In 1968, Pope Paul VI published Humanae vitae, the encyclical that reaffirmed the Catholic Church's continued opposition to the use of any form of artificial contraception. The author outlines the Church's position against artificial contraception as principally rooted in three biblical commandments.
The second volume of the Letters of Barsanuphius and John completes the collection of these monastic writings, which provided both spiritual and practical advice to a variety of sixth-century interlocutors from diverse walks of life. The two anchorites, having settled in an isolated location near Gaza, were in demand as trusted counselors, ......
Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria (412-444), is best known as a protagonist in the christological controversy of the second quarter of the fifth century. Readers may be surprised therefore to find such polemic absent from this early work on the twelve minor prophets of the Old Testament. Another possibly unexpected feature of this Alexandrian commentary ......
The book of Zechariah is ""the longest and most obscure"" of the Twelve Minor Prophets, Jerome remarked. That may have been the reason why in 386 he visited the Alexandrian scholar Didymus the Blind and requested a work on this prophet. Though long thought to be lost, the work was rediscovered in 1941 at Tura outside Cairo along with some other ......
Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe (ca. 467-532), is considered the greatest North African theologian after the time of St. Augustine. When Fulgentius was born, North Africa had been under the rule of Germanic Vandals for several decades. His family was repeatedly victimized by Vandal persecutions, and Fulgentius himself suffered persecution and exile. ......
In recent years historians and theologians have focused considerable attention on the church of late antiquity. The Constantinian revolution of the early fourth century produced changes that would affect profoundly and permanently the fabric of traditional Greco-Roman society and early Christian spiritual life. This volume--the third of the works ......
In 1953, the Fathers of the Church series published selected sermons of St. Peter Chrysologus (ca. 406-50), Archbishop of Ravenna and Doctor of the Church, thereby making thirty percent of his authentic sermons available to an English-speaking audience. With the publication of this volume all of Chrysologus's authentic sermons up to number 72 are ......
This volume is the third in the Fathers of the Church series to make available selected sermons of St. Peter Chrysologus (ca. 406-50), Archbishop of Ravenna and Doctor of the Church. With its publication, all of the authentic sermons of Chrysologus are now available in English. A gifted homilist, Chrysologus manifested great reverence for the ......
Friend of John Chrysostom and pupil of Diodore of Tarsus, the founder of the method of exegesis practiced in Antioch, Theodore was appointed bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia in 392. His pedigree thus seems impeccable, as was his early reputation as a commentator on the Bible, which earned him the sobriquet ""The Interpreter."" More than one modern ......
