New Paperbacks

Absolute Truth: The Catholic Church Today by Edward Stourton, Penguin £7.99. Who would have thought that Ed Stourton, the urbane Old Amplefordian BBC presenter, should nourish such radical sympathies beneath his welltailored exterior? According to Stourton, the failure of Liberation Theology was a tragedy for the people of Latin America — and he implies that Cardinal Ratzinger is to blame. Moreover, "a change in the ruling on contraception would bring millions of Catholics back into full communion with the Church, and destroy at a stroke the principal source of the gap between teaching and practise that has had such a corrosive impact on the Church's place in the daily lives of modern Catholics... Equally, the abolition of the celibate discipline for the priesthood would bring thousands of men into the Church's service, and dramatically reduce the scale of sexual deviancy and abuse..." The next Pope, he concludes, will need to free himself from "the creeping Infallibility that Hans Ming detected". You get the idea.
Poems by St Therese of Lisieux translated by Alan Bancroft. Fount £5.99. These are love poems, says Bancroft — but "discard any mental image you have of a sloppily sentimental girl. Rather, this was someone tough, in the best sense; intelligent, humorous, deep...". Here are the opening lines of "Joan's Hymn After Her Victories":
All, all! To you, Almighty, be The glory of the battle-sword (Since victory was given me! A child so weak and timid, Lord.) And oh, my Mother Mary! you, A guiding planet, always bright Your shining in my path, I knew, Protected me, from Heaven's height.
No prizes for guessing which Joan the poet had in mind.