What Does It All Mean? A Guide to Being More Faithful, Hopeful and Loving By Richard Leonard SJ (Paulist Press/ Alban Books £17.99) If Catholicism is what Catholics believe, then sometimes these days it is not what the Church purports to teach. Take for instance the question of angels. These days many Catholics believe that…
The Nuns of Saint’ Ambrogio: The True Story of a Covent Scandal By Hubert Wolf (Oxford University Press, £20.00) When the Church these days is besieged by scandal many seem to think that in previous generations things were different. They were certainly different, but in the sense of being far worse, as this book, by…
I have been a reader of books of travel and exploration since I was 10 or so – by which I mean real explorers and not the self-advertising egomaniacs so common today. Books by giants of science and endeavour, such as Marco Polo, Livingstone, Sir Richard Burton, Humboldt, Waterton (an old Stonyhurst boy) and others,…
Ireland’s nuns have not been getting much respect of late, for reason that painful headlines make only too clear. But in all this controversy some things are lost sight of. Critics seem to think that the Church took over institutions that ought to have been run by the state; but the truth is that if…
The release of Dunkirk has been the focus for mixed reviews and divided opinions. Christopher Nolan’s movie with its clean-shaven, well-washed, un-muddied British soldiers retreating with their weapons still in hand, though loved by critics, has been derided by veterans of WWII as a travesty. To see Dunkirk merely as an “heroic retreat” is to…
Nick Page is the author of some 70 popular books in the area of religion, written from a quirky Protestant point of view. This is suggested by his subtitle: “Commemorating 500 years of Popes, Protestants, reformers, radicals and other assorted irritants”. He begins by pointing out that the first historian of the Reformation, a servant…
The Hopkins Festival will be opened tomorrow by the British Ambassador, H.E. Robin Barnett in Newbridge College Theatre, Co. Kildare (at 7.30pm). Directed by poet Desmond Egan, who founded it 30 years ago, it celebrates the life and work of the Jesuit poet Gerald Manley Hopkins, now recognised as one of the great literary figures…
In the hallway of Clongowes Wood Castle there stands a white marble statue of St Ignatius Loyola. To the mind of at least one small boy it had a pale ghostly appearance, little suggesting a living person, and certainly not the vivid vitality of Ignatius himself. In his book Brendan Comerford aims to reveal the…
Dublin prides itself of being “a city of literature” – there are UNESCO signs all over the place promoting the fact. But when we look back over the centuries we can see that the city’s true life in literature only begins with Jonathan Swift, the 350th anniversary of whose birth we are celebrating this year.…
Best-Loved Joyce written by James Joyce with an introduction by Bob Joyce. Edited by Jamie O’Connell (O’Brien Press, €12.99) Joyce Unplugged by Anthony J. Jordan (West Books, €15.00) Tomorrow, during the now ever-expanding festivities recalling the day in 1904 on which James Joyce’s Ulysses is set, will see a host of events of all kinds for…