“The name of the early 1980s Minimal Electronic band Nine Circles originates from Dante’s ‘Nine Circles of Hell’.” —Wikipedia
Garry Wills, “The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden—and Abortion” (June 27, 2021)
“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)
Trump and his Enablers belong in Dante’s 9th Circle of Hell
“If Dante’s deepest circle of Hell did exist, it would be reserved for Trump and his enablers. It would be reserved for those who betrayed our country and this beautiful blue world for profit. It would be reserved for those who allowed a pandemic to take tens of thousands of lives and affect millions. It would be reserved for those who are silent about the bounties placed on our active duty troops’ heads, who disparage our military, intelligence agencies, our scientists, and health care professionals. It would be reserved for those who place all that we love in danger.
“It would be reserved for those who supposedly care for us, but expect silence about their support of Trump or of those who support him.
“The list of betrayals in my life is long and old.” […] –Onomastic, Daily Kos, September 15, 2020
France Štiglic’s The Ninth Circle (1960)
“After the qualification of the digitally restored Štiglic’s film The Valley of Peace (1956) for the 2016 Cannes Classics competition, the celebration of the 60th anniversary of its making, and its Cannes premiere, the same director’s film The Ninth Circle (1960) was the third work of his that was screened in Cannes (the first one had been the 1949 film On Our Own Land).” [. . .] —The Film New Europe Association, July 28, 2020
“The Ninth Circle of Hell – Dante and the DMV”
“Dante once wrote that Hell had nine circles within its depths. Dante’s Inferno is an amazing literary work that describes in great detail the horror of a place where no person wishes to go. Dante must have been inspired by a trip to the local DMV.
“You see, I recently journeyed into an inferno of abandoned hope, discomfort, and pain when I was forced to visit the Queens DMV. Like Dante, I encountered the nine circles of Hell, though not necessarily in the same order. But first, some backstory . . .” –Jason Greene, The Good Men Project, 2012
Read the full article here.
