Veterans Day has lost its sting. The seismic shock of World War I reverberated through American art and culture in ways forgotten now. Yet every generation needs to stare into the chasm between the cataclysm’s ambition—”the War to end all wars”—and its harrowing reality. Forgetful people embrace the illusion that this time, this battlefield, this […]

Notes On Hell

Maureen Mullarkey

October 24, 2022

Dante, Hell’s topographer, imagined its location and architecture with such specificity that Botticelli could map it in painstaking detail two centuries later. By now, images that stirred Savonarola’s audience to fear of sin have dwindled to plot devices in pulp thrillers and horror movies. Of all impossible thoughts, Hell is the most unthinkable for us […]

Leonardo Boff’s Unseen Hand

Maureen Mullarkey

October 17, 2022

Leonardo Boff is Pope Francis’ unacknowledged point man on the environmental creed. His name and work were not mentioned anywhere in Laudato Sí, not even in the footnotes. The omission was no oversight. Boff works most effectively as the man behind the curtain. He is the wizard of liberation theology’s protective metamorphosis—chameleon-like—into climate justice. Forget […]

Thoughts This Yom Kippur

Maureen Mullarkey

October 4, 2022

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, began Tuesday, October 4, just before sundown and will last until nightfall this evening. This Day of Atonement is marked by fasting for twenty five hours, extended synagogue services, and penitential liturgies. It is a day to afflict the soul with recognition of one’s sins, with […]

Notes on “Padre Pio,” the Film

Maureen Mullarkey

September 27, 2022

Peter Bradshaw, chief film critic for The Guardian, viewed Padre Pio at its premier in the 2022 Venice International Film Festival. He is a perceptive writer. His review emphasizes two things. One, the film is not a biopic of Pio’s life, as many devotees of the saint expect. Pio/LeBeouf does not appear on screen that […]

When Shia Agonistes Forgot How to Breathe

Maureen Mullarkey

September 26, 2022

My essay on Shia LeBoeuf ‘s conversion in The Federalist avoided stressing the obvious: the Latin Mass has no cure for clinical narcissism. Or sociopathy. It did not seem necessary to press the point. But judging from responses, I was wrong. More than a few readers were anxious to view LeBoeuf—actor, performance artist, filmmaker—with sympathetic […]