The Family Prayer Book, Council for Marriage and the Family of the Irish Episcopal Conference (Veritas, €14.99 / €14.99 / £12.75)
Peter Costello
The hope of healing and the charity of care
Caring for the Nation: A History of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, by Sr Eugene Nolan (Gill & Macmillan, €29.99 / £26.99)
What coalition costs us all
The Price of Power: Inside Ireland’s Crisis Coalition, by Pat Leahy (Penguin Ireland, €17.99 / £14.99; ebook €9.99)
A Canon of rich literature
Peter Costello profiles a forgotten novelist of Catholic Ireland
The World of Books
Mark Patrick Hederman, OSB has already given a wide ranging appreciation in this newspaper of some of the special qualities that characterised the late poet Seamus Heaney, whose passing has been greatly mourned. But there are other things too that might be said about Heaney from the point of view of the literary historian. …
Recent books in brief
Croagh Patrick: Irelandís Holy Mountain edited by Harry Hughes (Croagh Patrick Archaeological Committee, €14.95 / £12.70; Croagh Patrick Visitor Centre, Teach na Miasa, Murrisk, Co. Mayo; email: info@croagh-patrick.com) We are all familiar with the photographs of pilgrimages making their slow way up the slops of Croagh Patrick at the time of the annual pilgrimage. The…
The World of Books
Pyjamas are back in the news again. The reports that a welfare office in Damastown in north Dublin had posted a notice that its clients coming in for interviews were not to wear pyjamas aroused great comment, even though the topic had been well aired in the media when Maya Derrington’s street-smart film Pyjama Girls…
Recent books in brief
Visits to the Blessed Sacrament for the 21 Century By Richard Tobin CSsR (Redemptorist Communications,€5/£4.50) This is a little prayer book for private meditations. In his introduction, Fr Tobin writes about the nature of the Eucharist, adding that ”keeping the bread of communion in the tabernacle is a reverent prolonging of the Mass, to give us…
Recent books in brief
Navigating the Gospels: Mark By Philip Fogarty SJ (Columba Press, €12.55 / £10.46) This volume concludes Fr Fogarty’s set of guides to the Gospels. Intended for the general reader rather than the student, they aim through the use of the New Revised Standard Versions texts and the work of present day scholars and theologians, to open…
The World of Books – by the Books Editor
The poet Yeats (to distinguish him from the painter Yeats) was of the opinion that ”Words alone are certain good”. And so they are, but only if we know what they mean, and use them properly. The other day, in discussing the consequences of a burglary, a friend remarked to me that the Civic Guard…