In his introduction to this commentary on the Rule of Benedict, Abbot Georg Holzherr offers this analogy: “The Rule is comparable to an old heavy red wine that is enjoyed in small sips. . . . Head and heart, soul and mind should taste the words of the Rule, just as the eye enjoys the color of the wine while tongue, nose, and mouth take in the delightful gift of God each in their own way.”In this new translation, based on the completely revised seventh edition of Die**Be...

Saint John Vianney is also known as the Cure of Ars. This simple man that became a priest in the small French town of Ars became world famous during his life. Bob and Penny Lord bring his life story to you in this ebook.

A fresh translation of St. Francis of Assisi's Admonitions along with brief reflections on those, supporting each of the admonitions with passages from other of St. Francis' extant writings and selections from early Franciscan biographies.

From the Council of Trent to Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio a new generation of Catholics is discovering the beauty, reverence, appropriateness, and efficacy of the Tridentine Mass. The Traditional Latin Mass, as the saying goes, is "the Mass the martyrs died for." It is also the Mass the faithful lived for and which gave life to them and to the Church itself. This small volume is designed to humbly guide you in an appreciation of the Traditional Latin Mass' beauties, coherence, logic, aesthe...

Originally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the postmortem continuity of monarch and monarchy, as epitomized by the statement, “The king is dead. Long live the king.” In The King’s Two Bodies, Ernst Kantorowicz traces the historical dilemma posed by the “King’s two bodies”—the body natural and the body politic—back to the Mi...

The genius of St. Thérèse's spirituality is the originality of her approach to God in confidence and love. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love. At a time when some were offering themselves as victims to God's justice in reparation, Thérèse chose instead to offer herself to God's mercy, to enable that infinite love welling up in God to overflow into her and extend that love, not justice, to others. This little book treats of a lo...

Anyone who has explored a great Romanesque church has been impressed, even awed, by the mighty stone foundations supporting the great central tower. As four pillars give a firm base to these soaring structures, so four ancient Rules stand beneath the foundations of Western monasticism, giving a structure on which later spiritual architects, Benedict among them, would build. In this book Terrence Kardong explores the lives and Rules of four of the earliest monastic writers-Basil, Pachomius,...

Guido Stucco holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Sait Louis University. He is currently working on a book documenting the developments in the doctrine of predestination, from the Council of Trent to the Jansenist controversy.

A Study of the problems of the early history of the Franciscan ORder by one of the most important scholars of the ORder, this book seeks to contribute to a stronger historical understanding of the work of St. Francis byu looking into the debates and theories surrounding the formation of the Order, and the transformation of the "original ideals of St. Francis."

The final volume in the Handbook for Liturgical Studies series, Volume V: Liturgical Time and Space contains the concluding material for an integral study of the liturgy. It opens with a preliminary notion of time and space, before discussing in detail three types of liturgical celebrations on which time and space have a direct and particular bearing. The first of these is the Liturgy of the Hours. This topic is developed in the light of the early Christian tradition unti...

The Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination. But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate? In the early centuries of Christianity, ordination was the process and the ceremony by which one moved to any new ministry (ordo) in the community. By this definition, women were in fact ordained into several ministries. A radical change in the definitio...

Private reflections of the Roman Catholic pope elevated to sainthood, collected from journals spanning from 1962 to 2003.As the head of the Roman Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II shaped his times in ways few other popes could claim. This powerful and now sainted leader made headlines by conferring with heads of state, inspiring and leading fellow Catholics and other Christians, and building the foundations for making Rome the head...