This is the compelling story of a former Jesuit who traveled to Ireland in order to better understand the IRA, its widespread support among Irish Catholics, and the country's continuing civil unrest. Author Douglass McFerran, an American, made many key contacts in Northern Ireland, enabling him to gain unprecedented access to republican groups. He met with members of the Orange Lodge and the heavily armed Royal Ulster Constabulary; he had tea with leaders of Sinn Fein; and he participated in the annual Internment March on the streets of Belfast. In this book he provides a history of the conflict in Northern Ireland and goes beyond the propaganda on both sides to understand the causes of today's violence and explore what would be necessary to end it.

McFerran wrote this book at the suggestion of individuals within the Irish republican community. During its writing he had the cooperation of several Sinn Fein leaders and past and present members of the IRA. McFerran came to believe that the violent situation in Northern Ireland can best be explained by considering the manner in which the English government, through genocide and civil repression, attempted to eliminate Irish resistance to English rule. The failure of the Anglo-Irish War to achieve a united Irish government brought on a republican movement with a political expression in Sinn Fein and a military expression in the guerrilla activities of the Irish Republican Army. The continued failure of the English government to negotiate with Irish nationalists can be attributed to a desire to maintain the political support of predominantly Protestant unionists, who since 1913 have pledged armed resistance to any effort to allow a Catholic-led government to rule over them.

With more than fifty years of experience in presenting math and logic, Professor McFerran now offers a new version of an innovative text first published in 1991. While originally developed for use at the college level, it is also suitable for a high school course in critical thinking.

Designed to supplement a philosophy course dealing with society and values, this workbook includes brief descriptions of different approaches to the major issues in ethics and political philosophy. Short excerpts from writers both past and present provide the basis for personal responses to be used in group discussion, either in the classroom or online.

For more than two thousand years a study of deductive logic centered on the use of syllogisms as presented by Aristotle. In the twentieth century this was overshadowed by a symbolic logic that, while originally intended to discover a basis for mathematics, allowed new leaps forward in computer programming. However, the idea of examining the logic of an argument through the use of syllogisms has remained attractive as a starting point for beginning students. What was missing was a way of simplifying this study. Professor McFerran offers this in his adaptation of traditional material through the use of a postfix literal notation (PLN).

In the years before the Second Vatican Council great numbers of young men, typically just out of high school, entered a Jesuit novitiate to begin the thirteen-year march to the priesthood. Most would leave the Jesuits, sometimes long after ordination, and the question often is whether they failed their church or their church failed them.

In often brutally frank disclosures, a number of these former Jesuits talk about their lives: why they became novices and took lifetime vows and then why they left, sometimes just walking away after years in the priesthood.

What they have to say about themselves exposes a world once shrouded in secrecy.