The two most recent selections by the Catholic Book Club couldn't have been more different: A look at Thomas Jefferson's quixotic attempt to rewrite the Bible, and Niall Williams's richly evocative novel about a small village in the west of Ireland.

Something has changed for the novelist John Banville in the last 15 years. In a twist worthy of his own byzantine fiction, Banville has adopted a new persona and writing style, and even—perhaps—a changed attitude toward “the Irish thing” he once derided.

Americans with Irish ancestry have always balanced patriotism with an appreciation of their roots. And their identity should include solidarity with today’s immigrants.

Victim-blaming and a worship of the free-market system made the Irish Famine much worse. The death toll from Covid-19 shows we have not fully learned from the past.

From 1846 to 1848, in the worst years of the potato famine in Ireland and during mass emigration to the United States, one of the toughest units of the Mexican armed forces battling the invaders from "El Norte" was the Saint Patrick Battalion, known in Mexico as the 'San Patricios.'

In this season of discontent in American society, however, Heaney’s words have become emblematic of President Biden’s greatest political challenge: to act as healer-in-chief.