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643a27a
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For Tolkien, Catholicism was not an opinion to which one subscribed but a reality to which one submitted. Quite simply, pseudo-psychology aside, Tolkien remained a Catholic for the simple if disarming reason that he believed Catholicism was true.
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catholicism
j-r-r-tolkien
tolkien
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Joseph Pearce |
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1eb2c79
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The dragon sickness is a euphemism for the bourgeois materialism which is rife in our consumerist culture. Smaug's fury at the loss of a single insignificant and practically useless trinket serves as a metaphor for modern man and his mania for possessing trash that he doesn't need.
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Joseph Pearce |
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df08739
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For Chesterton and Tolkien, the goodness, truth, and beauty of fairy stories are to be found in the way they judge the way things are from the perspective of the way things ought to be. The should judges the is. This is the way things ought to be. We do not condone selfishness merely because it is normal, nor should we. A healthy perspective always judges selfishness--most especially our own selfishness--from the perspective of selflessness..
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Joseph Pearce |
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21546ca
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When Belloc said that the Protestant Reformation was the shipwreck of Christendom, he was simply stating a historical fact, but it was controversial because history is political.
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Joseph Pearce |
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a6524bb
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He could not write what he wanted, but what he had to.
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Joseph Pearce |
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ab4cfe4
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every life should be a quest to achieve the goal of heaven through a growth in virtue, thereby attaining the power, through grace, to overcome the monsters and demons which seek to prevent the achievement of this paramount goal. It is in this way and with this understanding of the meaning and purpose of life that we are meant to read The Hobbit and it is in this way, and this way alone, that we find its deepest and most applicable meaning.
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Joseph Pearce |
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a5feaff
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And here is the paradox at the heart of the Christian life: The one who embraces suffering, who dies to himself in order to die for others, is actually happier than the one who shuns suffering and who puts himself above all else.
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Joseph Pearce |
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afa9716
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To me the art of the Counter Reformation was a pure joy and I loved the churches of Bernini and Borromini no less than the ancient basilicas. And this in turn led me to the literature of the Counter Reformation, and I came to know St Theresa and St John of the Cross, compared to whom even the greatest of non-Catholic religious writers seem pale and unreal.19
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Joseph Pearce |
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ba840d0
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My descent into delinquency was aided and abetted by the progressive philosophy adopted by the school. No effort was made to impose discipline, which resulted in the triumph of anarchy in the classroom and the survival of the fittest in the playground. In the former, the disruptive elements made it difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to teach and for students to learn. In the latter, the school bully and his coterie of friends ruled ..
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Joseph Pearce |
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4daffdb
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In the absence of virtue and wisdom, intelligence becomes a servant of evil.
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Joseph Pearce |
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9987989
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To go to seances with good intentions is like holding a smoking concert in a powder-magazine on behalf of an orphan asylum.'4
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Joseph Pearce |
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20ff7fa
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growing up is about growing in wisdom and virtue and learning to curtail our selfishness so that we can give ourselves more selflessly to others.
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Joseph Pearce |
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d03980a
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In reading Chesterton I was undermining my own most dearly held prejudices.
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Joseph Pearce |
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dcfd3e6
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if in order to live it is necessary not to live, then what's it all for?
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Joseph Pearce |
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539bb64
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As a champion of the Church Militant in a hostile secular society, Belloc would sometimes exhibit a siege mentality akin to the defiance of Pius IX.
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Joseph Pearce |
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382c019
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It just so happened that they agreed on politics and religion. It was precisely that agreement that has caused most observers to associate them with one another.
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Joseph Pearce |
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e2fbc11
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There was a Race Relations Act, supported by socialists and conservatives alike, which made the incitement of racial hatred a crime but there was no corresponding Class Relations Act making it illegal to incite class hatred.
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Joseph Pearce |
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771ee3c
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Que hariamos con dos millones (si los tuvieramos)>>, explica la diferencia entre los filantropos y los cristianos: <>
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Joseph Pearce |
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ee68f3b
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Our theological antennae attuned to the clue being offered, we begin to see that the whole of The Hobbit is a figurative account of Bilbo's baptism into the fullness of life. He had been "dead" when trying to preserve the life of creature comforts at Bag End, his home in the Shire, and needed to "die to himself," laying down his life self-sacrificially for others, which is the hallmark and meaning of love, in order to find the fullness of l..
