Daniel B. Gallagher, Gambling with Gambling (2026)

“Ever since I started teaching the Divine Comedy years ago, I’ve been on the lookout for lacunae. Just when I think I’ve found one, it turns out Dante has covered it with incomparable sagesse.

Take gamblers. Why don’t we find them in Hell? Well, it depends on where we look.

There’s no specific infernal circle set aside for gamblers. That’s because they’re scattered throughout. And that, in turn, is because their true sin doesn’t lie in the wager, but in what prompts it, what feeds it, and what stems from it.

Dante has every base covered in the Comedy. No one rivals him in warning how a seemingly neutral act – an act the Catechism rightly characterizes as not in itself “contrary to justice” – can easily capitalize on our concupiscence and land us in the lowest circles of Hell. […]”  Daniel B. Gallagher, The Catholic Thing, June 6, 2026.