There’s been a lot of debate in English Catholic journalism over the last week or two about a Cambridge lecture by Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich. The lecture itself, ‘Pope Francis’ revolution of mercy: Amoris Laetitia as a new paradigm of Catholicism’, conducted under the auspices of the Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry, can…
Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity by Navid Kermani (Polity, £25.00) There is an old saying that “I never knew what my house looked like, as I had never been outside it”. This applies as well to religion: Christians cannot know what Christianity looks like because they never “go outside of it”. This book, by a distinguished…
You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living Henri Nouwen (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99) Anthony Redmond I have read quite a few of Henri Nouwen’s books and he never fails to move and inspire me. I never seem to tire of him. He was a profoundly spiritual, prayerful man, but he always struck me as lonely,…
Leabhar Urnaí an Timire níl aon eagarthóir ainmnithe (Foilseacháin Ábhar Spioradálta, €5) Tadhg Ó Dúshláine This slim volume of less than 50 pages will come as a godsend to the increasing number of teachers in Gaelscoileanna, under the trusteeship of the Church, charged with the transmission of the faith in a broken culture, where the rich heritage…
Gooch: The Autobiography by Colm Cooper (Transworld, €20.00) At the outset Cooper explains the origin of his nickname. It arose because when he was eight years old he had a passing resemblance to red-haired ‘Goochie’ dolls popular at that time. The real heroes in this book are Colm’s parents, Mike and Maureen. They began their…
The World of Books by the books editor The literary commemoration of the Great War takes many curious forms these days. But none can be more curious than the recent suggestion by Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, that a new renaissance of war poetry should be encouraged among modern soldiers. He had in…
Black Panther (PG) Both directed and written by Ryan Googler, this is yet another highly entertaining offering from Marvel Studios. It concerns a king, T’challa (Chadwick Boseman) who returns to the technologically advanced fictional nation of Wakanda to be its leader. His path to power is threatened by a cadre of ne-er-do-wells but a consignment of…
If you needed something spiritual and relaxing (and don’t we all) I can recommend a good show this week. I rarely watch BBC Alba, but I enjoyed their religious music show Alleluia, on Tuesday of last week. It’s a simple format: spiritual songs, with interviews and readings. Of course it’s in Scots Gaelic, which is…
Over the 160 years since the world first heard of Bernadette Soubirous’s visionary experiences of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a grotto outside the town of Lourdes much has been has been written about the events of the summer of 1858 by both sceptics and believers. These events have also, however, given rise to two…
Novels are but one way of exploring the dimension of a subject. Many still prefer non-fiction accounts of such a phenomenon as Lourdes. For this anniversary no distinctive new books have been published in either English or French. But this seems scarcely to matter for some excellent books are still available, new, second hand or…
Greg Daly
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan