We woke up last Thursday in a different country from the one we knew the morning before. A line had been crossed, one that we hardly realized was there. And if we did, we tried not to see it. Now there is no looking away. Charlie Kirk’s murder is, indeed, a turning point. But toward what does it point? Gunned down on the threshold of the twenty fourth anniversary of 9/11, Charlie Kirk died because he addressed the Left as if they could hear and be reasoned with. Continue Reading

Mixed Race

Maureen Mullarkey

August 10, 2025

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” If George Orwell had seen ahead to today’s scramble to make black—but not white—a proper noun when referring to racial groups, he might have cited capitalization, too, as a corruptor of thought. Jennifer Harvey, evangelist for the anti-racist gospel of Ibram X Kendi, never capitalizes white but always capitalizes Black. She explains why in the introduction to Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America (2020), her child-raising manual for white parents:

This may seem to be either an unfair, or at least a grammatically inappropriate nonparallel use of racial terms.

The Rainbow, LBGTQ Catechesis, & Queering the City

Maureen Mullarkey

July 22, 2025

Graphic design is a silent but powerful language. Instantaneously recognized, a single graphic is easily digestible. It serves as a branding device for more than your afternoon cuppa at Starbucks or a Ralph Lauren sport shirt. Applied to an ideology and a movement, it simplifies everything it stands for. It leapfrogs over complexities, contradictions, and muffles the noise of rational argument. Most significantly, it conveys an identity and, with that, a corresponding ethos. Under Constantine, the Chi-Ro—standardized and emblazoned on the official banner of the Roman Empire—was disseminated throughout the known world as understood by Greeks and Romans at the time. Continue Reading

Jubilee 2025: Luce, Tokidoki, & Brand Management

Maureen Mullarkey

February 2, 2025

Archbishop Fisichella, lead director of Jubilee 2025, chose not to launch Luce, the Vatican’s first-ever mascot, from the Vatican. Instead, he unveiled it at Lucca Comics & Games, an annual comic book convention in Lucca. Dedicated to comics, video games, animation, science fiction and fantasy novels, this is the largest comics festival in Italy, and the second largest in the world. A three-storey high inflatable Luce floated over the exhibition space set aside for Luce and Friends. Catholic media underplayed Fisichella’s move for good reason. Continue Reading

Trump, Thanksgiving, & the Puritan Mind

Maureen Mullarkey

December 1, 2024

Politics is outside the bailiwick of Studio Matters. Yet election of the once-and-future President Trump was so remarkable, so exhilarating in its implications, celebration is mandatory. There should be dancing in the streets. Fireworks, too . But all I have is words. Permit me, please, just a few of them. Just this once. It was June, 2015, when Donald Trump came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his run for the presidency. I scoffed at the news. Continue Reading