With the assistance of galleries around the world, the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome has mounted a magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime show, celebrating the youthful yet astonishingly mature genius of Raphael, who died in 1522 at the ridiculously early age of 37. Masterpieces which would have taken years of travelling to see, have been brought together. The…
In this series some of our literary collaborators will be giving suggestions for lockdown reading, books of all kinds to enlighten us and raise our spirits. This week Mary Kenny writes of John McGahern’s Amongst Women (1990), a novel of ordinary family life in provincial Ireland built around the life experiences of an embittered Republican…
I get a sense of the anticipation that’s growing with the prospect of public Masses being back from June 29. Some have wanted them sooner, others have urged caution, but unlike the anti-racism protestors the Church has shown great restraint and civic responsibility. Last Monday Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was interviewed on The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk)…
Ida is a Pawel Pawlikowski film about an 18-year-old orphan girl raised in a convent. As she prepares to become a nun she learns she’s a Jew. Her parents were murdered during the Holocaust. She has to put doubts about her vocation behind her as her cynical aunt helps her explore her roots. Shot in…
The Outlaw Christ: The response in poetry to the question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ by John F. Deane (Columba Books, €16.99) Gabriel Fitzmaurice The Outlaw Christ, developed from a series of talks and lectures delivered by John F. Deane while he was the Teilhard de Chardin Fellow in Catholic Studies at Loyola University, Chicago…
Thomas Finan, Collected Writings ed. D. Vincent Twomey (Columba Books, €34.99) Fran O’Rourke Reading this delightful collection, the word that repeatedly came to mind was the Latin for ‘wisdom’, sapientia, in its original meaning of ‘sweet knowledge’, knowledge to be savoured. As the editor Vincent Twomey notes, Thomas Finan’s primary draw was towards the sublime or…
In these strange and wearying times, I tend to welcome feel-good programmes, perhaps too uncritically, and if they manage deeper meaning as well, it’s a bonus. Unsung Heroes (RTÉ1) on Wednesday night of last week was conductor David Brophy’s third outing with special focus choirs – previously there was the High Hopes Choir (for people…
Had all gone according to plan, I intended being in the National Botanic Gardens this evening (Thursday, June 11) listening to music by Webern, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich played by the visiting Novus Quartet – a group of young Koreans creating a favourable impression wherever they perform. The Quartet’s visit was scheduled as part of the…
In this series some of our literary collaborators will be giving suggestions for lockdown reading, books of all kinds to amuse and raise our spirits. This week, Felix M. Larkin writes of that ‘study of provincial life’ which deals with normal people and their hidden lives, George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-72). At a public lecture in…
Theology and Ecology in Dialogue: The Wisdom of Laudato Si’ by Dermot A. Lane, with a foreword by Seán McDonagh SCC (Messenger Publications, €19.95/£17.95) This year marks the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s dramatic and historic encyclical Laudato Si’. It is being marked by the publication here in Ireland of a book exploring the document’s significance…
Peter Costello
Mary Kenny
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone