The story is told, by the Victorian writer H.C. Adams, of a student in the 1870s who was asked by an academic in an early exam in divinity at Oxford, “What is the distance from Bethany to Jerusalem?” “A mile and a half,” was the immediate reply. “I think not sir,” re-joined the examiner: “the…
There’s usually a glut of programmes with religious elements in the media over the Christmas period, and I’m usually on the lookout for something distinctive or shows that stand out for a variety of reasons. Heaven Made at Christmas (BBC One and Two) was particularly engaging. Over two episodes on Christmas week (on repeat from…
Seasonably festooned with Christmas trees and wreathes, the National Concert Hall was in celebratory mode earlier this month. And why not? After all, it was marking its 40th anniversary with an RTÉ NSO gala under principal conductor Jaime Martín. The music brought the première of an NCH/NSO commissioned work, The Treaty Debates by Brian Byrne,…
Film Review 2021 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For the first half of the year, Covid-19 had us under house arrest. Starved of cinemas we found sustenance in mini-series, box-sets, the occasional gem from streaming platforms. The Oscar ceremonies went ahead in February in the kind of funereal…
TV & Radio Review 2021 I had hoped that I wouldn’t be writing about Covid-19 again at the end of 2021, but it has dominated the media for the year. But should it be so? One night in early December I was listening to the BBC Radio 4 news headlines and the only mention of…
World of Books Selected by the Books Editor The December and January holiday season is the most important sales period of the year for many publishers and bookshops. The tables in the books-sellers are piled with books of all kinds, many on topics that would get better attention at another time of the year, such…
Books are among the most acceptable gifts we can give to others, especially children. Here is a small selection of what is now available, for young people of all ages, with a reminder too that Christmas is still a religious celebration, whatever the bizarre commercial activities that now surround it. Remember books are not just…
by the Books Editor When they were in doubt about a book to give a child or young person, our parents, grandparents and great grandparents gave a classic and in doing so followed an important tradition. But it is one with for some people disconcerting results. The philosopher L.P. Jacks, the once eminent editor of…
Christmas Crackers Keep Christ in Christmas, a Catholics Come Home special presentation EWTN Saturday December 18, 7pm also Thursday (night) December 23, 3.30am A tour behind the scenes of the making of Santa’s Priority, a Christmas evangomercial and discover what a small group of Catholics are doing to combat the secular war on Christmas and…
As selected by some of our regular critics Thomas J. Morrisey In a secularised western world we are told that the existence of God has been disproved by science, religious faith is futile superstition, truth is relative, morality is the result of evolution, and there is no absolute right or wrong, that Jesus Christ did…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone