Maureen Mullarkey is a painter who writes on art and culture. Her essays have appeared in various publications, among them: The Nation, Crisis, Commonweal, Hudson Review, Arts, The New Criterion, First Things, The Weekly Standard, and The Magazine Antiques. She was a columnist for The New York Sun.
She also keeps the weblog Studio Matters [www.studiomatters.com] She can be reached at [email protected] or via Twitter @mmletters.
Author: Maureen Mullarkey
The Amazon Synod and the Church as Laughingstock
The synod is done. But the mutant thing lives on in its final document, “Amazonia: New Ways for the Church and for a Holistic Ecology.” Prudence and discretion, rationality itself, are baffled by its opening hysteria. The Amazon rainforest … …
Amazonians: The Vatican’s Beloved Specimens, Preserved in Amber
It is considered insensitive, even Hobbesian, to use the word “primitive” in speaking of primordial cultures. Encyclopedia Britannica identifies the phrase primitive culture as belonging to “the lexicon of early anthropologists.” Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, father of cultural anthropology, wrote …
Note to Vatican Enviro-Boosters: The Amazon Is Pretty Awful
“Gatherers and hunters par excellence.” That phrase from the Amazon Synod’s solemn-sounding Instrumentum Laboris is hard to let go. Its glittering fatuity is the keynote of a Vatican syllabus for a theologized pre-industrial age in communion with “the identity of …
The End Time Is Ever With Us
I put aside the day’s news with one thought: the end times are always with us. We do not have to wait for their approach—not tomorrow, not next year, not some distant century. They abide with us. We are forever …
Hijacking Orlando
On the Monday after the Orlando bloodbath, I read in Crux Edward Beck’s scripted recollection of the homily he delivered in church the previous morning. The two did not quite square. Between the spoken address and the published account, something …
Francis Plays Pied Piper
Even before it became available on March 1, Loyola Press’s Dear Pope Francis was listed on Amazon as a #1 Best Seller in its category (Other Christian Denominations and Sects). Thirty letters from children to the pope are answered in …
The Incredible Shrinking Bishop Barron
I have never been more than an occasional viewer of Fr. Robert Barron’s Word on Fire chats. His recent televised interview with EWTN’s Catherine Szeltner put paid to whatever interest I had. Newly elevated to an auxiliary bishop in the …
Ominous Galumphing
Since early October, Catholics have peeked through the looking glass to see if the Jabberwock of doctrinal plasticity could be slain. It is a destabilizing place to be. Never in their lifetime have most Catholics been here before. We watched, …
A Difficult Feat (at the Roman Circus)
Hilary White —artist, journalist, and keeper of the weblog, Orwell’s Picnic emailed from Norcia to ask if I would contribute thoughts on the Synod to her new project on that topic. I really was not sure I had any thoughts. But her …
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 …
Read More