2023: Volume 112
Showing 1–12 of 33 results
Peter McVerry SJ
Contents
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A Kingdom Here on Earth: Jesus the Social Revolutionary
Peter McVerry SJ
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleJesus had a mission statement, long before mission statements became popular. We pray, in the Our Father, that Jesus’ mission may be accomplished: ‘Thy Kingdom come … on earth, as it is in Heaven’. Jesus talked about a kingdom here on earth, over which God could happily preside.
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A Pilgrim Church – Responding in Uncertain Times
Timothy Quinlan
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleHaving spent some thirty years (1980–2010) teaching religion at second level in a Dublin city school, I can confirm from personal experience many of the contentions about the steady decline of the influence of the Catholic Church as detailed in Derek Scally’s book The Best Catholics in the World and as it is reflected in the broad range of articles in response to its publication in the autumn 2022 issue of Studies.
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Cardinal Owen McCann, Angola and Mozambique: Greater Ireland Meets Greater Portugal
Alexandra Maclennan
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleThe first Mass in Southern Africa was celebrated by the Portuguese at Algoa Bay near Port Elizabeth, shortly after they arrived with Bartholomeu Dias in 1487. That there was a Catholic faith for the Dutch settlers to outlaw when they arrived in the Cape Peninsula in 1652 is indicative of its survival long after the Portuguese had left at the turn of the sixteenth century, and that in spite of the lack of continuity of pastoral presence and access to the sacraments. And again, in the nineteenth century, when the Irish but Lisbon-educated Dominican Patrick Griffith was sent to the Cape Colony to become the first Irish vicar apostolic in Southern Africa in 1838, and he set out to travel the length and breadth of the territory, and he found scattered Catholic families across the territory.
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Climate, Communities, and Capitalism: Critically Imagining and Co-Creating Pathways for a Sustainable Ireland
Amanda Slevin
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleWildfires, droughts, floods, beloved species facing extinction – a selection of stark indicators of the accelerating climate and ecological emergency. Underpinned by human patterns of production, consumption, and associated environmental degradation, the ‘triple planetary crises’of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution pose an existential threat to human and non-human species. Consequently, socio-ecological and scientific imperatives for urgent, transformative action have become firmly established, yet with only a few years to 2030 (a landmark year for climate commitments) our shared island, encompassing people on both sides of Ireland’s politically constructed border, is woefully unprepared to tackle the massive difficulties we collectively face.
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Confronting the Past for the Sake of the Future
Séamus Murphy SJ
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleThe 1998 Good Friday or Belfast Agreement outlined structures of power-sharing in Northern Ireland and supporting roles for the British and Irish governments. It also contained something new in Irish history, namely, a commitment by unionist and nationalist representatives to the following principles:
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Frances Biggs and the Windows of Gonzaga College, Dublin
Declan O’Keeffe
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleGonzaga College SJ, named after St Aloysius Gonzaga, one of St Ignatius’s initial companions, was founded in 1950 in the leafy suburb of Ranelagh, Dublin 6. For the first fifteen years it did not have a chapel, as other things took priority, and religious services took place in the concert hall, which required moving furniture in and out on every occasion. When Fr John Hughes SJ took over as rector in 1959, the first priority of his office was to provide a chapel. In May of 1962 a working committee was established and parents were persuaded to part with £100 each, spread over ten years. In the account of William Lee SJ, ‘[t]he quality of that cut-granite, copper-roofed building dictated to a large extent the quality of the new school Chapel. The fact that Mr Andrew Devane was architect for both buildings ensured that the standard was maintained … The sculptor Mr Michael Biggs was commissioned to do the altar, the ambo, and the tabernacle pillar … The stained glass window at the apex of the triangular building was the work of Mrs Frances Biggs.’
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Gnostic Undercurrents in Our Avatar Culture
Fiachra Long
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleWe are sometimes attracted by a striking, colourful and convenient initiative, but like the apparent bargain that flatters to deceive, or the colourful mushroom that turns out to be poisonous, some level of discretion is advised. The emergence of ChatGPT as the lead Artificial Intelligence platform is striking, colourful and convenient, but a high level of discretion is urgently advised.
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Homelessness: Some Theological Reflections
Suzanne Mulligan
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleDuring my time in America, I was invited to spend a week at another very well-known Catholic university. It too proved to be a very fruitful visit; the generosity of the staff and the welcome I received was amazing. But in truth, I felt a little uncomfortable with the opulence that I saw around me. I met with one professor who works closely with the homeless community in the locality. She divided her time between her academic responsibilities at the university and running a homeless shelter. On the Wednesday evening she took me to the shelter and located in the upper room of the building was a small, simple chapel. That evening, along with about twenty homeless folks, we celebrated the Eucharist.
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Imagining Kells: A Poetic Meditation on the Book of Kells
James Harpur
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleIn 2018 I published a book of poems, The White Silhouette, that mainly focused on Christian spirituality and mysticism. At its centre was a four-part meditative poem inspired by the Book of Kells that took me nineteen years, on and off, to complete. In this essay I hope to describe my fascination with the Book of Kells and some of the themes and questions that emerged in my poem, such as: ‘Can sacred art effect a fundamental change of consciousness in the beholder?’ ‘How much does it help to be a believer to appreciate the Book of Kells?’ ‘What is the function of the Book of Kells in the twenty-first century?
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Irish, ‘Celtic’, and the Future
Alan Titley
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleWhen I was asked to imagine Ireland, and the place that the Irish language, literature, and culture might have in it in 2030, I had to swallow hard. It is difficult enough to examine a past that is always changing, almost impossible to assess a present that is in constant flux: so what chance is there to imagine a future that will never be what we think?
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Living Lightly on Our Planet: Challenges for Ireland
Peadar Kirby
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleAt the time of writing this article in the autumn of 2022, a slew of authoritative reports and studies underline the extremely precarious nature of the current situation facing humanity and the other species with which we share this beautiful planet. To take a few examples:
• The UN Emissions Gap Report showed that updated national emission-reduction pledges since the Glasgow climate summit in late 2021 make a negligible difference to predicted 2030 emissions and that we are far from the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.
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Looking Out onto the World: The Global Compact on Education
Brendan Leahy
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€7.00 Purchase Single ArticleThe Global Compact on Education is one of the many inspiring initiatives launched by Pope Francis. Put simply, it’s an invitation on his part for any two or more – individuals, families, schools, institutions, organisations, or nations – to commit themselves to work for a more open and inclusive education, in order to respond to the challenges of a world in rapid transformation and increasing divisions. The Compact is not a particular educational activity or programme but rather a networking of people who, respecting diversity, reach out to listen attentively to one another in order to dialogue constructively on education in its broadest sense and in its significance for the future of our world, our planet, our relationships.
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