The February 9 issue of The Tablet has a beautiful article by Carolyn Butler, daughter of the late novelist and journalist Angela Lambert. It describes the spiritual reconciliation that took place over the last months of her mothers life as the daughter took care of the mother and they embarked upon conversations impossible before, especially since Carolyn converted to Catholicism. Upon her mothers death, she found a long essay by her mother, never published, "My daughter the Roman Catholic," which ended: "I believe that the Roman Catholic Church has repaired the harm done to her as a child and a teenagermuch of it done by me. I believe that without it, she might have spent her life in the hands of shrinks or charlatans or worse. It believe it confers upon her an identity and even a kind of peace which this difficult, beautiful, forgiving child of mine otherwise might never have found."And theres a lovely tribute to the enduring power of the Psalms. As her mother lay dying, Carolyn writes, "I began to read the Psalms to her, which I found painfully consoling. Those ancient voices reaching out across the centuries in their anguish and praise seemed to do justice to someone at the end of their lifeand to me in my own extremis."