As I indicated last week, producers started taking liberties with the Legion of Decency and the Production Code in the fifties. In 1951 Roberto Rossellini directed The Miracle, a film in which the character of Mary Magdalene is aligned with the Virgin Mary. The Vatican condemned it for profanity. So did the Legion. Cardinal Spellman,…
The Secret Life of Cows Rosamund Young, with a foreword by Alan Bennett Faber and Faber. £9.99 / €11.99 The Wisdom of Sheep and Other Animals Rosamund Young Faber and Faber, £7.99 / €9.50 Here in Ireland we are well aware of the importance of cattle to our history – is not the Gaelic…
Cold Porridge, Broken Promises and a Missing Dog: Notes from Nursing Home Advocacy Tony Carroll Scribe Consulting Services, €20.00 / £18.99; widely available on line and through shops It is something of a surprise that this deeply felt and engaging book had to be self-published, rather than appear from under one of the well known imprints.…
Paradise Lost: A Biography Alan Jacobs Princeton University Press, £20.00 / €22.99 He may be known to some readers as the author of a most interesting and arresting book, The Years of Our Lord 1943, in which he examines through the writings of a set of writers – C. S. Lewis, W. H Auden, Jacques…
There must be a factory somewhere producing films that attack the Catholic Church exclusively. The amount of them seems relentless at times. Shiny modern liberal Ireland seems so lacking in confidence that it has to keep hammering home the message. The latest iteration was Pray for Our Sinners (RTÉ One, Wednesday) an authored documentary by…
The influence of the Church in films of the thirties and forties was evident in ones featuring priests working against juvenile delinquency, like Spencer Tracy in Boystown in 1938. Pat O’Brien did likewise as Fr Jerry Connolly in Angels with Dirty Faces, also in 1938. The film was a huge success, exploring the issue of…
Church, Parish & Education: Interaction Joseph McCann CM (Kingdom Books, €30.00) Joseph McCann was born at Hollis, Queens, New York in 1940. He attended the local Pascal Baylon elementary school taught by the Sisters of St Joseph of Brentwood. After the family re-settled in Dublin he was a student at the secondary school of…
Anyone seeking a serious and well informed account of vaudou can consult Les mysteres du vaudou, translated as Voodoo: The Search for the Spirit (Thames & Hudson / New Horizons, €14.70 / £9.75), by the Haitian sociologist Laënenc Hurbon, a trained Catholic theologian, who is now a Haitian academic. May Deren’s The Divine Horsemen (published in London…
time forgot Anne Heffernan (Buy the Book and other online resources, €15.00 / £13.50) Anne Heffernan is an Irish journalist with wide local experience, but the year she passed as a volunteer aid worker in a remote area of the Republic of Haiti was quite beyond her expectations. She flew out from Ireland by…
Being introspective is not always a case of being self-centred or indulging in navel-gazing. And so, it is important from time to time for the media to look at itself – reviewing and learning. Hope in the Media (Radio Maria, Wednesday) is a new show with host Donal O’Sullivan-Latchford of the Family and Media Association…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan