Catholicism Archives - Dante Today

Pascale Marthine Tayou, Sisiphe remontant le tarmac (2013)

April 29, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Miserere—In vulgar Latin, it is the first word of Psalm 50: ‘Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam,’ used in the Catholic liturgy in funeral services, in the rites of Lent and the Holy Week, and generally in the orations of penitence. The penitential psalm is sung in the Comedy by the rows of the dead, in the second terrace of Ante-Purgatory, and the chant, is recited in alternate verses (‘singing the “Miserere” verse by verse’ [Purgatorio, Canto V, 24]), is interrupted by an exclamation of astonishment when the souls realize from his shadow that Dante is alive. In a rather different context, however, the expression ‘Miserere mei’ is cried out by Dante at the appearance of Virgil’s shadow in the forest (Inferno, Canto I, 65).”

Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

For more on the Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou, see Wikipedia.

Garry Wills, “The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden—and Abortion” (June 27, 2021)

June 29, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“What is the worst crime a society can commit? Some people (I among them) would say the Holocaust, the cold methodical murder of six million people just for being Jews.

“But some Catholics and evangelicals say they know of an even greater crime — the deliberate killing of untold millions of unborn babies by abortion. They have determined that a fetus is a person and abortion is therefore murder. This is a crime of such magnitude that some Catholic bishops are trying to deny the reception of Holy Communion by the president of the United States for not working to prevent it.

“No one told Dante that this was the worst crime, or he would have put abortionists, not Judas, in the deepest frozen depths of his Inferno. But in fact he does not put abortionists anywhere in the eight fiery tiers above the deepest one of his Hell.” [. . .] –Garry Wills, “The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden—and Abortion,” New York Times (June 27, 2021)

Read the rest of Wills’s opinion piece at the New York Times.

See also this response to Wills’s essay in The National Review, which includes an extended discussion of Dante and his era.

Contributed by Hilary Barnes (Widener University)

Dinty W. Moore, To Hell With It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno (2021)

May 10, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Dante published his ambitious and unusual poem, Divine Comedy, more than seven hundred years ago. In the ensuing centuries countless retellings, innumerable adaptations, tens of thousands of fiery sermons from Catholic bishops and Baptist preachers, all those New Yorker cartoons, and masterpieces of European art have afforded Dante’s fictional apparition of hell unending attention and credibility. Dinty W. Moore did not buy in.

“Moore started questioning religion at a young age, quizzing the nuns in his Catholic school, and has been questioning it ever since. Yet after years of Catholic school, religious guilt, and persistent cultural conditioning, Moore still can’t shake the feelings of inadequacy, and asks: What would the world be like if eternal damnation was not hanging constantly over our sheepish heads? Why do we persist in believing a myth that merely makes us miserable? In To Hell with It, Moore reflects on and pokes fun at the over-seriousness of religion in various texts, combining narratives of his everyday life, reflections on his childhood, and religion’s influence on contemporary culture and society.” —University of Nebraska Press

“Into the Dark Woods”

April 17, 2021 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“This year I was drawn to Mark’s ‘certain young man’—the one who flees naked from the violence in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives (14:51-52), leaving behind his linen cloth. Scholars vehemently disagree about who this young man was. Many deduce that it’s the writer of Mark’s gospel inserting himself into the story. Others say he is reminiscent of King David fleeing from Absalom on the the Mount of Olives. Or that he foreshadows the ‘young man’ in a white robe who will meet the women at Jesus’ tomb. Whoever he was, in the midst of an encounter with violence, this “certain young man” lost what thin protection he had and fled into the night, into the selva oscura, as Dante calls it, those ‘dark woods.’ Toward what, we do not know. As the human soul matures, we are confronted with moments that force us to let go of yet another thin veil of self-delusion. The “right road,” the moral high ground, sinks into a thicket of gray.” [. . .] –Rose Marie Berger, SOJOURNERS, May, 2012.

“Naples Celebrates Dante With Giant Easter Egg”

April 11, 2021 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“Naples continues to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri, the Father of the Italian language, in its own unique way. After creating Dante figurines for Christmas cribs, the southern Italian city is now devoting an out-sized Easter tradition to the Supreme Poet, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Master chocolatiers at the historic Gay-Odin factory in Naples have created a two-metre high Easter egg decorated with a portrait of Dante along with some verses from The Divine Comedy. The mediaeval poet and philosopher is portrayed on the enormous egg – which boasts 300 kilos of chocolate – in his traditional red robes and laurel wreath, based on the fresco in the Duomo in Florence.” [. . .] —WantedInRome, March 21, 2021.

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