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Getting started with the Early Church Fathers

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A friend recently expressed interest in getting to know the Early Church Fathers so I said that I would put together a brief (hah!) list of resources.

I was first introduced to the Early Church Fathers by Marcellino D’Ambrosio while I was on a retreat in England. He regaled us with some of the many colourful stories from the Early Church, such as the election of St. Ambrose to Bishop of Milan. Since St. Ambrose will be my roommate’s Patron Saint when he’s received into the Church next year I’ll make sure I write about that sometime soon…

Audio Resources

This initial introduction to the Fathers by Dr. D’Ambrosio was later supplemented by the excellent lecture series given by Dr. Lawrence Feingold to the Association of Hebrew Catholics.  Dr. Feingold takes the listener through a tour of the Early Church, focussing upon the issues in that Church, such the call to martyrdom, as the relationship between faith and reason, and the Arian heresy.

Association of Hebrew Catholics

Over time, I have found several other excellent sources for lectures. The Institute of Catholic Culture has an entire section of their website dedicated to the the Early Church, with lectures concerning the Lives of the Apostolic Fathers, The Councils of the Early Church and the desert fathers.

Institute of Catholic Culture

Another excellent resource is one which I recently advertised, the St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology. The website has lot of talks available, including the lives of the Fathers and a short series on Patristics.

St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology

If you would like to get a deeper grounding in Christian history (which is, itself, the story of the Fathers), I highly recommend the extensive series of lectures by Fr. Michael Witt. If you get through the Early Church period, don’t worry! You don’t have to stop there since he also covers Church history up until the present day… 🙂

Mike Aquilina also now has a podcast.

So those are a number of audio resources, but what about books?

Websites

There are several websites which provide a handy concordance for the Fathers, such as ChurchFathers.org.

Books

Mike Aquilina has written a number of very accessible books on the subject and I would particularly recommend his book The Fathers of the Church as it gives a good, brief survey of the Patristic period. If you’re interested in the worship of the Early Church he also has a very readable book entitled The Mass of the Early Christians.

I know a lot of people were first introduced to Patristics through The Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett, which focusses just four Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus. Likewise, if you would like to focusses more in depth on specific Fathers, Dr. Howell has a great couple of books which focus on Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp.

Fathers of the ChurchMass of the Early ChristiansFour Witnesses

Clement  Ignatius aThe Fathers Know Best

A new excellent reference book came out recently from Jimmy Akin entitled The Fathers Know Best. It is a book which arranges the writings of the Church Fathers by topic. For example, have you ever wanted to know what the Fathers thought about contraception? Well, with Jimmy’s book you can just flip to that topic and read, in chronological order, extracts from the Fathers on that subject.

Ad Fontes!

Finally, I would invite anyone wishing to get to know the Fathers better to actually get down and read the works themselves. I have several works available on this website in my Patristics section, together with MP3 recordings of the text. If you want to see what the Fathers thought about the Gospel readings at Mass each week, I’d suggest consulting the Catena Aurea. For further reading, I would recommend the Ancient Christian Writers series. The translation is excellent and there are a good number of explanatory endnotes.

So there you go! Hopefully that wasn’t too overwhelming! Pick which way works best for you and get stuck in! Get to know your Christian family 🙂

TOT: Making Tough Decisions

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JamieTheology On Tap is an initiative in the Diocese and throughout the USA where young adults gather in a bar or restaurant to listen to a speaker, to fellowship with one another and grow in their faith.

Earlier in the month, I gave a talk at Theology On Tap about Sacred Scripture. The series continues, this time with the talk being given by Jamie Cleaton.

Jamie is a fellow resident of San Diego, where he lives with his wife and three children. Jamie has been a youth minister for four years. He has been involved with all kinds of youth events and he has been a professional speaker since 2008.

Here is the audio for his talk entitled “Making tough decisions: Listening to God’s voice as you make daily life decisions”:

Main Talk (Download)

Q&A (Download)

Catholic Dating: Analysis Paralysis

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This post will be a little longer than usual. Today I will be closing the series by offering some final thoughts on some of the issues I see within the Catholic dating world.

Why is it that there don’t seem to be many Catholic couples dating and, by extension, why is the number of couples receiving the Sacrament of Matrimony plummeting?

As I’ve mentioned before, there are many different, complicated explanations as to why this is so, but today I would like to focus on the subject of analysis paralysis, as well as our attitude towards dating and courtship.