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Joseph Pearce |
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adc2243
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Chesterton entiende perfectamente que en nuestra religion el Misterio esta indisolublemente unido a la Evidencia, y las respuestas eternas, a las exigencias mas apremiantes y actuales. Chesterton es el hombre que ha abierto las puertas de par en par, que ha enviado a un mundo palido y enfermo rios de poemas, de alegria, de simpatia noble, de humor radiante e imponente, sacando todo ello de las inagotables fuentes de la ortodoxia. Su marcha ..
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Joseph Pearce |
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c17840c
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The war against the dragon is not, therefore, a war against a physical monster, like a dinosaur, but a battle against the wickedness we encounter in our everyday lives. We all face our daily dragons and we must all defend ourselves from them and hopefully slay them. The sobering reality is that we must either fight the dragons that we encounter in life or become dragons ourselves. There is no "comfortable" alternative."
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Joseph Pearce |
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af1630a
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Although I had grown significantly, my spiritual growth was as imperceptible on a daily basis as is the physical growth of a child. I was aware, however, that my reception into the Catholic Church was absolutely necessary to my continued progress. My first confession had cleansed me of my sins, enabling me to move forward with a clean slate, and my regular reception of the Blessed Sacrament supplied the very bread of my life, nourishing me ..
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Joseph Pearce |
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e5725ab
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My life since my conversion has, therefore, been an ongoing act of atonement. In particular, I have sought to use the gifts that God has given me to glorify Him and to bring souls to Him, in contrast to the way that I had previously used those same gifts to glorify his enemies and to lead souls astray. This has been the rationale behind my vocation as a Catholic writer in the twenty-five years since my conversion. The
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Joseph Pearce |
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11dc684
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Hatred and bigotry, both of which are the bitter fruits of pride, are self-encapsulating prisons, locking the intellect within the constraining confines of the self-centered ego. There is no way out of this prison of pride without the key provided by God-given grace.
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Joseph Pearce |
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dd04063
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In short, and to put the matter bluntly, without the healing power of grace we are not be able to reason our way to God because we will lack the desire to engage with the reality beyond ourselves. In refusing this grace, we excommunicate ourselves from the world of objective reality, exorcising the power of reason instead of exercising it. In so doing, we condemn ourselves to life imprisonment, turning our very lives into a living death sen..
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Joseph Pearce |
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558f39b
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It is essentially self-centered. It is the erotic manifestation of the creed of Polonius, which had exerted such a disastrous influence on my own life: "This above all: To thine own self be true." It is a love that sacrifices the lover on the altar of self-worship and self-gratification. The love that is happy to break hearts and kill babies. It is, like all other manifestations of pride, an act of self-deification. In contrast to this fals..
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Joseph Pearce |
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463a6dc
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The two great commandments of Christ are that we love the Lord our God and that we love our neighbor. They are commandments that must be obeyed even if--especially if--the love is not accompanied by any positive feelings.
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Joseph Pearce |
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fec3922
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As the Greek and the Christian philosophers could have told me, love and reason are inseparable because goodness and truth are inseparable.
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Joseph Pearce |
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1fe50d8
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It has been said that most of us are given life in order to learn whereas a special few are given life in order to teach. How true this is. Leo has taught us so much. He has taught us to love more truly. He has taught us to give ourselves more fully. He has helped us to lay down our lives for those we love. Could he have given us any greater gift? How wicked is a world that shuns such gifts! How wicked that children with Down's syndrome are..
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Joseph Pearce |
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6641352
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Antes de llegar al catolicismo, pase por diferentes etapas de lo que fue una lucha larga y duradera. Es dificil explicar con detalle las distintas fases. Tras estudiar y reflexionar detenidamente, llegue a la conclusion de que los males que sufria Inglaterra, capitalismo, imperialismo brutal, industrialismo, fortunas ilicitas y destruccion de la familia eran consecuencia de que Inglaterra no fuera catolica. La tesis anglocatolica da por sup..
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Joseph Pearce |
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a7e0750
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Las nuevas religiones se adaptan al mundo nuevo en cierto modo; este es su defecto mas condenable...
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Joseph Pearce |
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69243d8
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I was still very much embroiled in the racist politics of the National Front, living a double-life in which I wrote hate-filled propaganda during the day and read the love-filled pages of Chesterton and Lewis at night. I was not aware of any contradiction, at least at first, and sought to bring the two warring viewpoints together by a process of Orwellian doublethink, which is defined in Nineteen Eighty-four as "the power of holding two con..
