Saint Patrick: An Ancient Saint for Modern Times by Edmond Grace SJ (Sacred Heart Messenger, €4.95) At this time of the year we Irish tend to think of St Patrick as ‘our saint’, but Edmund Grace begins his brief book with a very insightful encounter far from Ireland. In St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York he…
Cold Pursuit (16) Why would one of the most beloved actors of our country, someone who received a tsunami of reverence for the dignified manner in which he dealt with the freakish death of his wife Natasha some years ago, commit career suicide through a racist rant? Unless you’ve been living under a stone in recent…
St John Paul II’s Theology of the Body isn’t just about sex. That might seem unlikely to those who’ve only ever encountered specific introductions to the late Pope’s biggest area of catechesis, or who’ve only ever heard caricatures of the late Pope’s teaching, but it’s important to understand for all that. Emily Stimpson at thecatholictable.com…
Nathaniel Hone: Travels of a Landscape Artist National Gallery of Ireland 23 February–1 December 2019 After Nathaniel Hone the younger died in 1917 his wife donated to the National Gallery some 500 works of art: it took until the 1950s to catalogue them all. Most of us have an image of Hone as the creator…
It amazes me sometimes how people who can’t possibly know the truth of an event get very dogmatic about it and take definitive positions. They fuel polarisation and aggravation, setting themselves up for a fall if things don’t turn out as they assumed, and that’s if we ever find out the truth. Last week Australian…
Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Allen Lane, €35) Robert Marshall “The evil that men do lives after them, / the good is oft interred with their bones…’ This apposite quotation from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar comes to mind when reflecting on this magisterial book written by Diarmaid MacCulloch about the life of Thomas Cromwell (1485 c.-1540). MacCulloch is professor…
Ways to go Beyond and why they Work by Rupert Sheldrake (Coronet, £20.00/€23.00) Christopher Moriarty In his preface, Rupert Sheldrake introduces himself as a research worker who is making a substantial contribution to the human knowledge that he calls “mundane”. He means the facts relating to our material world, which can be ascertained by…
Mainly about Books by the Books Editor It has long amazed me the amount of abuse that creationists and many evangelicals heap upon the head of Charles Darwin. Much of what is said is simply wrongheaded, or relies on over simplistic interpretations of the Book of Genesis (one of the most challenging books of the Bible…
The most prominent religious affairs story in the media last week was the child abuse summit in Rome. Commentary varied from optimistic to cynical and all shades between. Some Catholics called for a review of Catholic teaching on sexuality, but I felt they needed to be more specific. That position could mean anything from scrapping…
Pat O’Kelly Besides organising its touring programme, Music Network, which stemmed from the now defunct Music Association of Ireland’s ‘Country Tours’, also administers the government-sponsored Music Capital Scheme. The recently announced 2019 fund of €270,250 will be dispensed towards “the purchase of musical instruments to both non-professional performing groups and to individual performing musicians”.…
Aubrey Malone
Greg Daly
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan