Courtney McGrailCatholic University of America’s Christmas Concert EWTN Christmas Eve 11am and Christmas Day 3.30pm The annual Christmas concert presented by the Catholic University of America, featuring a brilliant blend of angelic voices and the wonderful sounds of the Christmas Season. The Word is Born: Christmas with the Louisville Chorus EWTN Christmas Eve 3.30pm and Christmas…
Category: Reviews
2016 books of the year
In these pages some of our regular reviewers provide a brief appreciation of their best most interesting books of the year, a selection of very varied reading which others will also enjoy.
Recent books in brief
Where I Find God: Personal Reflections from some of Ireland’s Finest Thinkers edited by Cora Guinnane & Joanne O’Brien, with a foreword by Mary McAleese (Columba Press, €24.99) Some 53 contributors, drawn from many fields of life share in a few brief but intense paragraphs their experiences of the mystical as they personally encounter it.…
Holy war against slave trade in 19th Century America
Aubrey MaloneThe Birth of a Nation (15A)
Knock the only antidote to a week of stereotypes
Brendan O’ReganStereotyping is normally regarded as a bad thing, and that’s fair enough, but sometimes it seems that it’s acceptable to stereotype certain people, including Catholic priests. These thoughts were prompted by a few episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, currently showing on TV3, Wednesday nights. Last week’s episode wound up a story about…
Christmas books for young adults and children
Peter CostelloChristmas time is one of the great books buying season of the year. For children and young adults especially the shops are filled with a bonanza of books, of all kinds for all kinds of taste. While it is said that girls take more easily to reading, they often prefer story books about girls,…
Kirk Douglas celebrates his 100th birthday
“My children didn’t have the advantages I had growing up,” Kirk Douglas said once, “they were born rich.” What he meant was that his poverty-stricken youth made him more aware of the value of a dollar. How many pampered sons and daughters of the rich and famous would learn to appreciate the wisdom of his…
Grim reality of rating lives as not quite human
One thing that makes me proud of Ireland is our largely pro-life culture, but sadly this ethos is under constant threat. Last Friday’s interview with Ann Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) on Newstalk Drive was disturbing listening. She was particularly frank in seeing abortion as a fall back option when contraception failed.…
Books of special interest to get through the festive time
At this time of the year the bookshops are filled with books of all kinds, a great many simply produced for immediate seasonal sale, with little hope that they will be of any lasting value to anyone in the months, let alone the years to come. However, among these daunting piles of printed paper for…
Cardinals argue that submitting ‘dubia’ is not such a bad thing
Despite well-observed concerns in recent times about the effects of social media bubbles, the internet remains an incredibly empowering phenomenon. In particular, it allows us access to documents hitherto reserved to the few: anyone nowadays can in moments call up the Treaty of Rome to establish that freedom of movement has been a principle of…