The World of Books by the Books Editor Back in 2013, the Bishop of Northampton Dr Peter Doyle appointed Canon John Udris to inquire into the suitability of Gilbert Keith Chesterton for canonisation. Canon Udris’s report will be given to the bishop later this month. He has been quoted in the press as saying…
Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith by Emma Mason (Oxford University Press, €30.00; available also as an ebook) John F. Deane The ever popular Christmas carol In the Bleak Mid-Winter was written by Christina Rossetti but holds its fame more from the musical setting by Gustav Holst than by the strength of the poem. Rossetti wrote a great…
Am I a Feminist? Are You? by Mary Kenny (New Island Books, €13.95) Those who can recall earlier manifestations of Mary Kenny might be daunted by a title so redolent of the #metoo generation and the fierce quarrels of the present day gender wars. But the present-day Mary is a person of great experience as well…
World of Books Some days I stand in front of the magazine racks in Easons and wonder if the great era of the general magazine is now over. Are they, so to speak, now dead in the water, killed off by television and the internet? Certainly they are not what they once were. The…
Saints for the Family by John Murray (Messenger Publications, €9.95) Inspiration from the Saints: Stories from the Lives of Catholic Holy Men and Women by Maolsheachlann Ó Ceallaigh (Angelico Press, £12.50 / US$16.95) Fr John Murray is the busy parish priest of Downpatrick in Ulster. His name may well be familiar to readers both from his…
A Gospel of Hope by Walter Brueggemann (Hodder and Stoughton, £12.99) As we get ready to mark the end of the First World War, the Great War as it was then called, and the war to supposedly save civilisation, many will be recalling that the treaty that concluded that appalling conflict was the source, within a…
Homily Hints and Prayers: Daily Mass Reading by Silvester O’Flynn (Columba Books, €19.99) In the blurb of this quite large book there is a striking little phrase: “Where there is no priest available, this book would be an invaluable help to any group who gathers to pray with the day’s Mass Reading.” Now this may seem…
Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting by Laura Kelly Fanucci (Veritas, €12.99) Author Laura Fanucci, a hardworking American mother and theologian, places as an epigraph to her little book a saying of St Francis of Assisi: “It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful. The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me…
The Little Book of Dog Quotes edited by Aubrey Malone (Barzipan Publishing, £8.95) The world is divided, as we all know, into cat people and dog people. Being myself a dog person, I found this little book amusing. The world, according to P.G. Wodehouse, is divided into those who can stop a dog fight and those who…
National Gallery of Ireland Print Gallery Drawing Dublin exhibition curated by Anne Hodge (Curator of Prints and Drawings) and Niamh MacNally (Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings) The three rooms of the Print Gallery in the NGI are currently devoted to a most interesting exhibition, one filled with unusual and little seen images of the…