice, passion, death and resurrection. She makes an insider’s criticism of evangelical dogmatism and charismatic extremes, and is not afraid to tackle topical debates such as the ordination of women and the church's attitude to homosexuality.

When Angels and Men first appeared, Fox’s local paper produced stories about the vicar’s wife who wrote dirty books. But more recently she has been the focus of a double page article in the Church Times, in which she spoke frankly about her Baptist childhood, and her growing feelings of marginalisation from mainstream evangelicalism with the rise of movements such as Reform, which opposes the ordination of women.

It may be a healthy reflection on the state of theology and the maturity of the Church of England today that popular novelists such as Susan Howatch and Catherine Fox can work so critically and so comfortably within those cloisters. One wonders whether Irish Catholicism would allow the kind of probing the novel needs ...

* * *

WHEN I was a student, my lecturer in moral theology included Dostoevsky and Iris Murdoch on his reading list. Flannery O’Connor, the self-styled “chill billy Thomist”, believed great literature deals with ultimate concerns which are essentially theological. But what about popular fiction? Fiction helps construct our view of reality, and popular fiction can help the general reader to enter the reality of theological debates and church life. It may not be long before Susan Howatch and Catherine Fox find they have become required reading in theological colleges.

This feature was first published in the Culture Section of The Irish Times on 25 March 1997