By Way of the Heart: Pierre Favre SJ, the First Jesuit Companion, by Brendan Comerford SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £10.95) In any great enterprise the initiating leader needs associates to make the new initiative a success. Among the Jesuits the names of Ignatius Loyola himself and Francis Xavier are well known. Less well…
Creat claims, as by now we are all too well aware, are being made for the future of AI – the internet development of artificial intelligence which it is said is about to transform, not just the world, but the cosmos. Though there are Jeremiahs who are filling the airwaves with their doubts about both…
Generous Heart: A Daily Prayer Book, by Donal Neary SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.95) Opening this book on its arrival on my desk, brought back to my mind the memory of my Jesuit mentors, seizing a quarter hour or so to pace about the corridors or grounds of Gonzaga College, to read their…
Dublin’s Women Street Traders, 1882-1932: “Civic Evil” and civil disobedience, by Susan Marie Martin (Maynooth Studies in Local History / Four Courts Press, €11.65 / £10.25) The street traders of inner Dublin were affectionately known as “Shawlies” from their custom of wrapping themselves up against the dank weather in large black woollen shawls. They…
After Newman: A Eulogy for Anglo-Catholics 1845-1965, by Aidan Nichols OP (Gracewing, £20.00 / €22.99) Near our house, off Clyde Road, there used to be a convent of Anglican Nuns. They belonged to the Community of St Mary the Virgin, founded at Wantage in England in 1848. When my wife and I were young…
Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform, by Christopher R. Altieri (Bloomsbury Continuum, £20.00 / €19.99) This book is among the very first to try to encompass what the advent of Leo XIV means in general terms. You can be sure many more will follow, but as author Altieri, a born-American with decades of…
Ireland: Mapping the Island, by Joseph Brady and Paul Ferguson (Birlinn, £30.00 / €34.99) These days we take maps, and the knowledge of the real world that they display, very much for granted. This was always the case as this marvellous compendium of Ireland’s history as evidenced in cartography reveals. The first printed map of…
Face to Face: The Theology of the Icon, by Aidan Hart (Gracewing, £9.95 / €11.50) The title is, of course, as allusion to the text of St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see as in a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then…
The Writings of Padraic Colum: “That Queer Thing, Genius”, edited by Pádraic Whyte and Keith O’Sullivan (Routledge Studies in Irish Literature, £135.00 / €156.00) There was a time, long, long ago, when Padraic Colum was one of the most quoted by heart poets in Ireland, a man whose words were happily on the lips of…
A Divine Calling: One Woman’s Life-Long Battle for Equality in the Catholic Church, by Soline Humbert, foreword by Mary McAleese (The Liffey Press, €19.95 / £17.95) This book arrived for review at about the same time that it was announced that Dame Sarah Mullally was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Her elevation brings into focus the…