Let me tell you, please, about Bevan’s dog. The anecdote does service to the awkward truth that, often enough, peace has to be imposed. And maintained. It is a brief tale. Inelegant. Some might call it indelicate. But it has bearing, in the crooked way that analogies do, on political news. And on the manner […]

Mortality, Magic, & Chinese Virus

Maureen Mullarkey

April 12, 2020

Mortality was much on the mind of St. Augustine. In The City of God, he exhibits skepticism that a world thoroughly free of death-dealing plague could ever be possible. The tenor of this old quatrain has an Augustinian ring: Doctor, Doctor, will I die? Yes, my child, and so shall I. Like the original wording […]

Frank Sheed; Love of Enemies; the Death Penalty

Maureen Mullarkey

March 15, 2020

A sword lays buried within the mandate to love our enemies. Paul nodded to it in his letter to the Christian community in Rome. He quoted a passage from the wisdom literature familiar among Jews: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In […]

On Loving Popes & Other Strangers, part 2

Maureen Mullarkey

March 13, 2020

Declarations of love for everyone are a bluff. To love Everyman, an abstraction, is akin to loving no one. In our heart of hearts, we concede we cannot love anyone we do not know. Love of neighbor binds us in kindliness to certain others. First among them are individuals we live among. These are family, […]

On Loving Popes and Other Strangers, part 1

Maureen Mullarkey

March 6, 2020

This post will keep its titular promise. But first, a personal note. My blog has been silent for a while. Crisis in a family shutters engagement with the world outside. It blocks the view of everything foreign to the suffering of our beloveds. The news cycle evaporates; external claims on our attention shrivel. Neither national […]

Confession & Love of Neighbor: A Ramble

Maureen Mullarkey

December 1, 2019

My confession finished, I waited for my penance and the sweet sound of the ancient formula, “Ego te absolvo.” There was a brief silence on the other side of the screen. Then came: “Is that all?” It was a practical question, a commonplace prod to swing open some door I might I have left shut. […]