Anyone interested in seeing good films has to think outside the box – no pun intended – in a wish to avoid the dross that’s often inflicted on us on the terrestrial TV channels. Thanks to Netflix, live streaming and other digital platforms I’ve been mentioning recently there are thankfully more choices available to us…
The controversy over restrictions on religious services gained extra traction last week with an online petition, Bishops meeting Government and Christian pastors calling for change. It was a pity this didn’t happen at level 3 – it mightn’t have been an open door, but there would have been more hope. On Lunchtime Live (Newstalk, Wednesday),…
A Small Pslater by Padriag J. Daly (Scotus Press, €12.00; available from www.scotuspress.com) John F. Deane This new collection from Pádraig J. Daly has been eagerly waited for. Daly is a priest currently working in Dublin and he has published many collections of his poetry. The poems gathered here are excitingly new and move from an…
The Lonely Century. Coming together in a world that’s pulling apart by Noreena Hertz (Sceptre, £20.00) Frank Litton It is no surprise that soap operas are a staple of television. After all, we make sense of where we are and where we might go with the ‘story’ of our lives. We find ourselves cast into roles…
The World of Books By the books editor Once again, thanks largely it seems to a very human impatience to be done, once and for all, with the pandemic, lockdown restrictions have returned because so many, especially in Dublin and Kildare, could not wait as calmly as we should for ‘normal life to return’. But…
Hardly a week goes by without some sort of a religious controversy blowing up. And the pattern is often the same – exaggerated headlines, soundbites and one-liners, with pre-reflective rushes to the ramparts. And so it was last week when Pope Francis was reported to have said, in a new documentary, that he supported civil…
House of Cards, a novel by Alice Curtayne (Cluny Classics, £14.50/$17.95) We often hear it said that before the rise of modern feminism, marriage was seen as the summum bonum of a woman’s ambitions. In Alice Curtayne’s compelling novel, first published in 1939, an Irishwoman makes it indignantly clear that this was not the case in…
The Ontological Argument, a critique from a Thomistic perspective by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €15.00) Donal Murray In this book, Fr Tony Gaughan has undertaken a careful and thorough reflection on what Patrick Masterson, President Emeritus of UCD, describes in his foreword as “one of philosophy’s perennial and still fascinating preoccupations”. Generations of philosophers, theologians…
At this time of the year, with the leaves changing colour and beginning to fall, the lines in the banner above from Sonnet LXXIII are always in my mind, especially with their hint of a Catholic outlook in Shakespeare (a much-discussed topic today, more so than it once was), through its allusion to the systematic…
There’s something iconic about the Confession box that draws attention, an intensity about the confessing and forgiveness of sins that makes one wonder why more people don’t have recourse to it. The Confessors (RTÉ last week, BBC One on Monday, BBC Two on Tuesday) was an absorbing and insightful programme, uneven at times but with…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Mary Kenny