We are accustomed to thinking that verbal discourse (written or spoken) and visual communication are complementary. Word and image accompany each other, so we believe, in the same struggle to get to the truth of things. But maybe not. Could they be not only distinct but antagonistic ways of understanding? Or are images mere accessories to words, meaningless without verbal explanation? What set me wondering was a flurry of unsmiling emails that came in response to the previous post. These were ones that said nothing at all about the written content but took exception—quite breathy in some instances—to the images. Continue Reading

Hesitance Comes For The Archbishop

Maureen Mullarkey

September 14, 2016

A tragic fault line runs through the approach of the American bishops to the 2016 election. On one side lies their traditional sympathy for immigration, extended now to embrace what amounts to open-borders and a reluctance to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal ones. On the other is the indispensable Catholic opposition to abortion. However much buttressed by religious language and attachments, one is a historically conditioned political position. The second is bedrock, a fundamental moral position the Church cannot abandon without losing its soul. Continue Reading

Recess & Recollection

Maureen Mullarkey

August 10, 2016

We are well into August and I find myself still at the computer. It is not really where I want to be just now. There are travels to take—though not necessarily far from where I am sitting. A few yards will do it. I am impatient to stay put. The loveliest road maps are ones intended to guide the anchored. Among favorite itineraries for the dug in is Louis Dupré’s The Deeper Life:

Precisely because God dwells first and foremost in the self, the mystical journey is mostly an inward journey.

Gender-bent on Suicide

Maureen Mullarkey

August 4, 2016

Is there anything left to say? We have reached the moment words no longer matter. They stream out of us, a ceaseless procession of utterances in a media world which swallows them whole. Undigested, they nourish no one. A civilization hungry for extinction has no taste for anything but death. Between a quisling pontificate, a debased political class, and a confused electorate, our age is caught up in a romance with doom. Words skim the surface but cannot penetrate the mystery of it. Continue Reading

Here & There

Maureen Mullarkey

July 25, 2016

In response to the previous posting, a witty correspondent writes me this:

Catholics should be quite at home in a Trump administration. We’ve been living under the same style of communication during this entire pontificate — absurd unscripted remark, inevitable walk back by the press office hacks, and a contradiction by the public figure the following week.

Not to mention antagonism toward one’s opponents. Though Francis’ hostility to traditionalists in his own Church is nothing compared to the frenzy of vindictiveness toward Ted Cruz that is still driving Trump, even now after winning his party’s nomination. Continue Reading

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Danse Macabre, Then & Now

Hesitance Comes For The Archbishop

Recess & Recollection

Gender-bent on Suicide

Here & There

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