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Showing posts with the label Fathers

Comic book of St Augustine's Confessions

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A few years ago, a young man from Tolentino, Fabrizio Cotogno, wrote a comic book version of the life of St Augustine as recounted in the Confessions. See: Agostino l'uomo . Click on "pagine" to see the pages. It would be good to see this in English (with perhaps a couple of alterations to one or two pictures...)
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New translation of Ignatius and Polycarp

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St Ignatius of Antioch was martyred at Rome under the Emperor Trajan. His letters were therefore written between 98 and 117 AD. (If Eusebius was correct, he was martyred in 108 AD.) St Polycarp was martyred around 156 AD: as a boy, he knew St John, and in later life, he was an influence on St Irenaeus. Consequently these two Fathers form a most important witness to the faith and life of the Church in the immediate post-apostolic period. Kenneth J Howell, Director and Senior Fellow of the St John Institute of Catholic Thought , has made a fresh translation of the letters of St Ignatius and Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians , together with the later work The Martyrdom of Polycarp . A sensible and helpful note on the translation explains his interaction with existing translations and the occasional differences of interpretation. Throughout the text, there are notes on both the language and the interpretation, making this a most useful text for the student. Also of great value a...
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Catena Aurea from Baronius Press

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Baronius Press have published a newly typeset edition in four volumes of St Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea , as translated into English by the Venerable John Henry Newman. I was very excited to receive a copy of this recently. " Catena Aurea " means "golden chain" and the work consists of a running commentary on the four gospels, taken from the Fathers of the Church. It thus provides a sure guide to the spiritual sense of the gospels and the apostolic tradition in relation to their interpretation. The intrinsic quality of the work is remarkable: the theological genius of St Thomas Aquinas is applied to the selection of quotations from the Fathers, and summaries of their teaching. He was commissioned to compile the commentary by Pope Urban IV. There could scarcely be a better translator than Newman, a highly competent classicist in his own right, and a master of the use of the English language. In his preface to the 1841 edition, Newman wrote: [...] it is impossib...
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Biblia Clerus

Over the past few years, the Congregation for the Clergy has quietly worked to make available a large collection of texts . It is possible to obtain a CD with these texts on or to download the whole collection to your hard drive. The collection is updated from time to time and there is a tool to update the collection on your hard drive. The collection includes the bible, commentaries from the Fathers, various other patristic and spiritual texts, and various catechisms including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Catechism of St Pius X and the Baltimore Catechism. The Liturgical section has the Missal of 2002 and the Missal of 1957. These are useful since although the old Missal is available on pdf, this version is a little easier to navigate through and the text a little easier to grab. With the bible, there is a good tool provided in the "comment" button which changes the sidebar to give links from a chosen section to various pat...
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Hippolytus and Eucharistic Prayer II

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When I was a student in Rome, I remember going with a priest for Mass in one of the ancient Churches. The priest said that he was going to use Eucharistic Prayer II because it was the most ancient of all the prayers and was specifically Roman, composed by Hippolytus. This was the standard view at that time (early 1980s) but has since been called into question. A number of people have recently mentioned the matter to me and so here are a few notes for you. In the 19th century, a number of ancient texts were discovered that were similar to the "Apostolic Constitutions", (of which the first modern edition was published in 1563). Among these texts was a document which came to be referred to as the “Egyptian Church Order”. In addition, the Canons of Hippolytus and the Testamentum Domini were discovered. The scholarly consensus in the early 20th century on the dependence of these documents was that the “Egyptian Church Order” was in fact the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hipp...
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First four centuries - introduction

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At the Faith Winter Conference, I promised to post here a list of books that might be helpful for students wishing to become acquainted with the early Fathers of the Church and to learn something about the early Councils. It should first of all be said that there is an immense amount of information available and there is an increasing amount of good material on the internet. These are only given as a few examples to get you started. The Catholic Answers website has a good introductory article by Marcellino D'Ambrosio called Getting Started with the Fathers of the Church . The same author, at the Crossroads Initiative, has an Early Church Fathers Overview and a brief summary of the first seven Ecumenical Councils . The New Advent website has the text of the Catholic Encyclopaedia online, and some works of some of the Church Fathers - including many of the most important works. In some cases, scholarship has superseded the encyclopaedia, and the translations (made by non-Catholics)...
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Popular posts from this blog

Saint Gabriel

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The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
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Plenary indulgences not impossible

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions: The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence Pope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina . Norm 7 states: To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.” It is worth reading the other norms bec...
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Portiuncula indulgence tomorrow (and indulgences generally)

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Tomorrow, 2 August, you can gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions ( see below ) by visiting a parish Church and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . This is called the Portiuncula indulgence and goes back to St Francis of Assisi. Fr Z has the details . Don't forget that you can also gain a plenary indulgence by visiting a Church on the day of the titular feast, and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . I made a list of other indulgences: please see the post Plenary indulgences for particular days which has a link to the list. The post has some background information which you may find helpful since indulgences are not well understood today - which is not surprising since indulgences are not included in most Catholic education curricula, and most priests never preach about them. Therefore many Catholics are left with whatever silly, half-baked, ill-informed nonsense about indulgences happens to be current. If you want to understand the theology...
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Our Easter Faith: Not a Pious Crème Fraiche

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In public life, some basically well-meaning figures have the graciousness to wish us well at Easter and to recognise the importance of the Christian feast day. Perhaps they might assure us that their thoughts are with us at this time. That is kind of them and in Christian charity we should thank them for their kindness, but Easter should be a great deal more than that for us. We must believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, in the flesh, and lives for eternity. We cannot treat Easter as a jolly holiday that heralds spring, or the remembrance of a significant event from the past. It must change us today and every day, change who we are and what we do. The Christian faith cannot be a mild custard or blancmange of religiosity. (I am showing my age. Nowadays, I should say that it cannot be reduced to a pious crème fraiche .) We bow down and adore the King of Kings, risen from the tomb, who, “[…] continues for ever,...
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Blessing of the New Painting of St Bede at Clapham Park

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This morning, the parish priest at Clapham Park, Fr Marcus Holden, blessed a new picture of the parish's patron, Saint Bede, painted by James Tildsley. It is sited over a recently installed side altar near the rear of the Church. The altar itself was acquired from Antique Church Furnishings . The website gives the information that the altar was built and carved by a nun in a convent near Liverpool. It is a beautiful piece of work and it is always a joy when such works of art find a suitable and dignified home. The inscription on the gradine is AMANS AMATUS AMOR. The sellers translate this as “Loving is the object of love” which is a reasonable stab at “dynamic equivalence”. Today the parish's relic of St Bede was exposed for veneration in its distinctive brightly-coloured reliquary. After the blessing, there was High Mass with Fr Holden as celebrant, Fr Littleton deacon, and myself subdeacon. That gave me the enjoyable task of chant...
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