The Tablet

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The Tablet
Editor	Catherine Pepinster
Categories	Catholicism
Frequency	Weekly (except Christmas and Easter)
Circulation	23,628^[1]
First issue	May 16, 1840
Company	Tablet Publishing Company
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Website	www.thetablet.co.uk
ISSN	0039-8837

For the weekly Catholic newspaper published in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, please see The Tablet (Diocese of Brooklyn).

The Tablet is an international Catholic weekly newspaper, published in London. It has an international readership of over 55,000.^{[citation needed]}

1 Ownership
2 Editors since 1935
3 References
4 Links

[edit] Ownership

The Tablet was founded in 1840 by a Quaker convert to Catholicism, Frederick Lucas, just 10 years before the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. It is the second-oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain after the Spectator (which was founded in 1828).

For the first 28 years of its life, The Tablet was owned by the Catholic laity. In 1868, Fr (later Cardinal) Herbert Vaughan, who had founded the only British Catholic missionary society, the Mill Hill Missionaries, purchased the journal just before the First Vatican Council that defined papal infallibility.

The Tablet remained in the trusteeship of successive Archbishops of Westminster and Superiors General of the Mill Hill Missionaries for 67 years. In 1935, Cardinal Hinsley and Mill Hill sold the journal back to a group of Catholic laity.

[edit] Editors since 1935

After the restoration of lay ownership, the first Tablet editor, from 1936 to 1967 was Douglas Woodruff, formerly of The Times, for many years (1938-1961) assisted by Michael Derrick, who after the Second World War was often acting editor. Woodruff was followed as editor by the publisher Tom Burns, who served from 1967 to 1982. Burns was followed by the BBC producer John Wilkins, who after 22 years in the editorial chair retired at the end of 2003. Catherine Pepinster, formerly executive editor of the Independent on Sunday, was appointed as The Tablet's first woman editor at the beginning of 2004.^[2]

Tom Burns, a conservative in political terms, took The Tablet in a decidedly liberal direction in terms of Church authority and sexual morality. Under John Wilkins's editorship the journal's political stance was seen as centre-left, and it continued to disagree with the Vatican and then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) on a number of issues, especially those related to sexual morality.

Wilkins's successor, Pepinster, has 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'.^{[citation needed]}