Sacred Space: The Prayerbook (Messenger Publications, €14.95/£12.95) A sure sign that the year is beginning to draw to an end is the early appearance of Sacred Space: The Prayerbook, the manual derived from the astonishing, globally popular online prayer site. This book has been appearing for many years and is always a sure-fire option for many as…
Gabriel Fitzmaurice Choice/Rogha: A selection of poems by Desmond Egan, translated into Irish by Michael Hartnett (Goldsmith Press, €20.00/ £17.50) Desmond Egan is one of our greatest poets, certainly our greatest Catholic poet which, among other things, means that he contains multitudes. Michael Hartnett, a poet of equal stature, is a gifted translator from the…
Thomas O’Loughlin While the image of ‘the pilgrim People of God’ has been central to formal understanding of the church since Vatican II – an event now more than two generations ago – its impact on the pew-level ecclesiology has been marginal. It was intended to be a biblically rich vision to replace the political…
Frank Litton Note by the Books Editor: The publication of a cheaper paperback, mass market edition of this highly praised title prompts us to reprint what our regular reviewer wrote when it was first published a few years ago, as the book will be found immensely readable and enlightening by ordinary readers, by students,…
The Slavic Myths by Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak (Thames and Hudson, £20.00/ €23.50) The strange world of Slavic myths is usually beyond the imaginative reach of those of us brought up in Western Europe. However, many years ago now, when I was at college in the USA, I had a regular place I sat…
I am Infinitely Loved: A Month of Meditations by Brian Grogan SJ (Messenger Publications, €7.99/ £6.95) This is a new edition of a booklet first published back 2017. It was popular then, and in its new form will reach an even larger audience of those who are now regular readers of Brian Grogan’s many books.…
Ancestral Voices in Irish Politics: Judging Dillon and Parnell, by Paul Bew (Oxford University Press, £25.00/ €29.50) The great Irish constitutional nationalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, with its twin aims of land reform and Home Rule, has been largely disregarded and uncelebrated in the Ireland that emerged from the 1916…
Fragments of Truth: Pallottines in Kenya & Tanzania, with the Rwanda Dossier, volumes I & II, by Donal F. McCarthy SCA (Pallottines Ireland, Dundrum, Dublin; the copies are on a print on demand system and priced accordingly) The Pallottines are a religious congregation who are more formally known as the Society of the Catholic Apostolate (Societas…
A People under Siege: the Unionists of Northern Ireland, from Partition to Brexit and Beyond, by Aaron Edwards (Merrion Press, €19.99) A touchy defensiveness, if not downright paranoia, has often seemed to be the defining character of Ulster Unionism since it first began to emerge as a distinct political phenomenon in the 19th Century. Aaron…
Thomas McCarthy Testament, Micheal O’Siadhail (Baylor University Press, $24.99/ €22.99; distributed in Europe by Eurospan, email: direct.orders@marston.co.uk) In the Irish poetry world Micheal O’Siadhail has been a writer of towering brilliance for over 40 years. A life dedicated to language and ethics has seen him study in great depth both the structure of the…
Peter Costello