Now that the dust is starting to settle after the World Meeting of Families and the papal visit, readers of The Irish Catholic may be wondering – especially readers who missed the WMOF pastoral congress or various papal events – how they can build on 2018’s unique highlights for the Irish Church. A useful starting…
The Children Act (12A) The penultimate scene of this moving (if occasionally sugar-coated) study of lives lived to the full, lives thrown away and those gone stale, is heavily reminiscent of the last one in John Huston’s magisterial The Dead. In that film, Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) has to listen to his wife Gretta (Anjelica Huston) telling him…
At the end of last week’s article I wrote about the beginnings of papal visit reviews. It was mixed, with some positive commentary at times. One of the most positive was an engaging interview with the Richardson family on the Ray D’Arcy Show (RTÉ Radio 1) on Tuesday of last week. Mary and Damien, the…
Why we Need Religion by Stephen T. Asma (Oxford University Press, £20.00) Christopher Moriarty The dramatic increase in secularism and fall in numbers of professed adherents to religion has been a feature of the past few generations in the western world. Its roots lie in the application of the scientific method which began to explode in…
Rich in Faith, Beauty and History: St Mary’s Church, Haddington Road, Dublin by Patrick Claffey (From the Parish Office, €5.00) Felix M. Larkin One of the ways we find God – or, more accurately perhaps, how He finds us – is through the art and architecture of places like St Mary’s, in Haddington Road, a lovely church whose art is…
The Shoemaker & His Daughter by Conor O’Clery (Doubleday 2018) Conor O’Clery was the Irish Times correspondent in Russia for many years. He married Zhanna Suvorov in Moscow in 1989. His new book reads describes “one ordinary family’s remarkable journey from Stalin’s Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia”. It records the travails of Zhanna’s extended family through the Russian…
Pat O’Kelly The ever-assiduous Madeleine Flanagan of ‘Classical-links’ in Claregalway keeps me informed of events in the West. Her latest missive draws my attention to this year’s Westport Festival of Chamber Music taking place over the weekend September 7-9. Founded in 2013 by violinist Catherine Leonard and pianist Hugh Tinney, they continue to guide…
The World of Books by the Books Editor In recent years a new sort of library movement has got under way across Europe, which promises well, because it is created and run by ordinary people and depends on neither commerce nor the state to function. This is the little library movement. I first came…
I’d need the full newspaper to do justice to all the media coverage of the World Meeting of Families and the papal visit, so I’ll stick to some of what stood out for me. First off, hats off to RTÉ’s religious programmes department and the outside broadcast units for the live coverage of last weekend’s…
An Astonishing Secret: The Love Story of Creation and the Wonder of You by Daniel O’Leary (Columba Press, €14.99) Anthony Redmond Fr Daniel O’Leary is a well-known Irish priest, author and speaker living in England. I have read a number of his books. He is a superb writer, deeply moving, inspirational and lyrical. In his latest…
Greg Daly
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello