Peter CostelloThe Living Image: Returning to the Heart, by Anna Burke (Messenger Publications, €9.95 / £8.95) Turning from Jim O’Connell to Anna Burke is to encounter a very different apprehension of the human and divine; yet what she has to say seems to grow out from what he writes in a living way, underlining the connectivity…
Category: Reviews
Secret agents of the faith?
Vatican Spies, from the Second World War to Pope Francis, by Yvonnick Denoël (Hurst and Company, £25.00 / €32.99) This book first appeared in French back in 2021, so it is about time that an English language version appeared, for it will certainly be of great interest, not only to Catholics of all kinds, but also…
The Suitable Man with the Monocle
Dad, by Aubrey Malone (Penniless Press Publications, £.7.99; a print-on-demand book from the publisher Ken Clay at pennilesspress.co.uk; for residents of Ireland, through aubreypmalone@hotmail.com; or locally at the Book Stand, Tone Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo, F26 VF30; tel.: (096) 60370.) Aubrey Malone will be familiar to readers as the film critic of this paper, though he…
Cerebral thriller recalls Ireland’s ‘tiger’ kidnapping era
Aubrey Malone
There are very few bank robbery films about which I could say that my prevailing impression of them was one of quietness but No Ordinary Heist falls into that category. Having said that, the tension isn’t compromised on that account. Maybe it’s even amplified. Such quietness is a welcome relief from the flash-bang style usually…
Youth going back to Church is a hope sign
Brendan O’Regan
I’m very pleased to note programmes that give us a sense of hope. I found one this week. Ireland’s Catholics: Signs of Hope (EWTN, Friday) was a timely report from Colm Flynn about the current situation as regards faith in Ireland, especially in relation to young people. We saw 60 of them at a eucharistic…
The varied career of a now forgotten Irish Jesuit
Robert St Leger SJ, by Thomas J Morrissey SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.50) When one considers the huge number of Irish men who answered the call of a priestly vocation, over the last three centuries it is inevitable that most of them will now be either forgotten or little known. The author of…
Brief words of faith for every day of three years
Crumbs from the Pastor’s Table: Reflection on the Catholic Lectionary – Three Year Cycle, by ‘Fr Francis’ (Scholastic Publications, available through Amazon.ie, €20.53 + €3.99 postage.) We have lived to see the end of the great days of sermons. In the Central Catholic Library, on Dublin’s Merrion Square, there is one wall in the…
St Patrick is ‘all things to all men’ in the manner of St Paul
This has been the week that people of Irish culture, wherever they are in the world, celebrate St Patrick’s Day. Our government ministers have sped around the world to capitals where they think Ireland can achieve better things. Otherwise, it has become, especially at home, a sort of carnival, with Mock Bishops surrounded by red-bearded…
The much-troubled Middle East – 4000 years ago
Love, War, and Diplomacy: The discovery of the Amarna Letters & the Bronze Age world they revealed, by Eric H. Cline (Princeton University Press, £30.00 / €39.95) Prof. Eric H. Cline is a leading North American archaeologist of Middle Eastern archaeology. He is the author of a previous widely admired book 1177 B. C.: The Year…
Spilt Milk: The curse of drugs in 1980s Ireland
If you think the people who shot Veronica Guerin are bad,” a garda said after the heroic journalist was shot in 1996, “you should see what’s coming up now.” Evil spiralled through the decades. Spilt Milk is set a decade before 1996. We’re in the relatively early days of Ireland’s drug ‘culture.’ (I’ve always hated…