On Marriage, On Birth, On Death (three titles in the series “How to Find God”) by Timothy and Kathy Keller (Hodder & Stoughton, £9.99) In this time of peril and stress, when Covid-19 continues to spread across the benighted nations of Africa, many are faced very directly with question of what it is they believe and…
With the assistance of galleries around the world, the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome has mounted a magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime show, celebrating the youthful yet astonishingly mature genius of Raphael, who died in 1522 at the ridiculously early age of 37. Masterpieces which would have taken years of travelling to see, have been brought together. The…
Theology and Ecology in Dialogue: The Wisdom of Laudato Si’ by Dermot A. Lane, with a foreword by Seán McDonagh SCC (Messenger Publications, €19.95/£17.95) This year marks the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s dramatic and historic encyclical Laudato Si’. It is being marked by the publication here in Ireland of a book exploring the document’s significance…
Medieval Philosophy (A History of Philosophy without any Gaps) by Peter Adamson (Oxford University Press, £25) When I discussed with a friend my intention of reviewing this tome – and tome it is, running to more than 600 closely printed pages – he wondered: “Are readers of The Irish Catholic interested in medieval philosophy?” Ignoring this…
The Sin of Certainty: Why God desires our trust more than our ‘correct’ beliefs by Peter Enns (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99) Author Enns, who is a professor of Biblical Studies at a Pennsylvanian University, is a writer in the evangelical tradition. This book, though issued before the present plague descended on us, has interesting things to…
Journeys of Faith: Stories of Pilgrimage from Medieval Ireland by Louise Nugent (Columba Books, €26.99) This book is an epitome of a thousand years of Irish history, roughly 500 AD to 1500 AD. It is a reminder, if one is really needed, of just how important the context of history is to understanding present attitudes…
Raphael’s World by Michael Collins (Messenger Publications, €19.95 / £17.95) The Renaissance painter Raphael (1483-1520) is an artist whose work is widely familiar to many people without them being aware of it. His images affect their imagination because of their content, not because of whom they are by. This is because (rather like Murillo) he was…
Strong in the Face of Tribulation: The Church in Communion, A Sure Support in Time of Trial, compiled and edited by the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, gratis, by download from the website of the publishing house, in pdf format; currently available in English, Italian, Spanish and French) The scene…
Passion Play: Oberammergau 2020 by Christian Tüeckl and others (Theatre der Zeit, £30.00; ISBN-13: 978-3957492845) The village of Oberammergau lies some 45 miles south of Munich in the Tyrol. In many ways it is a remote place, but in time of war and plague, no place is truly remote, in the sense of being totally…
A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by Alain Corbin (Polity Press, £14.99) When Silence Speaks: The Life and Spirituality of Elisabeth Leseur by Jennifer Moorcroft (Gracewing, €20.00) Silence, they say, is golden. But all too often we read about strenuous objections being made to the ringing of church bells in rural parts,…