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Catholic Dating: “Discernment”

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Before we get to the subject of today’s post, I wanted to say that I can tell from the site statistics and the conversations I’ve had over the last couple of weeks that a lot of people have been reading these posts. I would like to thank everyone for taking the time out to read this Englishman’s musings on a rather delicate subject.

Additionally, I would just like to encourage everyone to give their two cents in the Comment Box at the end of each article. You don’t have to use your real name or email address if you’d prefer to remain anonymous. It’s perfectly acceptable to submit comments under the name of “Balaam’s Donkey” or with an email address of papa_francis@gmail.com…

It was my hope that publishing this series would spark some much-needed open discussion among our community. I know that conversations certainly have been going on among different groups, but I’d invite everyone to make use of the Comment Box since, if you share your perspective here, you’ll get to enlighten the entire world (wide web)!

Benedict and iPad

“Hey guys, look! A new post at RestlessPilgrim.net!”

So, now that’s been said, let’s get underway with today’s subject. Today will be a short post about another potential cause for confusion in the Catholic dating scene and a reason why guys might sometimes refrain from asking out the lady folk. It is a uniquely Catholic issue, the question of “discernment”.

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The View From The Pew

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The homily given by the priest during the Catholic liturgy is incredibly important. Unfortunately, the homily is often one of the primary topics about which Catholics (and particularly former Catholics) complain.

“The ministry of the Word…among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place…is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture” 

– Dei Verbum, 24

Unfortunately, it is often said that the homily is often unintelligible, boring, uninspiring and unrelated to real life.

asleep

Our priests certainly have a challenging task assigned to them. They should therefore receive our support and constant prayers. We should listen carefully to each homily, attentive to what God wishes to teach us, each one of us, through His minister. When I returned to the Church, I was often humbled by listening to a homily and being shocked by the gold that was there for the taking, if only I had ears to hear.

However, in today’s post I would like to do something a little brave and suggest some practical ways in which the typical liturgical homily could be enhanced. I know I’m in a bit over my head here. I am not a priest, nor have I been trained in homiletics, but as a Catholic layman, over the course of my life thus far, I have heard over 2,000 homilies. So, for what it is worth, drawing upon my experiences from my side of the pulpit, here are my top ten suggestions for the preachers of the Word…

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Catholics Come Home: Part 3

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Over the last two days I have briefly shared a portion of my faith journey. During this retelling I have particularly focussed upon my ecclesiastical wanderings, mentioning some of the things which pushed me away from some congregations and drew me towards others.

As I mentioned in the initial post, this blog series was originally a talk I gave at my parish called “Catholics Come Home”. As part of my preparation I spent quite some time on the Internet reading the stories of those who had left the Catholic Church. It was a heartbreaking experience. A large number of the stories I read echoed my own. Many of the sentiments expressed were also very similar. It became clear that, more often than not, the reason someone leaves the Catholic Church is because of lack of pastoral care, rather than doctrine.

In the accounts I read, there were many complaints about the welcome experienced when attending a Catholic parish (or rather, the distinct absence thereof). Many stories were told of abysmal music and of incoherent, boring preaching. There were laments concerning the lack of community and the lack of ongoing Christian formation. There were also unfortunately quite a few incidents described where people felt poorly treated by priests, catechists and other parish staff. Careless words can cut extremely deep and have serious consequences..

leave church

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Catholics Come Home: Part 2

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Yesterday I began of my “Catholics Come Home” blog series. I spoke about my faith journey from childhood through to my university years. Today I’d like to pick up the story again…

The Wilderness Years: Suddenly Alone

The story ended yesterday with my final months at university. I was part of a strong community and I was growing in my faith. Things were good.

However, after university, things did not go so well. I moved to a new town for work and, although I did not move far away, I had virtually no contact with anyone from either the Chaplaincy or from Verbum Dei. In fact, during the months which followed, only one person took the time to reach out to me from my university years. I felt rather abandoned. It felt like I was out of sight, and therefore out of mind. Those months were particularly trying for me since, soon after moving to this new town, my employer went bankrupt, leaving me unemployed.

leave church

I did not fare any better in parish life. After experiencing the welcoming communities of Verbum Dei and my University Chaplaincy, I was reintroduced to the more typical Catholic parish life. Each Sunday I rose early and walked a long way through the cold to Mass.  Upon arrival, I was greeted by no one. The music was abysmal and the preaching was utterly uninspiring. Honestly, I felt I could have done a better job. There were no parish groups for me to join. There was nobody of my own age. There was no coffee after Mass and no real socializing of which to speak. I was just another anonymous parishioner who slipped in, heard Mass and then slipped back out. I had no personal contact at that parish whatsoever.

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