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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Crackpots & Coprophiliacs

There is a crackpot quality to this pontificate. Nothing is gained by tripping over our own tongues trying to disguise, excuse, or justify it. The Church was healthier under Alexander VI. A sinner, for sure. Yet the Borgia pope was still an impressive man in many ways. The Church would be better served by a pope who had all his wits plus a mistress on the side than an erratic, mercy-mongering pretender to virtue. Public sins are easily recognized. It is the cloaked and buried ones that are dangerous. Continue Reading

Moral Cretins & Castro Mourners

Only moral cretins and hard left wingers—overlapping categories—grieve for the death of Fidel Castro. Pope Francis hurried to place himself among the mourners of a moral monster:
On receiving the sad news of the death of your dear brother His Excellency Mister Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, former president of the State Council and of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, I express my sentiments of sorrow to Your Excellency and other family members of the deceased dignitary, as well as to the people of this beloved nation.
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Danse Macabre, Then & Now

We are accustomed to thinking that verbal discourse (written or spoken) and visual communication are complementary. Word and image accompany each other, so we believe, in the same struggle to get to the truth of things. But maybe not. Could they be not only distinct but antagonistic ways of understanding? Or are images mere accessories to words, meaningless without verbal explanation?  What set me wondering was a flurry of unsmiling emails that came in response to the previous post. These were ones that said nothing at all about the written content but took exception—quite breathy in some instances—to the images. Continue Reading

Speak Nice to Power

  Jeb Bush, on MSNBC last night, spoke about Donald Trump’s rise as a presidential candidate. He laid it partly at the pope’s feet, as reported on Breitbart:
Bush also went on to blame the Catholic Church, saying, “the Pope intervening in American politics didn’t help.” “[The Pope] was talking about basically open borders at a time when the whole Trump phenomenon was to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. [The Pope] literally goes to the border for a massive mass,” Bush said. 
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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 things about Francis. Each was allotted a single yea and a single nay. A double yea might have been okay but, please, no double nays. Not even a stand-alone one. Continue Reading
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