Luce is the name of the official mascot/logo for Rome’s 2025 Jubilee. A kitschy cartoon pilgrim derived from the cult-of-cute in Japanese comic books and animation, it is the brainchild of the Dicastery for Evangelization. Artificially child-like, Luce signals Vatican surrender to the hegemony of Pop culture. Competing for ratings in an image-saturated culture—one that values spectacle over argument—Mother Church has to entertain the customers. She needs to lighten up, lift her hems a bit, and show a little ankle. That means renovating the Church’s traditional symbolic system. Continue Reading

Trump, Thanksgiving, & the Puritan Mind

Maureen Mullarkey

December 1, 2024

Politics is outside the bailiwick of Studio Matters. Yet election of the once-and-future President Trump was so remarkable, so exhilarating in its implications, celebration is mandatory. There should be dancing in the streets. Fireworks, too . But all I have is words. Permit me, please, just a few of them. Just this once. It was June, 2015, when Donald Trump came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his run for the presidency. I scoffed at the news. Continue Reading

Mass Migration: Slouching Toward Dissolution

Maureen Mullarkey

October 20, 2024

Our betters tell us that mass migration is a moral imperative. “Love has no borders,” they croon. They use this facile sentimentality to bully us into assenting to the dissolution of shared culture and a collective identity. It is hard to muster courtesy toward the Better Sort who consciously conflate the word immigration with migration. The first is a legal process, in effect a contract between arrivals and the state. In current context, the second assents to illegal entry by the brute force of overwhelming numbers. Continue Reading

Ripperger, Exorcism, et al., Part 2

Maureen Mullarkey

September 30, 2024

Catholic televangelism is not what it was when Fulton Sheen pioneered it. In the following clip from a 2023 segment of the Chris Stefanick Show, Ripperger appears authoritative, reasonable, and self-assured. It is the demeanor of a tenured prof holding forth in the faculty lounge. “Demons understand human psychology the same way St. Thomas does,” the prof intones. That ought to have been a howler. But no. Chris Stefanick is dazzled at Ripperger’s facile equivalence between Thomistic theology and “cutting edge psychology”—neither of which he demonstrates any acquaintance with. Continue Reading

Chad Ripperger: Cautionary Notes

Maureen Mullarkey

September 28, 2024

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a publicity-conscious demonologist everything stinks of sulphur. Fr. Chad Ripperger is a celebrity exorcist with a vigorous following in certain Catholic circles. His disapproval of the Harry Potter series is well known among fellow traditionalists. He deems Harry Potter a wizard of dark magic, a caster of real spells and, consequently, a baneful influence. It is an odd stance for a man with a bent for soft-core spell casting himself. Prior to the 2020 election, Ripperger recommended two prayers for “breaking oppression and sending evil back before the election is called.” Continue Reading