The Irish Freemasons Young Musician of the Year competition took place last month at the Society’s head quarters in Dublin’s Molesworth Street, but the competition actually began life in RTÉ’s Music Department where it had been the brainchild of the late Jane Carty and was known as Musician of the Future.
This title was pointed out before Christmas last year, as I recall, as a delightfully entertaining introduction to some of the great heroes and ordinary characters of the Bible, told in a story telling style with a particular appeal to modern young readers.
You know the old story of waiting ages for a bus and then a few come along together. I felt like that last week, with three new religious programmes on RTÉ.
Brides of Christ: Women and Monasticism in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland, edited by Martin Browne OSB, Tracy Collins, Bronagh McShane and Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB (Four Courts Press, €50.00/ £45.00) Patricia Rumsey As the number of candidates for religious life apparently dwindles, so the wider interest in religious life – and particularly women’s monastic life…
How to be good. What Socrates can teach us about the art of living well, by Massimo Pigliucci (Basic Books, £10.99 /€12.99) The Power of Ideas. Words of Faith and Wisdom, by Jonathan Sacks (Hodder and Stoughton, £20.00 /€20.00) Frank Litton Both these books inform our moral compass, helping to sharpen its direction and deepen…
Lydia: A Story, by Paula Gooder (Hodder and Stoughton, £9.99 /€11.99) Lydia is a person who appears briefly in the account of St Paul’s second missionary journey. She was a seller of purple cloth – in the 1st Century a luxury item – an apparently insignificant person in life. But in a longer perspective she…
It’s always worth taking notice when there’s a new religious programme, and the latest nearly flew under my highly sensitive radar! Witness (RTÉ Radio 1, Friday) is a new religious affairs programme presented by Siobhán Garrigan, and is a successor to the long running Leap of Faith, though I’m not sure of the logic behind…
I went into Cat Person (15) thinking of Paul Schrader’s 1982 movie Cat People – for no other reason than the title. It has little in common with Schrader’s nightmarish curio besides that but you keep expecting it to turn into a horror film. Susanna Fogel directs with a clever use of anti-climaxes, red herrings,…
The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East, by Janine di Giovanni (Bloomsbury, £10.99 /€12.99) The author of this most moving book, now a senior Fellow and professor at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, has been described “as one our generation’s finest correspondents”. This book alone illustrates her skill, insight and compassion.…
The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war have highlighted for many of us in Western Europe the fact that oppression and persecution have never been far from the people of Ukraine. This is certainly the case with regard to religious persecution. Yet they have remained committed to their Christian Faith and have…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone