Our Sunday Visitor has once again put together a book containing Pope Benedict XVI’s Wednesday Audience catechesis. This time around we have the period of audiences that dealt with the Apostolic Fathers up to St. Augustine. Via the media we get bits and pieces of his catechesis and it is so nice to hava a volume containing the full text with a good translation. The Pope covers the Fathers in his wonderful style that is not just biography but a look at their lives and their importance and contributions they made to the Church. He writes about all of them as if he personally knew them and really gets to the heart of who they were along with examining their writings. It really is amazing how much information he is able to pass along in a Wednesday Audience. Of course some of the Fathers were covered in multiple Audiences. It is no surprise that the last chapter on St. Augustine is the longest considering that Pope Benedict is a scholar of this saint. Considering this saints contributions it is not just scholars bias and I so enjoyed the insights the Pope had into St. Augustine. But really the same goes for all of the Fathers he covered including some of the lesser known ones. His coverage of Tertullian and Origen were especially interesting and he addressed their major contributions while also going into where they went wrong.
But really when it comes to any book or compilation of writing from Pope Benedict you really don’t need a review, just a pointer that it is available so that you can get it.
This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Fathers.
3 comments
I’ve enjoyed these catecheses. The edition put out by Ignatius is much better. OSV’s edition is edited in an odd way, and some of the text is incomplete.
Beat me to it, Carlos. I was going to mention the Ignatius Press edition, and it’s on sale right now, too.
Well said, Carlos and Heather. I caught a lot of (Newark Airport) from fellow Catholics for a review of the Holy Father’s book on the Disciples which was very badly done by OSV. Although I was very clear that my only criticism was of OSV’s erratic editing (I love the Holy Father and his writing), one would have thought that I had accused the Holy Father of eating kittens!