Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Felix M Larkin’s review of Joe Good’s Inside the GPO 1916: A First-hand Account in the issue of July 30 acknowledges the author’s vivid account of his experiences in the turbulent years from 1916 to 1921. He is rightly critical of Good’s seeming lack of compassion and regret for those affected by the…
Month: August 2015
The World of Books
The Books Editor “At exactly 15 minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and…
More on the Martyrs of Easter Week 1916
J. Anthony Gaughan Here are two further biographies in the “16 Lives Series” dealing with the leading figures executed after the 1916 Rising, both subjects are among the less well-known of those whose died. Con Colbert was born on October 19, 1888 in Castlemahon, Newcastlewest. Soon afterwards his family moved to Athea, where he spent his early…
Knock Shrine in literature
Peter CostelloNews of the visions at Knock first came to the attention of the wider world through the medium of journalists anxious to report on what many thought might be an Irish Lourdes. This had an unfortunate outcome in many ways. Veteran journalist Andrew Dunlop, an Ulsterman, in his memoirs Fifty Years of Irish Journalism (Dublin,…
In Marian devotions, the Faith takes on a special relationship to the poor
Fr Ronald RolheiserDevotional prayer to Mary, the mother of Jesus, has always been the centre-piece within Catholic piety. Among other things, those devotions have focused upon various Marian shrines, places where Mary allegedly appeared, Lourdes, Knock, Fatima, Guadalupe, Medjugorje, among other places. Karl Rahner, studying the phenomenon of Marian apparitions, points out that all these apparitions have…
Francis’ papacy recorded in a book of quite magificent photography
Pope Francis: A Photographic Portrait of the People’s Pope by Fr Michael Collins, featuring exclusive photography by Rodolfo Felici (Dorling Kindersley, €28.00)
Mary a ‘model of faith and charity’
Cathal BarryMary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Taoiseach hails Irish ‘spiritualism’
Enda Kenny welcomes American pilgrims to land of ‘spiritualism’
On learning from young people
Dear Editor, Fr Peter McVerry states that the Church must learn from the young and focus less on the God of the law but on a God whose passion is compassion (IC 23/07/2015). I think very few of us would disagree in principle, but practically I am not sure what Fr McVerry is suggesting. Living…
‘Not in my Name’ argument doesn’t add up
Dear Editor, Does Niall Guinan’s reasoning in ‘Not in my Name’ (IC 30/07/2015) add up? Fittingly he says “The eighth amendment is an equality provision, protecting the most vulnerable human beings among us”. Planned Parenthood takes “the most vulnerable human beings” with a spark of divine being, kills them, takes the parts, “dead” in the…