One thing for which we can be grateful to Pope Francis: His pontificate puts paid to the superstition that our popes are chosen by the Holy Spirit. That could only be believable if we are willing to say that the Spirit operates like a one-eyed Odin, setting his dogs loose at conclaves. On Rorate Caeli this morning is a pronunciamento by the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin. It had appeared in La Repubblica on November 16, after the atrocity in Paris. Continue Reading

Dalrymple on Francis

Maureen Mullarkey

November 9, 2015

We know Theodore Dalrymple as a contributing editor to City Journal and a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, which publishes the journal. So you might easily have missed his October 1st essay “A Bien Pensant Pope.” It did not appear as expected in City Journal but in the Online Library of Law & Liberty. It was Dalrymple’s clear-eyed response to Francis’ address to the United States Congress. Herewith:

The Pope’s recent address to a joint session of Congress was greeted ecstatically, though (or perhaps because) it was notable mainly for its secular rather than for its religious pieties.

Note to Readers

Maureen Mullarkey

November 4, 2015

My blog is back home where it was before it migrated to FT’s server. Some cryptic stuff under the hood is still being tweaked. But there is enough in place to get going. But first, a clarifying word or two. The blog began in 2009 with the name Studio Matters. That is why Gustave Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio occupies the header. Courbet’s full title is too sententious for general use: A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase of My Artistic and Moral Life. Continue Reading

Notes On A Road Show

Maureen Mullarkey

September 29, 2015

The road show is over. The spectacle flamed up and subsided, a Roman candle of demonic sanctimony. Think of it as pre-game warm-up for the main event: the global climate summit in Paris, November 30 to December 11. The Vatican is partnering with the Obama administration, at the U.N. and later in Paris, in magnifying state control over a free society and tightening the screws on the developed world. This, in the name of saving the planet from the production and growth of those very means by which the poor can raise themselves out of poverty. Continue Reading

Bruce Dorfman, Artist & Mentor

Maureen Mullarkey

September 19, 2015

An artist who seeks subject matter is like a person who can’t get up in the morning until he understands the purpose of life. Fairfield Porter

Porter could easily have said the same about segments of art’s audience. There lingers a tired complaint that unless some aspect of the human condition presents itself—some scene, narrative, or vignette—an artwork appears empty, dehumanized, self-absorbed. Among this species of beholders, interest is tethered to subject matter. The art of a work is little more than a carrier for the anecdotal burden of the piece. Continue Reading

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After Paris

Dalrymple on Francis

Note to Readers

Notes On A Road Show

Bruce Dorfman, Artist & Mentor

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