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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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After Long Silence

Studio Matters has been silent for several months. Permit me to say simply that this has been a hard season. Let me leave it at that. How to reboot? Where to start? Interests and concerns pile up, like snowpack layers on a mountainside. It seems only courteous to bore into the consolidated mass with optimism, something upbeat and smiling. But the ground under good cheer is unsteady. Allow me to forego the balancing act. If you would, let the words of Will Herberg set the tone. Continue Reading
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Trump, Thanksgiving, & the Puritan Mind

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
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On Agee, Debates, & Douthat

James Agee was a fierce critic. His movie reviews for Time and The Nation, written in the 1940s and early ‘50s, are among the best—no, they are the best—in the annals of American film criticism. W.H. Auden admitted to reading his reviews to spare himself having to go to the movies. Agee did not squander column space on productions he anticipated would be a waste of time. He knew the plot line, the habits of individual directors, the range of talent of the actors. Continue Reading

Hesitance Comes For The Archbishop

A tragic fault line runs through the approach of the American bishops to the 2016 election. On one side lies their traditional sympathy for immigration, extended now to embrace what amounts to open-borders and a reluctance to distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal ones. On the other is the indispensable Catholic opposition to abortion. However much buttressed by religious language and attachments, one is a historically conditioned political position. The second is bedrock, a fundamental moral position the Church cannot abandon without losing its soul. Continue Reading

A Catholic Case for Donald Trump

In my mail box this morning came a link to a new website: Catholics4Trump. At first I thought it was one of those online petitions that I dislike signing. But no. It is an initiative by Remnant columnist Chris Jackson to encourage Catholics to set aside personal distaste for Donald Trump and go vote for the man. The site appears to have sprung up two days ago. It is provisional; its reason for existing will end on Election Day. As of now it contains two brief essays, both posted on July 17th: “No Place to Escape To,” and “A Time for Choosing.” Continue Reading
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