Edith Stein: Selected Writings ed. Marian Maskular CPS, foreword by Sarah Borden Shareky (Paulist Press, £35.99) Edith Stein (St Theresa Benedicta) is very much a witness to faith for the modern world. It perhaps significant that her philosophical thesis in 1920 was entitled ‘The Problem of Empathy’, for empathy, the sympathetic love and concern for others…
Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World by Marc Raboy (Oxford University Press, £25.00) The Vatican is said to be slow to communicate its views on issues, due to its own bureaucracy. But this is only partially true. L’Osservatore Romano, for instance, was founded in 1861 to propagate the claims of the Vatican under threat…
A Church of the Poor: Pope Francis and the Transformation of Orthodoxy by Clemens Sedmak (Orbis Books / Alban Books, £23.99) This important book is written with the aim, it seems to this reviewer, of enlarging our sense of what ‘orthodoxy’ ought to mean in the era of Pope Francis. Prof. Sedmak is a distinguished…
World of Books The primacy of the word, what the Greek philosophers called logos, has been for many the only way in which both good and bad can be distinguished. Yet one has, in this day and this age, to doubt some whether this is always so. Take these words – they are from a…
World of Books Do Chrstians, and especially Catholic Christians, really understand and appreciate the true nature of Judaism today? I ask this question, which has some importance to the world today, because I have been looking into a book I casually acquired but which has turned out to be quite fascinating. It is called A…
The Land of Far Beyond, The First Christmas and other Stories, Noah’s Ark and other Stories from the Old Testament by Enid Blyton (Hodder Children’s Books, £10.99 each) One has to feel some sympathy with the ghost of Enid Blyton if she were to return to see what has been done to her children’s books,…
The Harbour Within: A Book of Simple Spirituality by Sister Consilio (Hachette Books Ireland, €14.99 hb / €8.99pb) While working as a young nun in Athy Sr Consilio came in contact, through the local hospital, with “the men of the road”. These were men, often from a farming background, some ex-soldiers, who had been rendered…
Migraine: Not Just Another Headache ed. by Dr Marie Murray, compiled by Patrick Little & Audrey Craven (Currach Press, €12.99) In my time I have suffered from migraines. They are a very unlovely thing indeed, debilitating a person for days, or even weeks, on end. Recurrent and painful though they are, they are not fatal.…
Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Malcolm Guite (Hodder and Stoughton, £25.00) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are two poems known in some way to anyone anywhere who reads English. Yet there was more to Samuel Taylor Coleridge than these and a handful of other poems. He was also …
Mindful Meditations for Every Day by Sr Stan (Columba Press, €12.99) In Ireland, Sr Stanislaus Kennedy has long been much admired. One of the surprises among the releases of State papers at the turn of the year, as least to this reviewer, was a file dealing with the proposal put to the government that it…