You would think that during times of national crisis we’d be concentrating on the basics, the crucially important stuff of life. And yet quite a lot of media time was taken up last week with the issue of gender-neutral bathrooms – a reflection perhaps of ‘woke’ obsessions and so many hours of broadcasting to fill.…
Dignity: Seeking respect in back row America by Chris Arnade (Sentinel/Penguin Random House, £20.00) Frank Litton For years, I taught a course introducing Irish politics to US students who came to work as interns in the Dáil and Seanad. Many were surprised to discover how much the people they met knew about US politics. Some told…
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis (First published in 1946 by Geoffrey Bless; available in many editions new and second-hand) C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) was described as one of the intellectual giants of the 20th Century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his time. This slim volume – a literary outcome of the…
Death Comes for the Archbishop a novel by Willa Cather (Virago Press, £8.99/€11.40) Willa Cather’s Catholic classic Death Comes for the Archbishop was recognised from the time of its publication for its excellence. But Ms Cather is an unusual figure in American literature – a prolific author, poet, journalist and schoolteacher –and the romantic flavour of…
Peace-building and Catholic Social Teaching by Theodora Hawksley (University of Notre Dame Press, US$42.00, paperback/US$100.00,hardback; €50.00, paperback/€80.00, hardback) Dr Theodora Hawksley is associated with the Jesuits in Britain and specialises in peace studies, black theologies and other explorations of the essential connections between Catholic social teaching and the realities of the world we live today. This…
“The show must go on.” Notwithstanding the pandemic, the Oscar ceremonies are taking place next Sunday – and not by Zoom as previously thought. They’ll be held at two venues in LA, the familiar Dolby Theatre and outdoors at Union Station. Because of the time difference, in Ireland we’ll have to wait until the news…
It’s sad I know, but one of my hobbies is collecting confession scenes from film and TV drama. I added a new one to my collection last week. ‘That’ confession scene in Fair City (RTÉ One) caused a bit of a stir. Unfortunately, I came across the controversy first and caught up with the offending…
Robots, Ethics and the Future of Jobs by Fr Seán McDonagh SSC, with a foreword by Karlin Lillington (Messenger Publications, €19.95/£18.95) The Russian quasi-mystic and film director Andrei Tarkovsky was reputedly terrified about the implications of robots. He thought The Terminator, though by his own account a mediocre film, pushed “the frontier of cinema as art” for…
From Whence I Came: The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America edited by Brian Murphy and Donnacha Ó Beacháin (Merrion Press, €19.95/£17.95) Joe Carroll One would think that there is little new to be explored in the Kennedy-Ireland relationship 60 years after John F. Kennedy’s election as the first Catholic President of the United States and its…
St Patrick’s Day and Easter coming so closely together this year, set my mind running back over what we know about the earliest years of Christianity in Ireland, more especially around Dublin. Despite the assurance with which many people speak about this period, there are many mysteries about the events of the process of ‘national…
Brendan O’Regan
Ruadhán Jones
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone