This book by Mgr Charles G. Vella, who has had long experience as a hospital chaplain, stresses the humanising and healing effects of the simple communicative acts of listening, caressing, smiling, stopping by and giving time to sick patients and not treating them as a number. Useful for anyone working [...]

From the Veritas ‘Into the Classroom’ series: Fachtna McCarthy and Joseph McCann introduce the subject of the relationship between religious and scientific enquiry. This series, edited by Eoin G. Cassidy and Patrick M. Devitt, is designed for teachers of the new Leaving Cert religious education syllabus.

David Stevens, who has long experience of community work in Northern Ireland, explores the meaning of reconciliation in troubled communities and how it can be achieved.

John R Walsh and Thomas Bradley provide an excellent summary history of that most formative period of Irish history, the three centuries of Christianity after the arrival of St Patrick.

Anne Thurston explores the season of Advent using the themes of waiting and longing, hope and expectation. Pregnancy is the potent symbol here, along with stories of annunciations and visitations.

Teresita Durkan’s “Reflections on a Life” range over the seven decades of a rich spirituality from a free-ranging childhood on the Atlantic coast of Mayo, through three decades as a Sister of Mercy and re-location to Valparaiso in Chile during Pinochet’s dictatorship.

In this book Christina Rees argues that the only way we can know God is through our own experience; by embarking on a personal journey of discovery and gradually learning to recognise how God is at work in our world and lives.

Tony Hanna provides an introduction to and an analysis of the new energetic movements in the Church. He asks how the theological questions they raise might be resolved and what are the risks and potential they bring for the Church.

An original and stimulating examination by Hugh Rayment-Pickard of the theology of time and history drawing from art, literature, philosophy, theology and everyday life.

David Hays maintains that survey figures show that interest in spirituality, often expressed as the awareness of ‘something there’, is rising right across the developed world. He demonstrates this from hundreds of interviews of ‘ordinary’ people which back up the view that spirituality is hard-wired into our biological make-up, that [...]

The Cat Did Not Know tells the story of Christ through the eyes of a small cat that follows Jesus from his birth through the key events of his life, ending with his cruxifixion and resurrection.

A few months before the Special Olympics was due to open, journalist Fiona Murdoch received a phone call asking her would she profile some of the participants and write a book about them to help the general public better understand how able disabled people are. This is the result.

Saving the planet and healing the human community are at the heart of this passionate reflection on the nature of desire by Diarmuid Ó Murchú.

This biography of Saint Charles of Mount Argus gives us some ideas of the inner struggles through which he learned the compassion for which he became so famous. It is high quality hagiography, contains some beautiful illustrations and the accounts of the miracles that led to his canonisation.

Seán MacGabhann is an Irish-born Roman Catholic priest ministering in Canada. He sees relationship with Jesus as central to Catholicism. So his book is really a campaign to turn Catholics from concern with the institution to personal intimacy with Jesus: from head to heart, from power to service, from complexity [...]

John Drane offers the follow up to The McDonalization of the Church – where he puts forward arguments for a reinvigorated style of ministry, questions what it means to be Christian in a post-Christendom context, and asks what values might inspire the leaders of the 21st century.

Stephen Redmond SJ has written a book about saints – from Peter and Paul, Felicity and Perpetua right through to contemporaries of our own, like King Bedouin of the Belgians and Tom Doyle of the Morning Star Hostel, both of whom died in the 1990s. He highlights bits and pieces [...]

The reasons for migration and refugee flows are often complex, say Mark Raper SJ and Amaya Valcàrcel, but the main reasons are violations of human rights, military conflict, and the violence of poverty. This is Chapter 3 of Raper and Valcàrcel’s book, ‘Refugees and forcibly displaced people’.

Sean Freyne presents a set of essays which reflect his thought on the role of the Bible in modern theology. He shows throughout his abiding concern to read the Bible with an awareness of the different contexts in which the texts were produced and are received.

William Oddie edits a collection of essays by distinguished Catholic writers, each assessing some aspect of Karol Wojtyla’s extraordinary achievement as Pope John Paul II.

Roderick Stronge, Rector of the Beda College in Rome, is aware of the controversies surrounding the Catholic priesthood, but what he focuses on is the essential nature of ministerial priesthood and its pastoral practice, and restoring it to its place of honour.

Eamonn Bredin invites all who wish to be disciples of Christ to look again at the Jesus of the New Testament and at the struggles of those first disciples who saw Jesus die as a criminal on the cross, and then to embark on a journey of re-assessing their own [...]

Fr Jack McArdle’s book is a call to return to the basics of the Catholic faith and to examine the role of God and Mary in our own spiritual growth.

This book, edited by Louise Fuller, John Littleton and Eamom Maher, examines the changed, and changing, face of Irish Catholicism, Irish identity and the Irish socio-religious landscape at the beginning of the third millennium.

Declan Marmion has gathered a host of international specialists to explore their respective legacies by examining not only Karl Rahner, and Bernard Lonergan’s contribution to anthropology, systematic, historical, moral and practical theology and spirituality, and thus bringing their insights into dialogue with many of the issues facing Christians today.

Pope Benedict XVI chose the theme of love as the subject of his first encyclical. In response the Pontifical Council Cor Unum organised the “World Conference on Charity” held at the Vatican from January 23-24, 2006. This is a transcript of the presentations that were made on that occasion as [...]

What we present here is the table of contents and a brief review of this practical booklet which will help those who undertake to read in church. The booklet is available from Fr Colm Kilcoyne, PP, Cong, Co Mayo. Phone 087 95 46030 or 087 2402 486 Email: ckilcoyne@eircom.net

This book is a selection of extracts from the letters of Mary Aikenhead – one for every day of the year – containing wisdom inspiration and challenge, reflecting her deep spirituality. She founded the Religious Sisters of Charity in 1815 to work with the poor and most vulnerable people.

Norma MacMaster, now a priest of the Church of Ireland, living in Skerries, describes her growing up as a Presbyterian in Balieborough, Co Cavan, in the 1940s and 50s. At harmony with neighbours, yet holding on to their own way of seeing things, she knew the necessity of going to [...]

“We are made to be at home with God. That we are not yet at home is not, in itself, occasion for surprise. For we are travellers, pilgrim people….” This book by Nicholas Lash opens with a critique of Richard Dawkins, goes on to discuss the ‘impossibility of atheism’, distinguish [...]