Part Four of the Church Fathers series — The Great. It’s a title that has been applied to only a few rulers over the millennia, because so few are truly…well…great. Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, Bruce the Great (Springsteen’s not technically there yet, but give it time). It is not a title that the Catholic Church officially…

Part Three of the Church Fathers series — In the first two parts of this series, I profiled St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Jerome, and in those profiles I mentioned a third Church Father who lived at the same time and interacted with both of them in important ways. Of the three, he is the one you…

Part Two of the Church Fathers series — When we hear the word “saint,” most of us immediately picture some extremely holy figure of centuries past who lived a perfect life that we can’t even begin to match. After all, as Larry Darrell said in the film The Razor’s Edge, “it’s easy to be a holy man on…

Part One of the Church Fathers series — When I decided a few weeks back to start a series on the Church Fathers, I approached it with the same attitude I had the first time I played golf more than 40 years ago: how hard can it be? Had I bothered to recall the number of my clubs…

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…

A new series — Last week I completed a 13-part series, “Not Many Mighty,” which examined biblical characters we all know and pointed out the ways in which they were just as messed up at the rest of us. It was a fun exercise and received a positive response, even if none of the…