Michaelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, Ross King (Pimlico, £9.99) Quite by chance I was reading this book at the time the Conclave began. I thought it would be interesting to make the decorations of the Sistine Chapel the focus of some reflections on the election of the Pope. But like the rest of the world I…
Seamus Cashman Plenitude, by Thomas McCarthy (Carcanet Press, £11.99 / €14.99) Tom McCarthy’s new collection Plenitude has that centrality of ‘pleasure’ and ‘vocation’ at the heart of poetry’s creative energies which Auden once alluded to, as indeed do so many of his recent prose works. Plenitude completes a trilogy of collections, the previous books are Pandemonium (2016) and Prophecy (2019), all…
Seven Prophets and the Culture War: Undoing the Philosophies of a World in Crisis, by Alexandre Havard (Scepter Publishers, $17.95; available online through Amazon) This is a study which should be in the hands of every thinking person, university graduate and those who influence public opinion. At the outset the author describes the culture war which…
Fr Alan Hilliard may well be familiar to many readers who are out of bed early enough through his contributions to RTÉ’s ‘A Word in Edgeways’, 3 minute long broadcasts at 6.15am in the mornings from which the pieces in this new book of his derive. Having got up that early he spends much of…
The People’s Celebration of the Eucharist, by Fintan Lyons OSB (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £10.95) When it comes to the Eucharist, some of the toughest question are the simplest: who celebrates the Eucharist and what are they celebrating?” Fintan Lyons’ little book examines this basic question: just who are we when we celebrate the Eucharist?…
H.M.S TARA, by Richard Burnell, edited by Gareth Rowlands (Holyhead Maritime Museum, £7.95 / €9.50 approx.) The RMS Leinster, an Irish ship operating as a mail-boat, was torpedoed by a German U-boat on October 10, 1918, while outward bound for Holyhead. She sank some 4 nautical miles off the Kish Lightship. The exact number…
Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, by Niamh MacNally & Brendan Rooney, with texts by Sarah McAulife & Joseph McBrinn (National Gallery, €45.00 / £39.00) In 1924 the young Irish artists Evie Hone and her friend Mainie Jellett held their one and only joint exhibition in the gallery of the Society…
Pope Francis was a quite unique figure, a pastor whose achievements and teachings will come to be more and more appreciated in the decades, even centuries to come. Through him the Catholic Church, perhaps even the wider realm of Christianity as a whole, in all its varieties, may find a new and fitting direction, replete…
T.P. O’Mahony The Councils of the Church: A Short History, by Norman P. Tanner SJ (Herder & Herder, £14.99 / €20.00) The debate within the Catholic Church about conciliarism has waxed and waned since the 15th to the 19th centuries. The central question – where does ultimate authority in the Church reside, with…
J. Anthony Gaughan Beidh Tú Alright: An Irish Language Journey, by Joe McHugh (Red Stripe Press / Orpen Press, €19.99 / £17.99) This book is an illuminating and eventful account of a Donegal man’s journey through often conflicting aspects of Irish life, culture and language. Everyone , but especially those who are doubtful on the…
Peter Costello