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An Update on the Church Fathers Series
My ambition outran my abilities
Two weeks ago, after finally wrapping up my Not Many Mighty series, I said that I was going to start a new series on the Church Fathers. It seemed like an interesting topic both from a writing and reading perspective, and I promised the first installment would appear on Wednesday, September 28th. What appeared on that date instead was “Five Myths About the Catholic Church,” and here’s why.
As the subtitle says, my ambition completely outran my abilities. First, there are more than 175 men designated as Church Fathers over a 600-year period, so choosing the right ones is a daunting and time-consuming task (I refuse to write a 175-part series just as firmly as you would refuse to read it). I want to highlight the ones you’ll get the most benefit from knowing about.
Second, even deciding where to start has been a challenge. Taking them chronologically seems an obvious route, but it’s a route that winds through some pretty obscure figures; I’d need to include several of them to get to full article length, and I’m not sure I want to do that. Still, they do build upon each other, so completely ignoring the timeline and jumping around randomly has drawbacks as well.
For a brief moment I considered abandoning the project entirely; it wouldn’t be the first…
