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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Fragments On A Theme

The seventieth anniversary issue (November, 2015) of Commentary was dedicated to a symposium on “The Jewish Future.” Seventy Jewish writers and scholars responded to John Podhoretz’ request to answer the question: What will be the condition of the Jewish community fifty years from now? The tenor of responses range from the exhilarating to the unsettling. […]

Use & Abuse of Language

It is a short walk between linguistic priggery and the verbal bows and scrapes expected of us in talking about the great and the good. That thought nagged at me some months back at a symposium on “Freedom of Religion in the Age of Pope Francis.” To kick-start discussion, panelists were asked to say two […]

Language Most Foul

Vulgarity, too, is in the eye of the beholder. Oscar Wilde acknowledged as much when he remarked: “Vulgar behavior is the behavior of other people.” Wilde’s admonition is worth keeping in mind—a mortification-in-waiting. As we have been told, God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. But while we keep an obliging eye […]

Musical Life of English Catholics

If you are in or near Manhattan this coming Friday, May 27, you might take pleasure in this lovely program at St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets. Samuel Schmitt’s lecture, accompanied with live musical examples by early music specialists Charles Weaver, and Grant and Priscilla Herreid, promises to be wonderful. […]

Discerning the Will of God?

Are you never even a bit uncomfortable when someone claims to have discerned God’s will in this or that decision of their own? I certainly am. It is one thing to pray for discernment, but quite something else to announce being in receipt of it. When anyone tells me that, after much prayer, they have […]

Francis & His “New Europeans”

Coverage of Pope Francis by the mainstream Catholic press is barely worth reading. It confuses the papacy—most especially, this particular pontificate—with the Church itself. Scrap the dominant Catholic punditry. Ignore anodyne broadcasts from the Vatican Press Office. Get your goods from somewhere off the ghetto newsstand. Go some place where insight into the character of […]

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