Toluu : The Way of the Fathers

The Way of the Fathers

Mike Aquilina's Blog

Kevin at Biblicalia has posted a very helpful overview of the Popular Patristics Series published by Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press. I like the series — and I love the price — though some (very few) volumes’ introductions are marred by an anti-Roman edge that’s unnecessary and counter-productive. (This problem does not affect much of the series, which includes the work of outstanding Catholic scholars, including Robert Louis Wilken and Father Brian Daley, S.J.) Kevin gives us a list of the works included in each volume and other useful details.

Pop Go the FathersToday

Bread, Circuses, and Other ConsolationsJanuary 4

Adrian Murdoch points us to online audio discussions of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. Well worth the time.

Boethius plays an important role in Adrian’s The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West.

Now That’s RichJanuary 3

Rich Leonardi reviews my Companion Guide to Pope Benedict’s ‘The Fathers’. He calls it…

a valuable resource that should help popularize the Holy Father’s recent cycle of catecheses on the Fathers of the Church. Mike Aquilina is an expert on this subject, and in the book’s introduction he explains who and what the Fathers are and why we ought to study them. He groups Pope Benedict’s addresses (or “audiences” as they are properly called) into six sessions, with one Father serving as the session “representative.” Within the sessions, which are linked to an era in Church history, each Father is given one or two pages, with a synopsis of the papal address, a list of its main points, and a series of questions for discussion and reflection. All in all, it is a pleasing, well-organized format. This companion guide should prove to be an excellent aid for group or individual study, and my men’s fellowship group will be using it later this year. Also worth noting is the beautiful cover design by Lindsey Luken — the book is more attractive than Our Sunday Visitor’s edition of Pope Benedict’

Resolve: Learn Greek in 2009January 2

I’m sorry to say I didn’t take my first stab at learning Greek till I was almost forty. Luckily, I’d had some pretty good schooling in the other dialect, Latin, so it was a relatively painless transition. Rod Whitacre made it so by leading me to some pretty good resources.

But I must say that I longed for a text that would treat Greek the way Sister Herberta treated Latin. She made it unforgettable, ineradicable in our memory. The trend these days, though, is away from form and drilling and toward immersion, which may work for many kids, but not so well for me.

How grateful I am, now, to lay hands on Ann F. Castro’s brand-new Greek For All Ages: An Introduction to New Testament Greek. It’s a clear, concisely written book that actually lays out the rules so that they’re easily committed to memory.