"Francini Bruni, friend to Joyce in Trieste, wrote that 'he only completely admires the unchangeable: the mystery of Christ and the mute drama that surrounds it.' Colum Power, in a study of remarkable patience and rigour, traces Joyce's deep engagement with the more articulate forms which that necessarily mute, often mystical drama has sometimes taken when reduced to the humiliations of language . . . "
-From the Introduction by Declan Kiberd, author of Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece
Reviews of James Joyce's Catholic Categories:
"I am delighted to learn of this work about Joyce, being one of a relatively small number of Joyce critics who see him as having a very substantial religious sensibility; a topic that I continue to find of great interest and importance."
-Weldon Thornton, author of The Antimodernism of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
"A very important book. I now understand Joyce better. Critiquing Joyce and Joycean critics is always perilous, affording many opportunities to tumble ignominiously from the tightrope of true balanced perspective. This book crosses that abyss with awe-inspiring aplomb! Leaves one almost breathless, the masterful handling of the material."
-Joseph Pearce, author of The Quest for Shakespeare
"A wonderful book, I have read it with great pleasure. The author has surely done his homework. The arguments are compelling and expressed with grace and style; an excellent contribution to Joyce studies."
-Mary Lowe-Evans, author of Catholic Nostalgia in Joyce and Company
"A book of enormous significance not only for students of Joyce but for our coming to grips as a nation with Irish Catholicism, but it has enormous potential way beyond the special local Irish interest, considering the widespread influence of Joyce on world literature."
-Father Vincent Twomey
"A work of impressive quality, not only a matter of knowledge and extensive readings of Joyce's critics. The substance and course of the reflection is really interesting . . . So many of the observations made are absolutely remarkable."
-Father Antoine Levy, O.P.
A Note About the Author:
Fr. Colum Power, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1965, is a religious missionary priest. He obtained a Master's degree in Anglo-Irish Studies (1st hons.) at University College Dublin in 1991, a Licentiate in the History of Theology (9) at the San Vicente de Ferrer Faculty of Theology in Valencia, Spain, in 2011, and a doctorate in the History of the Church (9.2) at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome in 2013.
