The essays in Augustine and Psychology, edited by Sandra Lee Dixon, John Doody, and Kim Paffenroth, relate St. Augustine to the modern theory and practice of psychology in several ways. The contributors analyze Augustine’s own examination of himself (and occasionally others) to see to what extent he himself was a “doctor” or practiced “therapy” in ways that we can recognize and appreciate; they find connections between his theories of memory and mind, and modern theories of the same; they ...

Reading Augustine presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars.Todd Breyfogle's On Creativity, Liberty, Love and the Beauty of the Law introduces readers to Augustine's understanding of law as an arena in which the possibilities of creative freedom are reconciled with the needs of natural and civil order. It places Augustine's conception of law in the broader mosaic of his ideas about how human beings are bo...

The study of Augustine's political teachings has suffered from a history of misreadings, both ancient and modern. It is only in recent years that the traditional lines of "Augustinian pessimism" have been opened to question. Scholars have begun to explore the broader lines of Augustine's political thought in his letters and sermons, and thus have been able to place his classic text, The City of God, in its proper context. The essays in this volume take stock of these recent develo...

The comprehensive introduction to Catholic moral theology by the leading theologian and author of The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics .In Introduction to Moral Theology, Father Romanus Cessario, O.P. presents and expounds on the basic and central elements of Catholic moral theology written in the light of Veritatis splendor. Since its publication in 2001, this fir...

"What makes this work so exciting is not simply its content . . . but its revolutionary challenge to . . . Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions." — NewsweekJohn Boswell's National Book Award–winning study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the early Christian West was a groundbreaking work that challenged preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members—among them priests, bishops, and even saints—when it ...

A true account of a turning point in medieval history that shaped the modern world, from "a superb storyteller" and the author of When Jesus Became God ( Los Angeles Times).Europe was in the long slumber of the Middle Ages, the Roman Empire was in tatters, and the Greek language was all but forgotten—until a group of twelfth-century scholars rediscovered and translated the works of Aristotle.The philosopher's ideas spread like wildfire acr...

'Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers.' VoltaireVoltaire was one of the first philosophers to be commercially successful internationally. Famous for his strong views on the importance of civil liberties, he was equally renowned for his wit. A prolific letter writer, he was also the author of over 2,000 books and pamphlets, including the novel Candide, which criticises and ridicules many of the events and philosophies of the tim...

During four years in session, Vatican Council II held television audiences rapt with its elegant, magnificently choreographed public ceremonies, while its debates generated front-page news on a near-weekly basis. By virtually any assessment, it was the most important religious event of the twentieth century, with repercussions that reached far beyond the Catholic church. Remarkably enough, this is the first book, solidly based on official documentation, to give a brief, readable account of...

What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it cannot be distinguished from the rule?It is to these questions that Agamben's new book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the fascinating and massive phenomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis. The book reconstructs in detail the life of the monks with their obsessive attention to temporal articul...

Since his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury and his return to academic life (Master of Magdalene College Cambridge) Rowan Williams has demonstrated a massive new surge of intellectual energy. In this new book he turns his attention to St Augustine.St Augustine not only shaped the development of Western theology, he also made a major contribution to political theory (City of God) and through his Confessions to the understanding of human psycho...

A general introduction to the theology of Pope Benedict XVI, including his approach to issues in moral and political theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, interpretations of the of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and the theology of history. Tracey Rowland also addresses the question of Pope Benedict's place in the constellation of contemporary Catholic theologians. It has become a commonplace observation that Pope Benedict has been influenced by the thought of St Augustine, in con...

Secular humanists and other progressives” have been predicting the demise of religion for the past 250 years. But they keep running into a problem: those who were supposed to be liberated by the secular gospel that God is Dead aren’t buying it. Except for some parts of western Europe and in countries culturally destroyed by Communism, secularization in the radical sense has not occurred.While it has not obliterated the religious impulse, however, the drive towards progressive irr...