Good fiction deals with powerful themes and does so by embedding them in the plot line and character arc—so the word becomes flesh. This is the power of great drama and fiction: that we get caught up in the story and the emotion opens our heart, and as our heart is opened so is our mind. Author Roger Thomas understands this and delivers powerfully and effectively in his heart-thumping, page-turning novel with strong Christian themes, “Under the Watchful Sky”… (essay by Dwight Longenecker)
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/12/under-the-watchful-sky-roger-thomas-dwight-longenecker.html

If propaganda is a reality devoid of facts, a convincing narration which bewitches our reason, well, the bard of the wonder of colonization was doubtless, Kipling, while it was Conrad who lifted the veil that covered the embarassing truth. He resisted the charm of the sirens’  songs of his age and in a voyage down…
— Read on etinkerbell.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/piercing-the-veil-of-hypocrisy/

No government has ever made itself permanently wealthy through the plunder of its people—which destroys not just the productive capacity of a country but also its moral foundations… (essay by Bradley Birzer)
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/12/edmund-burke-revolutionary-armies-taxes-bradley-birzer.html

No 16 of 16!

A week later, on yet another Sunday, his wife entered the house and predictable bedlam ensued. All the staff were gathered around the child, laughing and jabbering, and he could hear an occasional squeal of delight from the baby at the center of all the joyous noise. Unthinkingly he opened the door to his office and caught his first glimpse of this interloper who had ruined, by his count, sixteen of his last Sundays. He was a darling little thing. So little, in fact, that the Missionaries of Charity sisters had unintentionally been misfeeding him, assuming him much younger than he really was. By late April he was over five months old and surprisingly alert. Sharon noticed her husband at the door and beckoned him closer; he remained where he stood, ever ready to escape. “Joe, come on. Just hold him. Just for a second.” He slowly turned and went back into his office. He knew better than to fall into that trap! No, you never hold a baby—or a woman—unless you are serious. It’s just too hard to let them go once they are in your arms. He went back to his work, an endless pile of embassy memos and cables that rivaled the Augean stables for stench and uselessness
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/12/christmas-that-almost-was-joseph-mussomeli.html

Corrington sees Gnosticism in the scientism of the modern era. If metaxy represents the proper understanding of the place of man and the divine on earth, the Second Reality, which the Gnostic chooses over metaxy, is a distorted teleological worldview. Corrington submits that more would be known about modern Gnostic tendencies in the form of ideology if there were not a breakdown of the disciplines into such compartments as history, science, political science, theology, psychology, and so on.
— Read on allenmendenhallblog.com/2018/12/12/john-william-corrington-on-gnosticism-and-modern-thought/

I’m in need of a web person to manage a variety of websites and tasks, which requires knowledge in HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, and MySQL. Experience with WordPress is
— Read on tomwoods.com/im-hiring-part-time/

In March 1953, having served his sentence, Solzhenitsyn suffered the further torment of being diagnosed with what was believed to be terminal cancer. Faced with such suffering and the imminent prospect of death, he made a final embrace of Christianity, becoming a convert to Russian Orthodoxy, a decision which marked the most important pivotal point in his life. If he had died, he would have become one of those unrecognized millions of heroes of whom later generations would know nothing, another forgotten victim of twentieth century tyranny. As it was, he made a remarkable, some might say miraculous, recovery
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/12/solzhenitsyn-centenary-celebration-joseph-pearce.html

Throughout the first three seasons of the series, a number of broken people come and go. Karen Page, an aspiring journalist with all the baggage of a broken home, seems at first like a damsel in distress, but she reveals a developed sense of perseverance and intelligence beyond almost any other character in television. Foggy, though bumbling, always knows how to break the tension and bring all things back to perspective. Father Lantom, Matt’s confessor, stands by Matt no matter the cost. A man’s man, Lantom is a refreshingly honest priest—so rarely seen in Hollywood or on the news—who loves to drink and play pool. He’s known Matt since his childhood, raising him as a son in his orphanage. He knows exactly what Murdock does at night in the back alleys of Hell’s Kitchen and recognizes him for what he is—a saint and defender of the poor.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/birzer/the-brilliant-and-profoundly-catholic-daredevil/

Oxford is the creation of the Church, and her beauty witnesses to the excellence of religion.  The mark was put upon her once for all, wonderful city; and why should men seek to erase it?  There are other places aplenty where laboratories may be erected and secular science may flourish; why not leave this fair domicile amidst her wandering rivers and her girdle of hills, why not leave it as a home for those who choose to ‘flee for the presse’ and to set their hearts on God’s peace?  They should repay the world for all the world gave them.  The signature of the Church is legible enough on the houses and streets of Oxford, but when one turns to the men who dwell in them and walk among them, one feels something like a shock.  From the samec ause can effects so unequal flow?  Often I ask myself how it can be that dead stones and mortar should speak more eloquently of the divine presence that does the living face of man, made in the likeness of his Creator.  Pass by the secular scholars, the philologians [sic], scientists, historians, economists, and their kind.  But what of the men whose special calling it is to search out and proclaim the sacred revelation, whose profession is theChurch?  I should like to see Oxford still more under the domination of the priest.  He has made it; the city is his.  However it may be with the his own soul, he is the custodian of the ancient tradition of the spirit; he is the only security we have against the complete invasion of a devastating materialism.

–Paul Elmer More, PAGES FROM AN OXFORD DIARY, 1937