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Joseph Pearce |
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a1cabd7
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I learned from the recklessness of my youthful relationships that unbridled passion is destructive and brings neither happiness nor satisfaction. On the contrary, it brings suffering to all concerned. I also learned that the feelings that lead to such relationships have nothing whatever to do with love. Selfishness is never love.
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Joseph Pearce |
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0fa1995
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The mistakes of my youth have allowed me to see what true love is through the experience of its absence. They have allowed me to see that love is not a feeling but an action. It is the laying down of one's life for the beloved. It is not the laying down of someone else's life or body for our own gratification. Ultimately, as a Christian, I have come to see that love is not merely an action but a commandment. We are commanded to love the Lor..
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Joseph Pearce |
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74fec29
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Gandalf's very last words are unequivocal and could not be starker or plainer: "Be good, take care of yourselves--and DON'T LEAVE THE PATH!" Here we see Gandalf as the archetypal father-figure advising his children as they embark on a journey on which he cannot be present to watch over them that they should be good, be careful, and don't do anything stupid! The advice is, however, charged with Christian moral guidance, which the everyday la..
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Joseph Pearce |
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5f6bfda
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For the Christian, every man is homo viator, whose sole purpose (and soul's purpose) is to travel through the adventure of life with the goal of getting to heaven, his ultimate and only true home, facing many perils and temptations along the way. The enemy of homo viator is homo superbus (proud man), who refuses the self-sacrifice that the adventure of life demands and seeks to build a home for himself within his "self." Such a man becomes ..
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Joseph Pearce |
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6adfc1c
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There is, however, one other figurative representative of humanity in which we fail to recognize our own scornful and pitiful selves at our peril. That pathetic figure reflecting the readers back to themselves very uncomfortably is Gollum. Seldom or perhaps never in the field of human literature has the human soul in a state of addiction to sin been portrayed with such psychological realism and spiritual brilliance.
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Joseph Pearce |
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1ee6855
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Gollum is, however, a fully embodied image of the sin addict's soul. He brings to life with monstrous vigor the words of Christ that everyone who sins is a slave to sin10 and the teaching of St. Paul about the slavery of sin.11 As a mirror of scorn and pity toward man, he is so powerful that we only have to visualize Gollum as the shriveled wreck of our sin-enslaved soul to shiver in horror and disgust at the vision being presented to us. I..
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Joseph Pearce |
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3563756
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but in later life Chesterton made no secret of the fact that he didn't care for institutionalised learning, describing education as 'being instructed by somebody I did not know about something I did not want to know'.
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Joseph Pearce |
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5b9f3c7
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As the Son rose on Christian civilization, the Blessed Virgin emerged as the mother of poetry as she is the Mother of God in the magnificence of the Magnificat, and St. John, her divinely appointed son, is revealed as the progenitor of Christian metaphysical poetry in the opening lines of his Gospel and in the mystical majesty of his apocalyptic vision.
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Joseph Pearce |
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a5bfd63
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At the Battle of Five Armies, as it became known, the men of the Lake fight with long swords whereas the goblins wield scimitars. This places the battle symbolically as a clash between Christendom and the Infidel, the forces of goodness wielding the broad swords of the Christian crusaders whilst the forces of darkness fight with the curved swords of Islam. The same symbolism is employed in The Lord of the Rings, in which orcs are armed with..
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Joseph Pearce |
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f872502
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In this embrace of suffering, even unto death, Bilbo is encapsulating the whole idea of life being a cross that we are called to carry willingly and indeed enthusiastically. Life is not about the pursuit of creature comforts and taking the paths of least resistance. It is about Love, which can be defined as willingly laying down our lives for others.
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Joseph Pearce |
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0762979
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Those who are open and alive, guided by the light of humility, will be blessed with the spiritual poverty with which they will inherit the kingdom of heaven; those who are blinded by the darkness of pride will be cursed with the material wealth with which they will purchase their ticket to hell. Such an understanding of reality, common to the elves of Rivendell and the Franciscans of Assisi, animates the whole moral atmosphere and literary ..
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Joseph Pearce |
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742601c
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After we have made the comparison between the malicious and destructive "cleverness" of the goblins and the gentle and genteel simplicity of the hobbits, we will perceive that the conflict in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings between those who serve the Shadow and those who walk in the Light, between trolls, goblins, and dragons on the one side, and hobbits, dwarves, and elves on the other, is a battle between two civilizations, the cult..
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Joseph Pearce |