St Patrick’s Day and Easter coming so closely together this year, set my mind running back over what we know about the earliest years of Christianity in Ireland, more especially around Dublin. Despite the assurance with which many people speak about this period, there are many mysteries about the events of the process of ‘national…
Pilgrimage: Journeys with Meaning by Peter Stanford (Thames & Hudson, £25.00/€30.00 approx.) Peter Stanford, a former editor of The Catholic Herald, is also the author of a long series of books that explore aspects of Christianity from a Catholic point of view which manage to appeal to a wide audience through his skill in making the often…
The Best of Benedict; An Irish Perspective edited by Dualta Roughneen (One by One Press/Alive Newspaper, available from Knock Shrine Bookshop and Mayo Books, €12.99 plus postage) This is not, as the title might at first suggest, an anthology of the writings of the Pope emeritus. These now span many decades of theological investigation and social comment,…
Easter was never ‘a normal day’. Over the years in these pages we have often stressed the need to use words properly as an aid to clear thinking and so to a better understanding of things. Over recent days I have been struck by the way so many people speak of longing for ‘a normal…
A History of the Church through its Buildings by Alan Doig (Oxford University Press, £30.00) This is an unusual book by an author with unusual talents. Alan Doig studied architecture at King’s College Cambridge, later completing a doctorate in the same field. Having taught history of art for some seven years he was ordained into the Church…
Fortune’s Many Houses: A Victorian Visionary, a Noble Scottish Family, and a Lost inheritance by Simon Welfare (Simon & Schuster, £25.00) Here in Ireland for many people in the early 20th century (and some even now) the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen were figures of folklore among many nationalists, as both Lord Lieutenant Johnny Gordon and…
The Story of Nano Nangle: A Life Lived on the Razor’s Edge by Anne Lyons PBVM (Messenger Publications, $4.95 /£4.50) Anne Lyons has been appointed by the Presentation Order as the postulator to promote the cause of the beatification of the order’s foundress Nano Nagle, who died in 1784. The cause was opened on the bicentenary…
Pope Francis has returned safe and sound, despite the fears of many, from his historic four day trip to Iraq. His visit seems to have deeply affected many both in the country itself and in the wider world. The damage done in the decades since the original American interventions is still very real. But the…
This year marks the 1,500th anniversary of the birth of St Columcille according to tradition To commemorate this significant date in the history of Ireland and Scotland, a group of supporting institutions and authorities have come together to encourage a wide range of events of all kinds across Ulster and Alban, from Derry to Inverness, and to…
Thomas MacGreevy and the Rise of the Irish Avant Garde by Francis Hutton-Williams (Cork University Press, €39.00) I have long thought highly of Thomas MacGreevy, who managed to be both a Catholic poet, a Parisian friend of James Joyce, an apostle of modernism in Ireland – indeed in Europe – as well as head of our…