Dipping into Advent: Reflections for Advent & Christmas by Alan Hilliard (Messenger Publications, €9.95) Sacred Space: Advent & Christmas 2019-2020 by The Irish Jesuits (Messenger Publications, €4.95) Candles in the Night: The Advent Experience by Anna Burke (Veritas, €7.99/£7.00) Whatever about family feasting, fun and commercial excess, Christmas for Christians of all traditions around the…
101 Reasons why Cork is Better than Dublin by Jim Fitzpatrick (Mercier Press, €6.99 / £5.99) Dubliners will need a lot of persuading that there is any substance in Jim Fitzpatrick’s notion that Cork is a better place: if it is why are so many Corkonians in Dublin? The rivalries of the two cities are…
The Village of Bernadette: The Irish Connections – Lourdes Stories, Miracles & Cures by Colm Keane & Una O’Hagan (Capel Island, €14.99) Lourdes has long been a premier destination of Irish pilgrims. It has answered to something in the Irish psyche. This is the theme that the husband and wife writing team of Colm Keane…
It Has to be Said by Brian D’Arcy (Sliabh Bán Productions, €24.00/£22.00) Next month, Fr Brian D’Arcy will celebrate a half century in the priesthood. This book is a second tranche of his life story, at the beginning of which he thanks his Passionist brethren for all their understanding since he entered their order in…
View Ireland: Collecting Photography Curated by Anne Hodge, Curator of Prints and Drawings; and Sarah McAuliffe, Curatorial Fellow, NGI Hugh Lane Room, NGI, Merrion Square West, Dublin 2, runs to 2 February 2020 The first image that meets the eye of the visitor to this select show of Irish photographs is one of Evelyn Hofer’s…
Mainly about Books In the winter of 1897 two English explorers found in the municipal rubbish heaps of an ancient city called Oxyrhynchus (120 miles south of Cairo) a fragment of a papyrus, dating from the 2nd or 3rd Century. The text written on it was one hitherto unknown. The single leaf contained parts of…
Mary in Different Traditions: Seeing the Mother of Jesus with New Eyes by Thomas G. Casey SJ (Messenger Publications, €9.95/£8.95) This is a small book that explores some big issues. Author Casey begins by noting the shift of emphasis over the last generations in the way Catholics perceive Our Lady. Marian devotions, which it has…
Glimpses of the Gospels: Theological, Spiritual & Practical reflections by Jack Mahoney SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.95) Every week – for a few, every day – Catholics hear a gospel reading at Mass. As these readings are arranged over the year along with extracts from the Old Testament and the Epistles, present a schema…
Social Life in Pre-Reformation Dublin 1450-1540 by Peadar Slattery (Four Courts Press, €45.00) Recently I was involved, in quite another capacity, in raising money for the purchase for the Trinity College Research collections of a fugitive manuscript from St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin, liquidated at the time of the Reformation. This brought to my…
Glenstal Abbey through the seasons with photographs by Valerie O’Sullivan, edited by Colman Ó Clabaigh OSB (Columba Books, €24.99) Through pictures and text this beautiful book captures the life of one of Ireland’s most famous abbeys. At the heart of it all is an annual round of worship, prayer and reflection. But this is also…