Usually there are loads of religious programmes on mainstream media over Easter. Mostly it’s biblical epics and religious services, but I’m always on the lookout for something different and creative. Walled City Passion (RTE One, Easter Sunday) certainly had those qualities. It imagined a peace festival in a certain walled city – Derry, but not…
From the first century Christians and others have been interested in visiting the Holy Land and seeing the places associated with the life and death of Jesus. This is especially so at the pivotal feasts of the year, at Christmas and now at Eastertide. In the early days this was a once-in-a-life time journey and…
The San Damiano Cross: An Icon of the Crucifixion by Madeleine Stewart (Conard Press, €12.00 / £10.50; ISBN 978-1-9161432-0-3; orders to conardicons.com) Madeline Stewart, who is an accredited expert on icons and their interpretation lives in Northern Ireland, but mentally she is a well-travelled global person through her explorations of icons of the Orthodox tradition.…
It’s great to see the idea of pilgrimage becoming more popular in recent years but sometimes it just becomes a secular or self-improvement exercise, with the spiritual side vague or side-lined. Pilgrimage: Road to the Scottish Isles (BBC One, Sunday) is the third outing in this series from BBC. The formula is the same –…
I joined Netflix against my better judgment. People kept telling me I was missing out on a lot, that it had anything and everything. Maybe, I thought to myself, that’s the problem. I was accused of being snobbish when I said it reminded me of the cinematic equivalent of Woolworth’s. That was my first impression.…
Limerick: Snapshots of the Treaty City and County 1840–1960 by Tom Donovan and Vincent Carmody, forward by JP McManus, preface by Matthew Potter (Poundlane Publications, €35.00/£30.00) Limerick is a much-storied city which traces its origin back to its establishment by the Vikings in 821. The authors take just a snapshot of that history, zooming in on…
The key to the link between past and present, as is so often the case, lies in a book. President Vladimir Putin’s earlier life was spent in the ranks of the Russia secret service. The distorted moral vision of that organisation has shaped his views of people, life and the world. For that state service…
Late at night (late for me!) I tend to dip into the newspaper review programmes on the British channels – it’s a good snapshot of what’s coming up on the next day’s headlines. Press Preview (Sky News) and The Papers (BBC News) still have their guest reviewers joining in remotely, while Headliners (GB News) seems…
From 1723 to the end of his life in 1750, Bach spent his time, more or less, in Leipzig where he was kantor at the Thomasschule. His duties included providing music for the city’s two major churches – St Thomas and St Nicholas – as well as for two of the smaller ones – St…
Becoming a Pastoral Parish Council: How to Make Your PPC Really Useful for the Twenty-First Century by Patricia Carroll, foreword by Archbishop Dermot Farrell (Messenger Publications, €9.95/£8.95) This is a short book, but intentionally so, for it is very much to its purpose which is to promote and encourage the emerging parish pastoral councils, which…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone