I have not brought myself to pay this year’s dues on my long-term membership in AICA-USA, the United States section of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art. Founded in 1950 in Paris (hence the acronym), it presents its mission as “elevating the values of art criticism as a discipline, and acting on behalf of the physical and moral defense of works of art.” [Embalming criticism in an academic discipline sends cold steel through the heart of the kind of lively observations recorded by the Goncourt brothers. Continue Reading

Eucharistic Revival And A Ritz Cracker

Maureen Mullarkey

May 15, 2022

“Hello, sweetie. Can I have a Ritz cracker?” At last Monday’s noon Mass in a local Novus Ordo parish, the young woman ahead of me on line for Communion was carrying a toddler. The child clutched a Ritz cracker. The presiding priest, a baby-boomerish Dominican, dropped the host into the mother’s hand while chirping to the little one the banality above. What the mother thought of that, I do not know. But it made me flinch. Flannery O’Connor had words for this sort of thing: “Stupidity and vulgarity are harder to put up with than sin, harder on the nerves.” Continue Reading

Consecration Of Russia Served In A Whirlwind (part 1)

Maureen Mullarkey

April 13, 2022

On March 25th, Pope Francis formally consecrated “all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine” to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The declaration raised questions more urgent than technical ones about proper wording and protocols. At stake is the efficacy of politically tinged papal pronunciamentos and, with them, the integrity of ecclesiastical authority in the Catholic Church. First, some preliminaries. Catholics are not bound to believe in private revelations. The emotional sincerity of visionaries is not evidence of divine authorship of their visions. Continue Reading

Facing Or Masking Ourselves

Maureen Mullarkey

February 12, 2022

Here within the orbit of Manhattan, masks are not merely tolerated; they are embraced. Obedience to Covidian biopolitics elevated masking to a sacramental act. It has become the secular analogy to sprinkling holy water or making the sign of the cross. Merit accrues to a new ritual observance that effaces individual identity and desensitizes us to the complex role of faces in personal communication. This compulsive masking sharpens my memory of words that have stayed with me since girlhood: “By the time you are 40, you are responsible for your own face.” Continue Reading

Finger Food At The Lord’s Table: A Chicago Tale

Maureen Mullarkey

February 1, 2022

Finger food at the table of the Lord. That, apparantly, is the sum of the Eucharist in Cardinal Cupich’s bailiwick. His diktats targeting the Latin Mass were broadcast over Christmas. In his zeal to erase—by piecemeal where necessary— the ancient protocols, Cupich’s broadside included even the Canons Regular who run St. John Cantius Church in the Chicago Archdiocese. [The order’s founding Constitution commissions its priests to restore a sense of the sacred in solemn liturgies. Central to their apostolate is the Latin Mass and the treasury of Tridentine liturgies.] Continue Reading