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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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The Holy See’s China Gamble

In Beijing on Saturday, the Holy See signed an historic and consequential agreement with the People’s Republic of China. The Vatican issued a press release stating that Msgr. Antoine Camilleri, undersecretary for the Holy See’s Relations with States, and Wang Chao, deputy minister for foreign affairs of the People’s Republic of China, signed a “provisional agreement” on the appointment of bishops. It concludes: “The shared hope is that this agreement may favour a fruitful and forward-looking process of institutional dialogue and may contribute positively to the life of the Catholic Church in China, to the common good of the Chinese people and to peace in the world.” Continue Reading

Transgender Identity: A Degraded Enchantment

Determined to be relevant, my town library is ripping out its excessively gendered Women’s and Men’s rooms to make way for four gender-neutral bathrooms. The renovation concretizes the American Library Association’s endorsement of gender ideology and transgender identity. Measured by the ALA’s Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services, relevant means assisting “traditionally underserved” communities. Among those neglected, the ALA cites “GLBT populations,” an improbable capitulation to identity politics. The ALA has decided that a sexually fungible—also militant, well-funded, and politically savvy—fragment of the public needs more material about itself. Continue Reading

Three Women, Three Decisions Against Abortion

In the lead-up to Ireland’s abortion referendum, The Tablet, a Catholic weekly out of London, ran an overview of both sides of the debate. Lorna Donlon’s article was headlined “Ireland’s Very Personal Question.” But it begs the question: Just how personal is a woman’s decision to kill the life she is carrying? Is abortion no more than a matter of subjective preference? In a society that is serious about what is right, can the personal dimension overtake the moral? The article called to mind three women who had grasped the falsity of the feminist rallying cry: “It’s my body.” Continue Reading

Dolan, The Met & The Politics of Carnival

The question begs to be asked: What is the point of Cardinal Dolan? Whatever vocation he might once have espoused has dissolved in the acid of celebrity. He is an embarrassment to his office, and a disincentive to every serious-minded, diligent working priest in his archdiocese. Let him retire to the Hamptons, or South Beach, some glittering water hole where he can do what he is best at—glad-handing. He is an episcopal show-boater, the grinning face of a hierarchy desperate for the moment’s approval. Continue Reading

Alfie Evans & the Lethal Sympathy of Bioethics

Alfie Evans is dead. Deemed unfit, the child was sentenced to death by dehydration and suffocation. We shun the term life unworthy of life but embrace its content. We mask the odor of it with smiling phrases like “end of life care,” cruel details dismissed in the “best interest” of the patient sacrificed to force of law. The act of killing is rephrased in the argot of compassion. Language loosens constraint from the annihilation of life judged undeserving of the means to sustain it. Continue Reading
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