I recently penned the last entry to a project, begun in 2014, to review all the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard in their publication order. This would seem an apt time to add an afterthought on the perennial question, the selfsame by which Alcuin admonished the monks of Lindisfarne, “What has Ingeld to do with Christ?”
In the war between the pagan Germans and the civilized Romans of Christendom, Robert E. Howard, author of the far-famed Conan of Cimmeria, was clearly on the side of the German barbarians, our enemies.
So why do we read him and love him?
The question is how can a Christian admire Robert E Howard’s Conan stories, which are tales of lurid violence and buccaneering most unchristian in tone and content?
My answer is that the Catholic Church is truly catholic.
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