Courtney McGrailIn more than nine out of 10 American churches, 80% of worshippers are racially homogenous, Peter Leithart observes at firstthings.com. Just 5.5% of the more than 270,000 Christian congregations in the US are racially mixed, and much of this mixing is only temporary, he points out. Racial segregation, then, seems to be integral to American…
Category: Reviews
Recent books in brief
Studies An Irish Quarterly Review (Messenger Publications, €10.00; €45.00 for a year; visit www.studiesirishreview.ie for more information) This summer edition of one of the country’s most thoughtful journals focuses on the Great War, in an issue subtitled “The Pity of War 1914-1818”. These authors cover a range of issues from the philosophical considerations of Heather…
The Jewish blood libel in history
Peter CostelloThe Murder of William of Norwich: The Original Blood Libel in Medieval Europe by E. M. Rose (Oxford University Press, £16.99)
Perhaps not a Nobel novel
Cré na Cille / The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain; translated from the Irish by Alan Titley (Yale University Press, £16.99)
Knock Shrine in literature
News of the visions at Knock first came to the attention of the wider world through the medium of journalists anxious to report on what many thought might be an Irish Lourdes. This had an unfortunate outcome in many ways. Veteran journalist Andrew Dunlop, an Ulsterman, in his memoirs Fifty Years of Irish Journalism (Dublin,…
Francis’ papacy recorded in a book of quite magificent photography
Pope Francis: A Photographic Portrait of the People’s Pope by Fr Michael Collins, featuring exclusive photography by Rodolfo Felici (Dorling Kindersley, €28.00)
More on the Martyrs of Easter Week 1916
J. Anthony Gaughan Here are two further biographies in the “16 Lives Series” dealing with the leading figures executed after the 1916 Rising, both subjects are among the less well-known of those whose died. Con Colbert was born on October 19, 1888 in Castlemahon, Newcastlewest. Soon afterwards his family moved to Athea, where he spent his early…
The World of Books
The Books Editor “At exactly 15 minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and…
Is deception in the name of God ever justifiable?
It’s a common complaint that Catholic pro-lifers while often quick to criticise pro-choice groups for stretching truths or disregarding legal propriety tend to gloss over their own failings. Explosive internet debates about the Planned Parenthood sting videos, however, show just how false that allegation is. One Twitter thread alone has featured over 900 interventions between…
Is deception in the name of God ever justifiable?
It’s a common complaint that Catholic pro-lifers while often quick to criticise pro-choice groups for stretching truths or disregarding legal propriety tend to gloss over their own failings. Explosive internet debates about the Planned Parenthood sting videos, however, show just how false that allegation is. One Twitter thread alone has featured over 900 interventions between…