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Richard John Neuhaus, founder and editor of First Things magazine, once wrote that there are writers whom you read because you have been told you must read them. Having done so, he said that they then become part of your history, along with foreign countries you have visited or great music you have heard. It was all part of the never-ending process called learning, “and a very good thing it is.”…

I lost a friend of more than six decades last week – although lost is the wrong word, for he has gone to a far less troubled world. He was also more than a friend – he was a guide, confidant and often even a confessor.  His name was Fr. Walter Macken, son of the well-known Irish novelist and playwright, Walter Macken, whose hugely popular historical fiction were international bestsellers in the…

The New Yorker is a world famous magazine, not least famous for the very quirky sense of humour of its very prolific team of cartoonists. But it is also famous for its long, very long, essays and articles. What it is not famous for is positive and sympathetic articles, long or otherwise about things Catholic. I’m not alleging it is anti-Catholic. Let’s just say you would not think of it as a…

“There are two ways through life—the way of nature and the way of grace”. In Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, one of the protagonists offers us this reflection.In a way, all of Terrence Malick’s films are a reflection on this truth, each one of them an essay on one or other way—or both. We now await the release of what may well be his last film, a work on which we have little detailed…

In the February issue of the Irish-based magazine,  Position Papers, a review of Vandalising Ireland by historian and writer Eoin Lenihan was published. It was a kind of ‘call to arms’ in defence of an authentic Irish identity and nationhood. We might wish him luck. As the reviewer, Dr Tim O’Sullivan, implied, the sometimes sneering reception of the book in the mainstream media spoke volumes…

The School of Athens Socrates died for it. Charlie Kirk died doing it. They both died because some people, powerful or not, hated them for what they said and did. Socrates died from a dose of hemlock his enemies obliged him to swallow; Kirk died from a bullet in the neck. Essentially what these two men had in common, and for which they were hated by their political enemies, was the dangerous…

It is difficult to pick up a serious newspaper or magazine, or tune in to a serious podcast today, without finding another essay where someone is worrying about modern technology’s dire impact on our mental health, our political life and our literacy.  Thomas Edsall mused at length in The New York Times (October 14) on ‘The rise of the Smartphone and the Fall of Western Democracy’. He drew on…

What is it about 2025? Will it be remembered as the year in which a new awakening finally exposed the shallowness and idiocy of the poisonous ‘awokening’ which has blighted our politics and our societies and mark the beginning of its end.   That so-called ‘awokening’ nightmare was the surface manifestation of the fatal flaws revealed in the answers Patrick Deneen gave to the question he asked…

This is the story of one of the most disturbing miscarriage of justice this century. It is the story of a nightmare transposed to the real world in a civilized European country and inflicted on a 20 year-old American student. But it is also the story of that young girl’s resilience and nobility and the near miracle of how she overcame her adversity and went on to forgive the man at the heart of…

Christopher Nolan has described it as the greatest war film ever made. I have not seen or read any elaboration by him of that opinion. It is not necessary. Not only isThe Thin Red Line a searing depiction of war, it penetrates to the heart of the struggle that is endemic in life itself. One of the people who worked with him in the long process of making the film, Penny Allen has said of Terrence…

Science fiction has a respectable pedigree stretching from, by general agreement, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, down through Jules Verne, H.G Wells and into the mid 20th century with Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and others. It’s certainly a robust genre. And while that mid-century flourishing may be considered a golden age there are those who now think we are in a new golden age.  At the heart…

In opening scenes of Terrence Malick’s film, The Thin Red Line, the raw recruit, Private Witt (above), who has gone AWOL from his company in the run up to the battle of Guadalcanal, muses about the problem of evil. He is wandering around a peaceful Melanesian village in a South Pacific island, its inhabitants unaffected by the war raging across the world. The words he utters to himself are the…

Back in the late 1950s and 1960s the film-maker Ingmar Bergman’s prestige and reputation were at their height. In those years anticipation of the next Bergman film to arrive in cinemas was akin to the anticipation today of the next film from Christopher Nolan or Terrence Malick. They were the works which dominated cultural conversation for months after their release. Why was that?  In a word I…

Nobel Prizes are always reported in the international media. In some years we hear more about them than  than in others. Very few occasions have matched the sensation caused in 2017 by the announcement  that the prize for literature was being awarded to Robert Zimmerman, better known to most of us as Bob Dylan. The Swedish Academy, was entrusted by Alfred Nobel with the onerous task of…

(René Girard, Part 3) Fyodor Dostoyevsky – a central figure in Girard’s journey Rene Girard’s first book, the fruit of his thinking and research in the 1950s was published in 1960. It was called Deceit, Desire, and the Novel.   Writing it resulted in not just a fascinating study of the genesis of  great writing but it also transformed his own life forever. He describes his attitude and…

René GIRARD, PART 2 René Girad was born into a Catholic family in Avignon in France on 25 December 1923. His father, Joseph Girard, was a historian. René studied medieval history at the École des Chartes, Paris. In 1947, Girard went to Indiana University. He was to spend most of his career in the United States. Although his research was in history, he also taught French literature. A…