James McPolin looks at some biblical that arise for the Hebrews experience of their Exodus – liberation, community, covenant, fidelity, remembering, land, justice and sharing.

John McHale was among the first Irish bishops since the Reformation to have been educated in Ireland. As a fearless critic of British mismanagement of Ireland during the Great Famine, he was attacked by the British press but loved by the Irish people.

Seán McDonagh reminds us that climate change is the most serious issue facing us. If we continue with a business-as-usual approach in relation to our use of fossil fuel, we will have set in train planetary changes like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which will make the world [...]

Edith Stein was canonised on October 11th 1998. She was a Jew who studied philosophy and then became an atheist, but through the example of the deep faith of a Protestant widow and her own reading of St Teresa of Avila, she became a Carmelite nun. At Auschwitz she was [...]

Jesus seems to have deliberately provoked conflict with the dominant social vision represented by the religious authorities by his compassionate healings on the Sabbath and his table-fellowship with outcasts. James Mc Polin SJ tells the story.

Clare Louise Creedon works in the Forum for People with Disabilities. Here she alerts us to what it is like for people with disabilities to cope in a world that ignores them.

Frederic Ozanam is known especially as the founder of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, an international voluntary Christian organisation noted for helping the poor. John Murray PP tells his story.

The editor of “Studies”, Fergus O’Donoghue SJ, writes about the cultural apostolate he and his counterparts in other countries exercise through being editor of the Jesuit cultural journals.

This book aims to get both the parents at home and the parish community involved with the candidates for confirmation as they prepare for the day they receive the sacrament and insure it will be a fruitful experience for all. John-Paul Sheridan is diocesan advisor for primary religious education in [...]

This article is a chapter from John Bollan’s book on religious education, “The Light of His Face: Spirituality for Catholic teachers”. I consists of reflections on the mysteries which, as he says himself, “cross over into any sphere of life and work”.

Although she lived on for twenty-six years, Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity had an extraordinary sense of the three persons of the Trinity dwelling within her. John Murray PP tells her story.

Forty years ago in his encyclical “Populorum Progressio”, Pope Paul VI warned that “the disparity between rich and poor nations will increase rather than diminish” and so it has happened. Eugene Quinn addresses the problem of social justice and what we must do about it.

This is a collection of recent essays by Enda McDonagh – many in honour of friends – on a variety of topics such as theology in the university, education, globalisation, grief, suicide, politics, risk, transformative justice, poetry, art, theatre and tragedy.

Fr Oliver Treanor reflects on the miracle of the marriage feast of Cana and tries draw out what it means.

Apart from the prayers for the different times of the year, this book prepared by the brothers of Taizé community also gives practical instructions on how the elements, such as prayer around the cross, the icons and the meditative chants, contribute to our personal intimacy with God.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty had an enormously practical loving spirituality that brought healing to many wounded and poor people. John Murray PP tells her story.

Neil writes: “It amazes me how so many people in the modern world seem to be so anti-family. When I was young it was simply taken for granted that there was no better place for children to grow up than in a happy family. What has happened? Bernard McGuckian SJ [...]

This excellent book by Hugh Rayment-Pickard is a model of clarity and accessibility. It introduces the key themes, movements and thinkers in theology and religious studies.

Brendan Hoban has a feel for the telling phrase, the sound-byte that sums up pastoral dilemmas, like “not going to church anymore”, “teenage sex”, “making your own soup”, “neurotic curiosity”, “the grace of eccentricity”, “too many Bodenstowns”. He has the compassion to understand why people say the Church “doesn’t do [...]

Fr Michael Mullins lectures in Scripture in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He has already produced commentaries on the gospels of John and Mark. Again this commentary on Matthew gospel is a thorough and scholarly, but written in a readable style.

Jesuit University Support and Training (JUST) is a project seeking to help young people (and some not so young) in Ballymun break the cycle of deprivation that kept them from getting into third level education. Tess Martin tells the story.

In a series of six monographs, James J. Harkins explores the historical dimensions of the coming of Christianity to Ireland and its subsequent spread to Scotland and the European continent. Using German and French sources he has interesting insights and comments on what the Irish missionaries did well and not [...]

Boethius defined ‘person’ as an individual, and that became theologically and socially dominant, whereas Augustine understood person as ‘relatio’ and Aquinas as ‘relatio subsistens’. Tom Norris thinks if we could return to thinking of the divine person as ‘relatio’ we could more easily return to a spirituality of communion.

Brian Grogan SJ looks at how being wounded in action at the siege of Pamplona brought Ignatius to a sense of crisis in his life where he had to make a decision about his future. It also revealed how he now looked at the life he led up til then.

Pope John XXIII was fully conscious of the implications of his opening speech at the Second Vatican Council. He managed to outwit the prophets of doom and asked for a great leap forward in the Church. The substance of the faith, he said, is not the same as its historical [...]

The Power of Dreams acts as a practical handbook that can be used over the course of a month. Gerard Condon analyses and discusses the scientific, psychological, theological and spiritual sides of sleep and dreaming in this easily accessible and interesting book.

Ciarán O’Rourke writes: In early March this year, a team of twenty from Gonzaga College travelled on a house-building trip to Zambia, where they spent nineteen days living and working with the native people. Having spent the previous five months fundraising and preparing for the trip, all involved had their [...]

Andrei Rublev is famous for his icon of the Trinity. It is a stunning vision of the divine community to which, in the Eucharist, the faithful are invited to participate. John Murray PP tells us of the life of Rublev who was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988 [...]

Polish immigration to Ireland has created a communion between Polish and Irish Catholics. How different is the history of their faith, the culture and practise of their faith, and what can they learn from each other? asks Jacek Poznanski SJ.

Honor McCabe OP has written an excellent and comprehensive history of work of the Irish Dominican Sisters in Portugal. The chapter presented here tells how Fr Dominic O’Daly OP, after setting up a college in Lisbon for the education of young Irish men for the priesthood, successfully negotiated founding this convent for [...]