GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

Rules for submission

• Marriage, Families & Spirituality (MFS) welcomes unsolicited contributions.
• Manuscripts submitted to MFS should not be under assessment by another journal at the same time.
• Major articles for publication will be refereed via peer review (see below). The final decision about inclusion rests with the editorial team.
• The editors reserve the right to make editorial changes in all articles, solicited or unsolicited, in the interests of clarity, brevity, or uniformity of style. Final versions will be sent to the author for review before publishing.
• Overall copyright is assigned to MFS.
• Articles may be submitted in English, German, French, or Italian.

Publication and Open Access

Since all articles will be published in Open Access, we require your express consent to do so. Accordingly, together with the first proof of your article which we will send you for verification, we will also send you a consent form, which you should complete, sign, and return to us.

Manuscript

Manuscripts should be between 4000 and 6000 words in length, excluding bibliography and

footnotes. Manuscripts should be submitted by email in Microsoft Word format. It is not necessary to send a printed version.

Summary

Articles should be accompanied by an abstract. An abstract is a comprehensive summary of the

essential contents of the article which enables readers quickly to survey the contents of an article. It should be 250-400 words in length. Abstracts should be submitted in the language of the article and will be translated into English.

Author Bio

Each manuscript should include a few lines indicating the author’s preferred name, title, present post, employer, most recent or major publications, and current projects.

Peer Review

We ask authors to provide several names of scholars who would be capable of assessing the

manuscript. The editors remain, of course, free to draw on the author’s suggestions or seek another scholar. A peer reviewer should have expertise that is specific to the manuscript or work in a field that is close in nature to the manuscript, and should have recently published in the area, i.e. within the last decade. See also our Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

Style

Headings

• Articles are normally divided into sections with headings for each section. These sections should be numbered and must be so if there are subsections.
• For numbered sections, each section receives a number, including the introduction and conclusion. Example: 1. Introduction; 2. Marriage in flux; 2.1. Social changes; 2.2. Theological developments; 3. Magisterial reactions; 3.1. John Paul II; 3.1.1. Audiences; 3.1.2. Encyclicals; 3.2 Benedict XIV; 3.3. Francis; 4. Conclusion.
• All headings are centered and placed in bold and italics.

Abbreviations

• Non-standard abbreviations should be spelled out at first use whenever possible.
• Avoid Latin expressions (ivi, viz.).
• References to the books of the Old and New Testament should be abbreviated (Mt 3:16).

Emphasis

• Italics alone should be used for emphasis (no bold or underline) and should be used sparingly.
• Words in a foreign language that are not names or titles should be placed in italics.

References to groups of people

• The language used should avoid formulations that are generally taken today to exclude groups of people. For example, in German, forms such as “Vertreter:innen” should be used rather than “Vertreter”. English articles should not use “man” or “mankind” when the reference is to humans or humanity, nor should “he” be used as a generic individual (“they” should be used instead). In the same way, references to specific communities should reflect that community’s preferred identification (“gay men” rather than “homosexuals”).

Quotations

• Quoted material should be included within double quotation marks (double inverted commas), and quotations of four lines or more should be set off as block quotations. However, block quotations should be used sparingly.

References

References in the article should normally be made via footnotes, with the full information at the first mention and a short form for subsequent references.

Specific texts, whether quoted or paraphrased, are referenced directly. If the reader is generally referred to the contents of a text, but these contents are not given, then “see” or the equivalent is used (the abbreviation cf. may be used in this case in languages other than English).

Abbreviations in notes

• Do not use ibid., idem., cit., op. cit, or the word passim.
• Do not use f. or ff. but instead give the full page references.

Specifics

Books or parts of books

• • The first mention of a work should include
    • The full name of the author, as they are normally published (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann, N.T. Wright, David Bentley Hart).
    • The publisher’s name and year of publication.
    • Full page reference (do not use f. or ff.).
  • Subsequent references to the same work should include
    • Author’s initials and last name
    • Short title
    • Page numbers
  • Examples
    • Darrin W. Snyder Belousek: Marriage, Scripture, and the Church: Theological Discernment on the Question of Same-Sex Union, Baylor Academic, 2021.
      • W. Snyder Belousek: Marriage, Scripture, and the Church, 23.
    • Nkelenge Hilaire Mitendo: “Valeur, signification et implementation d’Amoris Laetitia dans L’Église d’Afrique”, dans: Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi/Shaji George Kochuthara/David Dawson Vásquez (eds.): Thinking Globally and Responding Locally in the Church: Common Ground and Diversities in the Reception of Amoris laetitia, LIT, 2024, 88-110.
      • N.H. Mitendo: “Valeur, signification e implementation”, 93

Journal articles

References to articles in academic journals should include – beyond the full name of the author, the title, and the journal name – the volume and issue of the journal, the year, the page numbers, and the DOI reference if available.

Examples:

• • Michael G. Lawler/Todd A. Salzman, “Marrying Body and Theology: A Response to Thomas Finegan”, in: Irish Theological Quarterly 89/4 (2024), 320-339, https://doi.org/10.1177/00211400241279432.
  • M.G. Lawler/T.A. Salzman: “Marrying Body and Theology”, 322.

Vatican documents

Quotations from Vatican documents should use the translation published on the Vatican website unless there is good reason for using a different translation, which should then be noted.

For multiple mentions of magisterial documents, the first mention should include an abbreviation, and subsequent references should be indicated in the text with the abbreviation and paragraph number.

Examples:

• Francis: Amoris laetitia (AL), 19 March 2016, 232.
• (AL 233) in the text