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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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To Go A-Christianing

Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, while the Barbary corsairs ranged freely around the Mediterranean, these pirates also sailed by the dozen up the [English] Channel and even into the Thames estuary, plundering local fishing and coastal towns. . . . The Algerians were said to have taken no fewer than 353 British ships between 1672 and 1682, which would mean that they were still picking up between 290 and 430 new British slaves every year.
—Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters  Historical truths become casualties of preferred narratives in the present. Continue Reading

Columbus’ Day

Christopher Columbus is the patron saint of everyone who misses the turnoff and winds up in Cleveland. —Anonymous
The finest way to spend Columbus Day weekend is to put down whatever else you are doing and sit awhile with Samuel Eliot Morison’s Christopher Columbus, Mariner. It is the popular version of his magisterial two-volume Admiral of the Ocean Sea, which won a 1942 Pulitzer. America’s pre-eminent naval historian, Morison was a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserves, a seaman himself. During World War II, he saw active duty aboard twelve battle ships, reaching the rank of Rear Admiral by the time he retired in 1951. Continue Reading

New Evangelism?

Christian mission is not to preach Christ, but to be Christians in life. —Fr. Alexander Schmemann The new evangelization is hardly different from the old. It resides, as it has from the first century, in the lived witness of individuals to a risen Lord—to the sacramental character of the world, of time itself, and of each other’s place in it. It inhabits right relations between persons. And it endures in confession of inexhaustible sorrow over failure in those relations. For generations in New York, the calling of the Church took up residence in its schools. Continue Reading

Letters From Ireland

Among letters responding to recent posts are two from Dublin. One is from a parish priest uneasy with Rome’s Disneyfied wedding fest and its predictable press response. One of the uncountable shepherds of a stumbling contemporary flock, he writes to say:
The last two weddings I had were of couples with a child – and the vast majority now cohabit before their nuptials. The apparent attempt to spin this with details released to the press was puerile and offensive —not to mind a breach of confidentiality of those concerned.
Continue Reading

Weddings, Papal And Otherwise

Would Lena Marie and Walter still be together if they had been married by the pope? Lena was the first of my old high school friends to marry. From wedding march to wedding cake, the nuptials were grand. Preliminaries, too, were imposing—the showers, the parties, the trousseau. Yes, a trousseau! A chest of linens with trim crocheted and tatted by Aunt Philomena, nightgowns hand-smocked and embroidered by Cousin Lucy back in La Spezia. Family silver. More. The ceremony was moving, the homily inspirational; cast and setting were as dazzling as solemnity permitted. Continue Reading
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