St Laurence O’Toole, known in Irish as Lorcán Ua Tuathail, born in 1128 at Castledermot, Co. Kildare, Ireland, became renowned as a reformer, peacemaker, and man of deep faith. Laurence’s early life was marked by hardship; at just ten, he was handed over as a hostage to the King of Leinster, a political practice intended…
Gerard Bennett Every now and then, you realise that you are part of something historic, quite possibly, a once-in-a-lifetime moment. In that situation, you don’t want to miss anything; you know you want to recall each part of this special time. So it was when the relics of St Bernadette visited the Oblates of Mary…
It’s that time of the year again. The French film season at the Irish Film Institute runs from November 13 to 24. France knows a thing or three about making movies. Sometimes, admittedly, they’re too talky. (Eric Rohmer, anyone?) There’s also a danger of pretentiousness. You may come out of a cinema shaking your head…
Gabriel Fitzmaurice Questioning Ireland: Essays and Reviews, by Thomas McCarthy (Gallery Books, €17.50 / £14.50) Thomas McCarthy’s latest book, Questioning Ireland, is, like its predecessor, Poetry, Memory and the Party, magnificent. McCarthy, poet, novelist, essayist and critic is at once a Waterford man, a Munster man, an Irishman and a man of the world. A…
“Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins”. These words of Christ, spoken from a cross in the little church of San Damiano to St Francis of Assisi, crept into my mind when I took an old wooden pew in the little church of the Immaculate Heart…
Hienrich Zimmer, along with other Germans over the last two centuries such Rudolf Thurneysen, Kuno Meyer and Ludwig Bieler, was one of the scholars who did so much to establish the foundations of modern studies into the Celtic languages of Europe. Their publications were not only respected in their own day, they still remain essential…
A Catholic priest executed by the Nazis in 1944 who’s today a candidate for sainthood will be memorialised in November, along with four other figures, in a “Garden of the Righteous of the World” located on the island of Sicily. Fr Alcide Lazzeri will be honoured in a ceremony on November 29, which will feature…
Q: Please explain what an indulgence is and how it can reduce or eliminate the time a soul must spend in purgatory. A: Indulgences are perhaps one of the more misunderstood parts of Catholic practice. But indulgences are deeply rooted in several key Catholic theological concepts, such as the nature of purgatory, the Church’s…
Inside Rural Ireland: Power and Change since Independence, edited by Tomás Finn & Tony Varley (University College Press, €30.00 / £25.00) It was a maxim in medieval times when a social problem arose to “Wait a bit: lets us ask the country folk” – “Sustine modicum: ruricolae melius hoc norunt.” This was transformed by the…
Irish politicians may well be looking warily on the US election results as they move into the race for power. There can be no doubt that Donald Trump won the election because he was listening to what mattered to the people of the United States, and planning to address their very real concerns which echo…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Nuala O’Loan