A Few Good Links (vol 4)

I'll accept my co-blogger's contribution and continue numbering from his:

1. A list of the ten priciest cities in which to rent an apartment. I do not live in any of these (the median rent here is a much more "reasonable" $1093/month, which is still a rip-off), and I notice that (appallingly) many of them also make the top 10 list for cities in which it is better to rent than to buy. I hope I don't end up living in one of those places.
2. Fighting the good fight for purity.
3. It's been 45 years since Humanae Vitae. It was despised at the time, but that is how all prophets are treated, and this work was indeed were indeed prophetic.
4. Professor Peter Kreeft gave a talk at Steubenville on how to lose the culture war. He's given this basic talk before, though not from the "Screwtape" perspective (that I know of). Here's a summary.
5. More about the porn wars in the UK. That this is handed down by their national government suggests that subsidiary isn't being used: but the issue actually is big enough to deserve a national effort, there just needs to be a local effort to really make it work. And Prime Minister Cameron is actually fighting the good fight on this one.
6. Dr Scott Hahn has a truly epic home library.
7. I've heard people say that the doctrine of Hell is the most unpopular of all Christian doctrines, followed closely by Original Sin. Actually, the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God gives Hell a close running, since there are many who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. The Anglican cleric Desmond Tutu is apparently such a man.
8. On the topic of gays: it's worth looking at the Pope's remarks concerning gay clergy and "judging" homosexuals in their actual context. And, as Mr Ross Douthat puts it, we need mercy, but also discipline.
9. Popular truth and modernized morality can only get you so far. Or, as Chesterton quipped, a dead thing goes with the flow, but only a living thing can swim against the current.
10. Rebecca Hamilton explains why censoring internet comments on a blog which is meant to foster discussion is actually a good thing: "All I have to do to shut them [various trolls and internet ruffians] down and allow others to speak is delete their blasts of 20 hateful comments, or, as I often do, allow the most thoughtful of their blast of twenty comments through and delete the rest. If I didn’t, the nice people who enjoy this blog would end up leaving and all I would have left would be the trashy trolls and their hate-filled, bullying agenda."
11. Well, that's certainly one way to shut down a protest peacefully. Maybe there's something to that "turn the other cheek" business. God bless Governor McCrory.

That's it for now.