Communal Discernment: A Lamp for our Synodal Journey by Michael Bach and Esdac Tea, edited and with an introduction by Brian Grogan SJ (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) I am inclined to think that the Synodal process is as significant event in the history of the Church as was the Second Vatican Council. The Council was…
Vexed: Ethics beyond Political Tribes by James Mumford (Bloomsbury Continuum, £16.99 / €20.50 ) Politics are everywhere. We’ve had the British general election, currently the drama of the United States’ presidential election, and the prospect of our own general election in November. As the tumult, the divisions, the competition fill our screens and the pages of…
We Are Saved Only Together. Living in the Revolutionary Vision of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement by Colin Miller, foreword by Seth Haines (Ave Maria Press, €19.50 / £16.30 / US $ 17.95) The parable of the Good Samaritan is surely the best known of Jesus’ parables. It is among the most easily understood:…
A Summer with Pascal Antoine Compagnon, translated by Catherine Porte (The Belknap Press / Harvard University Press, £19.95 / €23.60) Pensées by Blaise Pascal, translation edited by Pierre Zoberman with an introduction by David Wetsel, with notes by both (Catholic University of America Press, £29.99 / €35.50 Pope Francis published an Apostolic Letter in June 2023…
Democracy and solidarity: On the cultural roots of America’s political crisis James Davison Hunter (Yale University Press, £30.00 / €36..00 / US$40.00 ) Some years ago, three married couples from Texas, USA, contacted us. They were touring Ireland in pursuit of their ancestors. They thought that we might be a branch of one of their family’s…
Fully alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, by Elizabeth Oldfield (London: Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99 / €26.99) Elizabeth Oldfield directed the London based ‘think-tank’, Theos from 2011 to 2022. Established in 2006 with the support of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the then Archbishop of Westminster and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Theos researches issues…
The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms Translated by Cynthia Schoch and Trista Selous (Hurst, £20.00) I have promised myself that should I win the lottery, I would employ an ‘explainer’. There is so much about the modern world that I do not ‘get’. And it is not only TV advertisements and…