Last month an important new book appeared: Models of Priestly Formation, Assessing the Past, Reflecting on the Present, and Imagining the Future (Liturgical Press), edited by Salvador Ryan, Declan Marmion, and Michael Mullaney.In Models of Priestly Formation, an international team of leading experts considers priestly formation since Vatican II, explores current best practice internationally, and imagines what the future of such formation might look like.

A new collection of scripture essays by an international team of eleven authors has recently been published, edited by Jeremy Corley with Geoffrey David Miller (St Louis, USA). The volume—Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature (Walter de Gruyter)—offers fresh readings of deuterocanonical writings such as Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees. Several essays focus on important characters such as Abraham, Moses, David, Tobit, Judith, Mother Zion and Mother Earth. Overall, the essays reveal the rich links between various scriptural books, as well as connections with wider literary culture.

A fascinating volume has recently appeared, entitled: Marriage and the Irish: A Miscellany (Wordwell Press), edited by Salvador Ryan. This is the second volume in the series on Birth, Marriage and Death among the Irish. Seventy-five contributors explore the institution of marriage in Ireland from the seventh century to the present day. In eighty articles, scholars from a range of academic disciplines, including History, Art History, Celtic Studies, English Literature, Theology, Sociology, Archival Studies, and Folklore, reflect on Irish marriages over the centuries, both at home and among the Irish diaspora, often with surprising results.

Finally, one of Maynooth’s recent doctoral graduates, Michel Simo Temgo SCJ, has just published the results of his research, entitled: Jon Sobrino and Pope Francis - A New Springtime for the Preferential Option for the Poor/Vulnerable? (Xlibris publishers, Bloomington, Indiana). The book focuses on the use of the preferential option for the poor in theology today, and compares the work of two contemporary Jesuits: Jon Sobrino and Pope Francis.