Towards Ecological Conversion

Fr Sean McDonagh

Earlier in 2015 Pope Francis issued his encyclical Laudato Si. This papal study of environmental issues precedes the 2015 UN Climate Change conference, which is due to take place in Paris from 30^th November to 11^th December. To mark these events, we have invited Fr Sean McDonagh SSC to give the second lecture in our autumn series. 

Sean McDonagh is an Irish Columban Father who has earned an international reputation as an eco-theologian. He has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the links between the values of justice and peace, environmental sustainability and faith. 

In his books and lectures, he has voiced his deep concern about a number of ecological issues, including access to clean water and an adequate diet in the developing world, nuclear power, genetic engineering, loss of biodiversity and the extinction of species.

His published work includes Patenting Life? Stop! Is corporate greed forcing us to eat genetically engineered food? (2003), The Death of Life: the horror of extinction (2004), Climate Change: the challenge to all of us (2006), and Fukushima: the death knell for nuclear energy? (2012). Fr Sean is also patron of Christian Ecology Link and writes a weekly column in Catholic broadsheet The Universe.  

The title of his lecture in the Central Catholic Library will be:  “Laudato Si: does it contain new teaching on the environment?”

The lecture takes place at 6.30pm on Tuesday 3^rd November and all are welcome.

Celebrating St Kevin's Church with Adrian Kenny

Adrian Kenny

The Church of St Kevin in Dublin's Harrington Street marks its 150th anniversary this year. For the first lecture in our autumn series, we have invited author Adrian Kenny to talk about this church and the ancient Dublin parish which surrounds it.

Adrian has researched and published a history of St Kevin's. He is a member of Aosdána, and his previous books include both fiction and autobiography, ranging from the novel The Feast of Michaelmas and  the memoir Istanbul Diary to the short story collection Portobello Notebook. Adrian has also translated and edited for Raven Arts Press Eachtra Tomás MacCasaide, a text preserved in an 18th-century Irish manuscript.

Adrian's lecture takes place at 6.30 pm in the library on Tuesday 13th October. All are welcome.

The Priest in Fiction: an exploration by Eamon Maher

Eamon Maher

 The closing lecture in our spring series will be given by Dr Eamon Maher, who is lecturer in French and director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies at the Institute of Technology Tallaght. 

The dominant focus of Eamon Maher’s work is the cultural, literary and historic links between France and Ireland.  In connecting the two countries, and setting their literary art in parallel, he has richly illuminated our understanding of their shared artistic and religious concerns.  Just two examples: in his early publications on French priest and writer Jean Sulivan (1913-1980), he identified a parallel between the rural Brittany of Sulivan’s roots, and the Ireland of the 1950’s.  In later work on John McGahern, Maher explored the profound influence of 19^th century French novelist Flaubert on the Leitrim writer.

Eamon Maher’s own books include his translation of Jean Sulivan’s memoir,  Anticipate Every Goodbye (Veritas, 2000)  and  The Church and its Spire: John McGahern and the Catholic Question (Columba Press, 2011).  He has also edited or co-edited over twenty monographs, and publishes widely in newspapers and periodicals such as The Irish Times, Doctrine and Life, The Month and Études Irlandaises. In 2013, he broadcast five short presentations on Jean Sulivan for RTE Radio as part of the Living Word series. His guiding interest in the influence of faith on 20^th century literary culture is evident in work such as his 2014 article exploring Catholic sensibility in the early novels of Edna O’Brien.  

He is currently contributing a series of articles on depictions of priests in fiction to the journal Spirituality. He will draw on this research for his talk in the Central Catholic Library. Entitled "Life in a Roman Collar: some clerical figures in modern fiction", the talk begins at 6.30pm on Tuesday 28^th April, and all are welcome.

The Legacy of the Second Vatican Council

  

The second lecture in our spring series will be given by Fr Gerry O’Hanlon, whose topic will be the legacy of the Second Vatican Council. December of this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the council.

Fr O’Hanlon is a Jesuit priest and theologian who works at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Dublin.  Previously he was Dean of Theology and Vice-Chancellor of the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy. His books include Theology in the Irish Public Square (2010) and A New Vision for the Catholic Church: a view from Ireland (2011). Fr O’Hanlon has also published many articles in journals such as The Furrow and Doctrine and Life. These include the article “Contested Legacies” on the contribution of the recently canonised John XXIII and John Paul II to church reform and renewal (The Furrow, July-August 2014).

All are welcome to Fr O’Hanlon’s lecture, which takes place in the library at 6.30pm on Tuesday 31^st March.

Fr Eugene McCaffrey O.C.D.

Celebrating St Teresa of Avila

Our spring lecture series this year takes as its motif "remembering and imagining", with the first two lectures celebrating significant church anniversaries, and the final two exploring some of  the links between Christianity and the arts.

For the first lecture, we have invited Fr Eugene McCaffrey to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of St Teresa of Avila. All are welcome to the talk, which takes place in the library at 6.30pm on Tuesday 10th March.

Fr McCaffrey is attached to the community of Discalced Carmelite Friars at the Avila Centre in Dublin www.avilacentre.ie  In 1998 he published a book on another great Carmelite saint, Thérèse of Lisieux, in the year in which she was declared a doctor of the church.

Fr McCaffrey's  books on the Spanish Teresa include an introduction to her writings, brought out by the Teresian Press in 2014. This year, Columba Press has published a second book Let Nothing Trouble You: Teresa - the woman, the guide, the storyteller. 

All of these titles by Fr McCaffrey are available for borrowing from our lending library.