Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Fr Conor McDonough’s column of December 15 – ‘In praise of books at Christmas’ – reminded me of an older notebook in your paper where one Maolsheachlann O’Ceallaigh wondered about what middle ground there is between, say, introductory books on St Thomas Aquinas and scholarly articles on the Angelic Doctor (‘Beyond Catholicism 101’ IC 15/08/2016).
Fr McDonough talks of reading “novels to develop the moral imagination, travel writing to inspire adventure, science writing to provoke wonder, works of history to lead to wisdom, and theology to lead to prayer”. Might it not be worth covering such topics in future books specials?
The Irish Catholic is a great resource for finding out what new books are worth reading, and in special editions of the paper your overviews of how topics have been covered in the past have been fascinating, but it could be a real help, especially to younger Catholics, to supplement this by covering the kind of books that will help ordinary Catholics in the many ways Fr McDonough mentions.
I’m not talking about pious fiction or hagiography, but the kind of books by intelligent Catholics that can help us think more deeply and talk more broadly about our Faith and the world in which we live.
Maybe you can put this in the ‘ideas’ file.
Yours etc.,
Fintan McGrath,
Athlone, Co. Westmeath.