Month: April 2019

Lively scenes from pre-Famine Cork

Daniel MacDonald Painting and Pencillings Cork 1843-1844 (Exhibition at the Gorry Gallery; catalogue from Gorry Gallery, 20 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2) In the Lion’s Den: Daniel MacDonald, Ireland and Empire by Niamh O’Sullivan (Cork University Press, €20.00) The exhibition of Daniel MacDonald works recently at the Gorry Gallery in Dublin was the first time that the…

Prelates denounce South Korea abortion law reversal

South Korea’s Constitutional Court has ruled an abortion ban in the country to be unconstitutional, receiving mixed responses from Korean citizens. Seven of the nine justices on the court voted to repeal the law on April 11, ordering it to be revised by 2020. Two of the justices dissented. The law, which was established in…

Faith in the Family

Sometimes God just breaks in. That phrase, “You can’t pour from an empty cup” makes sense to me and so for Lent this year one of my commitments was to take time out. On a sunny Thursday morning I took myself to Ards Friary – for quiet time. A few days previously a friend of…

The council that is to come

Vatican II is only just beginning to bear fruit, Colm Fitzpatrick is told   No other event springs faster to mind when conversing about radical changes in the Church than the occasion of the Second Vatican Council; an event which continues to reverberate in the hearts and minds of Christians today. With well over 50…

Sinfully good meals for the family

Saintly Feasts: Food for Saints and Scholars by Martina Maher & Colette Scully, with Dries van den Akker SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.95 / £17.50) Mary
 Litton   This is a lovely book by two charming and talented ladies, one in her 90s, who undertook to cook Sunday lunch for a Jesuit community in England. Those familiar with…

Outrage over memorial crosses bulldozing

Catholic and Orthodox leaders have condemned the bulldozing of memorial crosses at a site of communist-era mass executions. Media reports said at least 15 protesters were arrested in early April when police cordoned off an area of the Kuropaty Forest, outside Minsk in Belarus and bulldozers moved in to demolish about 70 15-foot crosses, which…