1. Aleteia: As Boko Haram’s reign of terror continues in Nigeria, the Christian faith persists
2. Atlantic: When Faith Comes Up, Students Avert Their Eyes
3. Public Discourse: Luma Simms reviews Mary Eberstadt’s new book on our cultural identity crisis
(More on Mary’s book here and here.)
4. After Decades-Long Immigration Fight, A Chicago-Area Family Says Goodbye To Its Matriarch
5.
"As a mom, I certainly understand what it feels like to have a life inside of me and to understand that it's a creation that was a special gift from God."@GovKristiNoem is South Dakota's first female governor. She tells @EWTNProLife how being pro-life is pro-woman. pic.twitter.com/CE6Cr81STT
— Catherine Hadro (@CatSzeltner) August 29, 2019
6. A list of “adoption influence blogs”
7. Michael Pakaluk writes about John Senior, an academic deeply influenced by John Henry Newman (Cardinal Newman will be canonized next month):
attend to the culture of the home. His key educational idea, his main improvement over anyone else, is the insight that students who arrive at college, having passed through our educational factories (the modern school), inevitably conditioned by technological society, will be harmed rather than formed by immediate specialist studies.
They arrive alienated from nature. They need space, and freedom, simply to discover in an unstructured way, and wonder at, what is real. In effect, they never were children. Their sensibility and imagination should be informed before they undertake a higher education that shapes only the intellect.
He speaks to fathers and mothers thus:
To conclude not so much with a proof of anything as an exhortation to experiment: Read, preferably aloud, the good English books from Mother Goose to the works of Jane Austen. There really is no need for reading lists; the surest sign of a classic is that everyone knows its name. And sing some songs from the golden treasury around the piano every night. Music really is the food of love, and music in the wide sense is a specific sign of the civilized human species. Steeped in the ordinary pot of the Christian imagination, we shall have learned to listen to that language by absorption, that mysterious language the Bridegroom speaks; and we shall begin to love one another as He loves us.
Newman would have recognized here a deeply kindred spirit.
The reading aloud bit reminds me of Meghan Cox Gurdon’s delightful Enchanted Hour.
8. AP: With a nudge from the young and sober, mocktails taking hold
(Hat tip: Jay Nordlinger on Twitter)
9. A competition — with a $2,500 award — “to encourage difficult conversations in good faith”
10. A poetry contest to be judged by Dana Gioia
The Trinity Forum also has Goia, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, speaking at the Press Club in D.C. next week.