This weblog began life under the banner Studio Matters for good reason. So permit me, this once, to sidestep expected topics—the baleful doings of the papal court, of an unnerving pope, and all those signals of civilizational decay. Instead, let me invite you to an exhibition at George Billis Gallery, New York City. If you […]

Francis & Mirages of Fraternity, part 1

Maureen Mullarkey

January 8, 2019

Pope Francis' Christmas message, clotted with the word fraternity, was such a brew of pernicious banality that it is hard to know where to start.

St. Xavier’s: From the Waterfront Priest to the Dancing Priest

Maureen Mullarkey

December 19, 2018

There exists no sharper illustration of present-day enfeeblement of the Jesuit temper than the difference between the ministries of John Corridan, S.J., the “waterfront priest” of the 1940’s, and today’s Robert VerEecke, S.J., the “dancing priest.” Fr. Corridan earned a significant place in labor history. Fr. VerEecke earned removal from the Church of St. Francis […]

Priesthood: From Uncle Fultie to Uncle Ted

Maureen Mullarkey

December 6, 2018

This is no easy time for the priesthood. The culture that produced and celebrated Bing Crosby’s portrayal of Fr. Charles O’Malley in Going My Way (1944) and, two years later, The Bells of St. Mary is extinct. Decent, congenial “Fr. Chuck” was a blithe symbol of goodness, honor, and virtue that an entire nation could […]

Confusion of Tongues: Language of Sin vs Bureaucracy

Maureen Mullarkey

November 23, 2018

To religious minds, the language of sin, its vocabulary and syntax, cuts closer to the heart of things than its secular replacement: the language of bureaucracy. In a religious lexicon, the word sin describes violation of the inalienable rights of the God Who commands. Bureauspeak, by contrast, is a secular rhetorical practice adept at describing […]

McCarrick’s Seminarians

Maureen Mullarkey

November 5, 2018

Ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick interests me less than the seminarians who kept mum for so many years. The saga of this man is far larger than the story of one libertine prelate. The ugly dimensions of the scandal lie in the conspiracy of silence, a de facto collusion that permitted a known sexual predator—a sociopath—to rise […]