By Robert Royal, Editor-in-chief, The Catholic Thing - I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with pagans lately. Not the modern, self-indulgent, falsely idealistic, entitled, uninteresting kind all around us, conspicuously so at our universities. But the ancient – almost too interesting – stout seekers of the true and the good. Especially the Stoics, who influenced St. Paul and other early Christians, and – not incidentally – helped prepare the ground for the spread of Christianity among peoples living in great darkness, under bad rulers. Like us.