How to Succeed in Secondary School: A Practical Guide by Tony Bellew (Orpen Press, €15.00/£13.00pb) These first weeks of September, what with the anxieties of students of all ages about going back to school, the stress and strain on teachers, parents, and indeed families is very real. Their worries are not just economic, but also…
Under pressure of space this week, the series on places of faith, having encompassed lesser known aspects of Northern Europe, crosses the Atlantic, moving from the shrines of the Old World in Germany to the shrines of the New World in South and North America, from very ancient places honouring Jesus and the Three Kings,…
Who stole the Papal Stone back in 1854…and why? I recently came on details of what might be called an American Catholic mystery, which I thought I might share with readers. I am always amazed at the enthusiasm with which Irish Catholics, and indeed many American Catholics, embrace American conservatives. I am all for brotherly…
The recent attack on Salman Rushdie, like the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in 2015, raises fundamental questions about the limits of free speech. There are no easy answers. Those of us who live in liberal democracies are predictably appalled by the very idea of restrictions, formal or otherwise, on our freedom of speech.…
The Norwegians and Dublin’s Christ Church When we Irish set off on a holiday, or related pilgrimage (to repeat myself slightly from the other week), we inevitably turn south. Because of this we often miss many interesting things. It seems our chilled Hyperborean hearts need a large supply of those “beaded bubbles winking at the…
Prayer: Our Dialogue with God by Pat Collins CM, preface by Cardinal Seán Brady (New Life Publications, €18.00) Fr Pat Collins has been popular with many people for many years. This book is an epitome of the qualities that they go to his books to find. He sets out in his new book, which contains…
Irish people desire most, it seems, to fly over Britain to reach Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje. While well understanding their motives, I feel that by this choice they miss many interesting experiences, and narrowly restrict their contacts with places of faith over the past two millenniums, engaging places which in many ways have perhaps done…
Thomas Meagher: Forgotten Father of Thomas Francis Meagher by Eugene Broderick (Irish Academic Press, €29.95/£27.99) Thomas Meagher was described by Daniel O’Connell as “one of the best men that ever lived”. Yet he is only generally remembered as the father of Thomas Francis Meagher, the Young Irelander and later a Brigadier General in the US…
With things getting back to normal these days, summer provides enough fine days for us all to make some visits to often overlooked places of faith, as well as a few famous ones. Over the next few weeks some of these will be described here, with their appropriate literary associations. Croagh Patrick I am writing…
The Price of Truth: Titus Brandsma, Carmelite by Miguel Arribas, O. Carm Carmelite dia, US$23.85/£19.60/€23.50 “It was around six o’clock Monday evening, 19 January 1942, when two burly young men rang the doorbell of the Carmelite Priory in Nijmegen in Holland. The brother porter greeted the visitors and enquired, ‘how may I help you, gentlemen?’…
Peter Costello