It’s Malachi’s fault

“ Michael, Richard and Dan are the only newly ordained priests for Dublin’s million-plus Catholics”.
Its not exactly news but it’s written up in the usual limpid McKittrick style of letting the story tell itself which requires far more skill than you might think. (Note the avoidance of redundant value judgments.) It sounds as if another journalist for whom value judgments are meat and drink, Malachi O’Doherty, is partly to blame for a revival of this touchy subject, as his latest book “Empty Pulpits” is about to published, see credit from David. Malachi gave himself a plug somewhere in the tangles of Turgon’s bookish thread earlier this month but not a word yet in his own sparse-ish blog. Lucky boy Malachi, he prefers to write for payment. According to the only blurb I’ve seen about it so far, for North Down’s Irish literature festival:

” In “Empty Pulpits”, “author Malachi O’Doherty argues that our Irish experience has news for the fundamentalists, who think nothing ever changes — but also for the hard atheists, who don’t understand religious culture from the inside. Ireland is on the cusp between faith and atheism, free now to think freshly about both.” That should get the sluggerees going.

Brian Walker

Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London