Category: Marriage
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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).…
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Two are Better than One
About the Author The world-weary author of the book of Ecclesiastes takes time in book 4, verses 9-12 to speak to the importance of friend and, perhaps, a spouse who is a support and a helper. Two are Better than One 9 Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their…
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Aristotle on the Good Wife
About the Author Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) was a Macedonian who went to Athens to study with the great philosopher Plato. Aristotle studied in Plato’s school, the Academy, until the death of his teacher. Aristotle might have been a natural choice to lead the Academy, but he seems to have been passed over, perhaps…
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Cardinal Jacques de Vitry on Superstitious Wedding Customs
About the Author Jacques de Vitry (1180 – 1240) was a French clergyman. Rising through the hierarchy of the Church, he was involved with the Albigensian crusade, which resulted in stamping out the heresy of the Albigensians in France. The Albigensians, or Cathars, adopted a view similar to that of the Manichees of Saint Augustine’s…
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Re-Creation In The Byzantine Rite Of Crowning: A Reflection On The ‘Baptism’ Of Marriage
About the Author Quinton Peralta is a Byzantine Catholic residing in Toronto, Canada. He is a current doctoral student in the Political Science Department of the University of Toronto. His present work focuses largely on the virtue of moderation and its connection to personal and political identity formation, though his interests span widely in the…
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The Usurer’s Marriage
About the Author Stephen of Bourbon (1180 – 1261) was a Dominican friar living and working in modern France. The Dominicans were known as the order of preachers, and Stephen moved around modern France preaching to the people. He also worked as an inquisitor. As he went, he gathered stories, weaving them into his sermons.…
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What is a Man? What is a Woman?
About the Author Dr. Leon Podles is the husband of Mary Elizabeth Smith and by her is the father of six and the grandfather of eight. He has written two books on masculinity, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity and Losing the Good Portion: Why Men are Alienated from Christianity. He is a board member of www.bishop-accountability.org and wrote Sacrilege:…