Author: Tradition Magazine
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Saint Paul Answers Questions on the Married Life
About the Author Saint Paul the Apostle (c. 5 – 64/5 AD) founded the church in the Greek city of Corinth around 51 AD. By around 56 AD, scholars believe, Saint Paul was getting word that the situation in Corinth had devolved. Some people were falling away. Some had started spouting heretical opinions. Sexual immorality…
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A Pact with the Devil and a Marriage
About the Author The Cistercian prior Caesarius of Heisterbach (1180 – 1240) was a famous author of the Middle Ages – so famous, in fact, that he had to scold his monks for stealing his drafts and publishing them to keep up with the demand for his work. Today we remember Caesarius chiefly for his…
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Unmarried Women and the Feast of Saint Catherine
About the Author Anonymous / folk tradition. Unmarried Women and the Feast of Saint Catherine Saint Catherine of Alexandria was martyred on November 25. Princess Catherine, so the story goes, had gone to the Roman Emperor Maxentius to plead with him to halt the persecution of Christians. Maxentius tried to change her mind, even offering…
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Homeschooling and Catholic Marriage
About the Author Bonnie Landry is a Catholic convert, wife and mama who lives in the little hamlet of Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island. She and her husband Albert have been raising and homeschooling their seven children since 1987. Bonnie hosts the podcast Make Joy Normal: cozy homeschooling; she covers topics that lend themselves to…
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Erasmus on Sexual Temptation
About the Author Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469 – 1536) was a Dutch humanist scholar of vast learning and expertise. As Europe was rocked by the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus became known as one of Church’s most subtle and conciliatory defenders. Erasmus’ writing output was vast, and he counted among his friends men like the English scholar…
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Plato on Sex and Immortality
About the Author The philosopher Aristocles, better known to us by his nickname Plato (428/7 – 348/7 BC) wrote many dialogues featuring his great teacher, Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC). Although Socrates was a real person, the words Plato puts in his mouth are often Plato’s own thoughts. In Plato’s Symposium, the fictional character Socrates…
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Saint Augustine on the Birds (and the Bees)
About the Author Saint Augustine, more fully introduced above, had interests beyond engaging with the Manichees as seen earlier. Augustine’s interests in philosophy were wide. Like his Platonist teachers, Augustine recognized nature as a hierarchical structure. In this passage from On Marriage and Concupiscence, Saint Augustine considers what we can learn from the fact that…
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On Loyalty in a Marriage
About the Author Around 1393 a man in Paris whom we remember only as the Goodman of Paris got married. We think he was in his sixties and his wife was in her twenties. The Goodman of Paris set out to tell his young wife what he thought a marriage should be by writing a…
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Saint Augustine on why Marriage is Good
About the Author Saint Augustine (354 – 430 AD) was slowly brought to Christianity via the philosophy of Platonism and the gnostic cult of the Manichees. He tells the whole story of his conversion with introspective honesty in his Confessions. Augustine’s search is a model for many Christians, as were his words, credo ut intelligam, I believe…
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Four Royal Weddings
About the Author Charles A. Coulombe is a historian and author who has written widely on Catholic and secular topics, whose 14 books and many articles range from monarchism to mythology to poetry to rum and well beyond. Recently Charles is the author of Blessed Charles of Austria: A Holy Emperor and His Legacy (TAN Books, 2020).…