RadioReview: Bernice HarrisonThe sky didn't fall in or anything but there was a bit of a moment this week when Keelin Shanley, sitting in for Mary Wilson (Drivetime, RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), suggested to Catholic primate Archbishop Seán Brady that for some people, religion - and specifically his religion - was about as reasonable as believing that Aquarians are floaty dreamers and Leos bossy wagons.
He was on air because of his sermon earlier that day, during which he had warned his flock against horoscopes, astrology, palm-reading and tarot cards. "There are people who would say," she said, "that asking people to believe in life after death, the Immaculate Conception or even God himself is the same as believing in astrology - there is no proof in the efficacy of either." An uncomfortable, brief silence ensued before the archbishop, who must have been seriously taken aback, mustered a not-entirely-focused rebuttal, ending with the lame "to compare the two is silly". And this is a man who didn't get where he is today by being a slouch on theology. But then, he probably didn't expect to have the very basis of his faith prodded so dismissively in a teatime interview. "Believers believe that God exists," said the archbishop simply, back on track, and, with the speed of a teenager on the way to slamming her bedroom door, Shanley replied: "I suppose that is a personal opinion." The archbishop was always going to have the last word, this being the national broadcaster. Shortly after the interview, Shanley announced a break for the Angelus, his religion's call to prayer.
Matters of faith and spirituality are teased out every week in a more measured, discursive forum on Susan McReynolds's Spirit Moves (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday). This week her assembled guests discussed whether there is a link between the arts and spirituality, if what Rembrandt said is true that "painting is the grandchild of nature - it is related to God". At the start of the lively and thought- provoking discussion - it's a live programme, which always gives energy to a studio debate - playwright Michael Harding cautioned that "there is a danger in a programme like this of too much consensus". He was right, of course, but in the end it didn't matter that guests Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, writers Peter Sheridan and Harding, and actor Sharon Hogan agreed that art has the power to give us a glimpse into something or someplace beyond ourselves, because they were all so engaging in their explanations for their thinking. "Both art and spirit are invitations to depth," said Gallagher. "Art leads my sympathy into places it didn't go."
A report on a new production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by the National Association for Youth Drama (NAYD) on The Eleventh Hour (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday) showed vividly how art can impact on teenage lives and take them to previously unimagined and far-off places - both literally and in their dreams. Actor Cathy Belton and director Jim Culleton, now hugely respected theatre folk, told how being members of a youth theatre had opened up a different world to them. There was a clip from the rehearsals for the current production and an interview with NAYD director Orlaith McBride, who explained the difference between a youth theatre and a pushy-mom stage school. The whole, perfectly-pitched item fizzed with energy and purpose. Like a youth theatre, in fact.
Maybe it is sheer parochialism, but I found last week's first part of City Limits (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday) uninteresting - it was based on interviews in someplace called Scadbury, just outside London - while this week's second part, which featured Dublin's Ballymun, was utterly fascinating.
The series looked at the fringes where suburbia meets the countryside, places that are half-town and half-country, where you find brutal transport corridors and rubbish dumps and where we pitch our "nowhere architecture", most notably those enormous shopping centres.
When Ballymun was developed in the 1960s it was at the edge of the city, a place local town planner Michael Grace described as being "beyond where the last bus stopped". It was somewhere that no one wanted to go. However planned regeneration has changed that, and in future, thanks in no small part to Ikea, it will be a destination. The city has now sprawled way beyond it, but it is still close to farms or "the country", as one market gardener who farms just beyond Ballymun explained. People from Finglas and Ballymun love coming to pick fruit on his farm, he said: "Most of these people are only two generations from being culchies." Not a word you hear too often on Radio 4.