Here’s a couple of more books I’ve been spending time with recently.

The Fathers, by Pope Benedict XVI. Every Wednesday, Pope Benedict gives a “General Audience,” at which he does some teaching. He spent most of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 on the lives and teaching of the Apostolic Fathers: that is, on the great teachers of the Church from the time just after the Apostles up until St. Augustine of Hippo. He covers 26 of the Fathers, including St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Origen, Tertullian, St. John Chrysostom, and of course Augustine himself.

As such, the book is similar in format to his The Apostles, which also started its life as a series of Wednesday talks; however, I enjoyed it considerably more. Note that I didn’t read it straight through; instead, I kept it in the backpack I take when I leave the house, and read it a chapter or two at a time. The only problem is, now I need to go look up the writings of each of these guys and get the whole story.

Highly recommended; and I love the painting of St. Jerome and St. Augustine on the cover. Carlo Crivelli rocks.

Benedict XVI: An Intimate Portrait, by Peter Seewald.
On two separate occasions, Seewald spent a period of two or three days closeted with the then Cardinal Ratzinger; the result of these extended interviews is captured in two remarkable and outstanding books, Salt of the Earth and God and the World, both I which I’ve devoured. When I saw this book at the bookstore last weekend, consequently, I snapped it up, and devoured it over the last several days. The bad news is, it’s not as good as the two books of interviews; which is to say that it’s merely good rather than excellent. And much of the purely biographical information is available in Cardinal Ratzinger’s own book, Milestones. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating portrait–and a portrait not only of our current Pope, but of his theological adversaries, like Hans Küng, and of Seewald himself. When Seewald was first assigned to interview Ratzinger (for an extended magazine article; the books came later) he was an atheist and a communist with no reason to say anything good about the man the German press had dubbed the “panzerkardinal”. By the time of the interview sessions for God and the World, Seewald had quietly become Catholic. It was interesting to read how it happened.