It’s a bit early to be brewin’ up a storm about St Patrick’s Day (St Eunice, maybe), but there seems to be some level of friction about it every year. A conflict over St Patrick’s Day stamps blew up on Liveline (RTE Radio 1 Thursday), grist to the mill for that Confessio-type show. The first…
Christ and His Cousin: Renaissance Rediscoveries, curated by Dr Aoife Brady (Continues to 8 May 2022; Hugh Lane Room; free admission – no booking required) Currently the National Gallery is running a small but very interesting show in one of their smaller exhibition spaces focused on images of the child Jesus and his cousin St John…
Books Reviews 1975-2021: Reviews of works by distinguished biographers, historians, philosophers and writers by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €24.00/£20.00) Fr Tony Gaughan, himself the author of many books ranging over philosophy, local and national history, and Irish social life since the middle ages, is one of this paper’s most popular reviewers. This compilation of…
Nice to see that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have got back together again but does the news deserve the buzz it’s been getting from the tabloids? They were a joke last time they were together, around the time they made Gigli. Now the prospect of them going up the aisle has got the paparazzi…
Few people like to hate, those who hate probably feel justified, and few would defend it in public discourse. And yet, though I’d have no truck with hate, I’m uneasy about the idea of ‘hate crime’. Some crimes are motivated by hate, but the crime is still the crime and can be prosecuted as such.…
Sacred Space for Lent 2022 (Messenger Publications, €4.95/£4.50) The Sacred Space website, a mission of the Irish Jesuits, continues to be one of the most popular prayer sites, accessed worldwide, continuing some would say the ancient ambition of the earliest Christians in this country to spread the word directly to people. Sacred Space for Lent…
Just before Christmas the international press carried worrying stories about the renovation and future use of Notre Dame de Paris, one of the most important and pre-eminent churches, not just in Europe, but in the world. Middle Ages It has had, since the Middle Ages, a special place also too in the life and imagination,…
The Spirit of Catholicism, by Vivian Boland OP (Bloomsbury, £16.99/€18.50) by Frank Litton As somebody who spent a good part of his career teaching organisation analysis, helping students understand organisations and the problems of organising, I have wondered why we pay so little attention to the Church as an organisation, subject to the failings that…
Periodicals and Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland 2: A Variety of Voices, edited Mark O’Brien and Felix M. Larkin (Four Courts Press, €50.00) This new book complements an earlier volume on periodicals and journalism, also edited by Mark O’Brien and Felix Larkin, which was published back in 2014. The two volumes, taken together, offer a comprehensive overview…
I’ve often thought that if I was forced to have just one television channel to watch TG4 would be among the top contenders. This was confirmed for me by Ar an Aer (TG4, Tuesday). Subtitled ‘Pobal Dé’, it was a short and unfussy programme compiled from the archives 1960s-1990s and focusing on the work of…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone