Easter being the most important feast day in the Christian calendar has always attracted artists. Each incident of Holy Week from the Last Supper, the arrest in the garden, the trial before Pontius Pilate, the denials by Peter, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the women at the empty tomb: each of these has been the…
Category: Reviews
A truly Catholic poet, with a uniquely modern voice
Thomas McCarthy Few poets have written with the intensity and seriousness of Aidan Mathews; and fewer still have sustained that intensity over a career of five collections, six books of prose and six plays. This heroic, wide ranging and always engaged achievement belies the poet’s character which has seemed at all times evasive, ironic…
St Matthew’s Passion brought to life
Over the past number of years the National Symphony Orchestra and Chorus have focussed their Holy Week concert on religious themes. This event normally takes place on Good Friday afternoon not, in my view, the ideal time as it clashes with the sacred liturgy in many churches and there are those who would like to…
Religious dramas range from razor sharp to theologically vapid
I’ve been catching up on a few TV drama series that have religious themes. The best of the lot is Kim’s Convenience (Netflix), a comedy about a Korean family running a convenience store in Toronto. The characters are believable and likeable, even the minor characters are very funny, particular the random customers, even if they…
How Christians have disputed the date of their salvation
One of the curious facts of 2,000 years of Christian history is the readiness with which Christians will dispute their traditions and the dates appropriate to them, especially in relation to the nature, date and place of Easter, the most important date in the whole Christian calendar that is celebrated this weekend. Historically, the…
Religion in modern Ireland: a patchwork of faiths old and new?
Rev. Robert Marshall The opening paragraph of the editors’ introduction notes that “Ireland’s centuries old reputation as a land of saints and scholars (and sinners) is well established”. They continue that two decades into the 21st Century the island’s association with religious devotion is increasingly considered something of an historic artefact – a kind expression…
Irish born and at large in the wider world
This I suspect is the sort of book that many families have been looking for, a compact, highly readable and adroitly written narrative of the Irish aboard. Author Bunbury makes vivid use of all the human parts of a 2,000-year-old history that academic historians resolutely leave out in favour of a more austere impersonal narrative.…
Child death fractures friendship in absorbing drama
The devil – and angel – is in the detail. Great movies come from moments. Mother’s Instinct (15A) is threaded together like a labyrinthine tapestry of ominous vignettes where every slight movement or gesture becomes charged with an opaque threat. It’s a horror film that plays out like a symphony. Stanley Kubrick would have…
A blurry mix of devotion, ritual and superstition
It is customary around this time of year for us to go all Celtic, with a focus on all things Irish, or even Oirish! I wouldn’t accuse the new series Ag Triall ar an Tobar (TG4, Thursday) of that latter charge. I felt it was an enjoyable exploration of Irish holy wells with the…
The rise to respectability of New York’s Irish Catholics
Every March since 1991 has been designated Irish-American Heritage Month in the United States. President Biden has continued the practice again this year, and a proclamation to this effect was signed by him on February 29th. America has not always been so sympathetic towards Irish immigrants and their descendants, as this book illustrates. Written…