Why Not? How to Bring the Liturgy About by Turlough Baxter (Veritas, €8.99) This little book consists of thoughts on the liturgy that originally appeared in Intercom, the pastoral and liturgical resource magazine, over the last dozen years or so. Though aimed by Turlough Baxter at his fellow clergy, it will be read with by many…
Category: Reviews
Animated conversations and loaded terms
Has Political Correctness Gone Mad? – a documentary with a name to draw in the curious, on Channel 4 last Thursday night. It was billed as an authored programme, an opinion piece, by Trevor Phillips, and despite advance warnings about bad language and racist terms, it was actually a reflective and relatively moderate programme. I…
Their love bridged the North’s divides
Winnie & George: An Unlikely Union by Allison Murphy (Mercier Press, €16.99) This is the story of two almost forgotten figures from the troubled Twenties in Northern Ireland. Winifred (‘Winnie’) Carney was born in Bangor, Co Down, on December 4, 1887. Following her education in a Christian Brothers school in Belfast she graduated from a…
Seeking the soul of Judaism amid a treasury of folklore
World of Books Do Chrstians, and especially Catholic Christians, really understand and appreciate the true nature of Judaism today? I ask this question, which has some importance to the world today, because I have been looking into a book I casually acquired but which has turned out to be quite fascinating. It is called A…
The saintly women’s window in St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart
Felix M. Larkin There are many connections between Ireland and Tasmania, and not only because of the latter’s status as a penal colony in the first half of the 19th Century. These connections are reflected in a beautiful stained glass window in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Hobart. Erected in 1995, the window is dedicated…
Shedding light on Amoris Laetitia
It’s hard to deny that online debate about Amoris Laetitia has been marked far more by heat than light. Indeed, disagreement about the Pope’s exhortation on love and the family has reached such a point that at least one commentator has claimed the Church is now entering a fully-fledged civil war. This is, of course, nonsense: that…
An antidote to conflict and cliffhangers
It was a dizzying week, with more drama on Oireachtas TV than on any mainstream channel. It had all the features of fictional drama – moral dilemmas, cliffhanging tension, heroes (short supply), villains (don’t ask), the rise and fall of interlocking story arcs. You didn’t know from breakfast through lunch whether you’d still have a…
A turning point in Irish life
Thomás Flynn, Thomas J. Devine (1862 -1941), and The Election of the Snows: The North Roscommon By-Election of 1917 Published by the author; copes from Trinity Books, Carrick-on-Shannon and The Reading Room, Carrick-on-Shannon, €12. For further information: ring 086 067 5283 On February 6, the result of the North Roscommon Bye-Election of 1917 was announced…
The initimable Enid Blyton
The Land of Far Beyond, The First Christmas and other Stories, Noah’s Ark and other Stories from the Old Testament by Enid Blyton (Hodder Children’s Books, £10.99 each) One has to feel some sympathy with the ghost of Enid Blyton if she were to return to see what has been done to her children’s books,…
La La Land likely to dominate this year’s Oscars
Much as I admired La La Land I never like to see one film sweeping the boards at the Oscar ceremonies – as Damien Chazelle’s film seems set to do this year – any more than I like to see the Lotto being won by one person instead of a syndicate. At the time of…