Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

I wonder what the inspiration for the gargoyles are, as well as the stained glass windows. The Rose Window is utterly gorgeous. I hope that wasn't destroyed in the fire.

Aight, I got a question about written works of St. Augustine:

Would reading The Confessions and City of God be beneficial in understanding basic groundworks of the Catholic church?

Also, what would be the best English translations/edition for those two works?

While I can't answer the second question, I can very much say that both works are foundational to understanding Catholic doctrine, especially during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

That being said I will also point out that Saint Augustine's works, like those of the other Doctors of the Church, are one part of the whole. Saint Thomas Aquinas for instance is another important figure that helped shape Catholic doctrine.

Edited by raziel365 on Feb 14th 2024 at 8:11:15 AM

Ah yes, of course.

Thank God Aquinas wrote Compendium Theologiae, basically an official abridged version of his works, because there's no way I could ever read the entire Summa Theologica.

I kind of want to read his whole collection but I need to be in the right mood with a lot of time.

This is also a massive, daunting work ... but if you want to delve into Aquinas' more specifically apologetic thoughts, I'd recommend the Summa contra Gentiles.

Everybody says that Aquinas is too complex to be easily understood, but in fact the opposite is true—he's too simple. He takes nothing for granted, makes no prior lazy assumptions, and defines his terms in ways that ensure he & the reader aren't taking different things away from his arguments. Highly worthwhile.

If a Catholic priest were to set up, say, a shelter for sex trafficking victims, would he need to approach a bishop? And after that, is there a process that ends with having to consult the Pope over the idea of a shelter for sex trafficking victims?

I ask for a fiction book I'm writing, with my inspiration being one Cesare Lodeserto, who turned an old resort in the town of San Foca in southern Italy's Lecce province into a shelter for sex trafficking victims who came from Eastern Europe.

So, I've been reading A History of Western Thought: From Ancient Greece to the Twentieth Century by Gunnar Skirbekk and Nils Gilje, and currently finished chapter 6, "The Middle Ages".

And I must say, holy crap, while the book already made me realize that I was totally out of my depth about this area, chapter 6 made me really slap my forehead.

I...I actually thought St. Augustine and St. Aquinas were almost contemporaries, or at least had only around couple decades between them...not 4th and 13th century, respectively.

There was much more time between those two than between Augustine and Jesus of Nazareth.

You know, I have been watching the Chosen after putting it off for some time....

And I... I fucking love this show! And I don't feel ashamed to say it.

Easily the best story featuring Jesus I think I have ever seen. Period. It blows everything else out of the water. The series I liked before was Jesus of Nazareth from the 70s, and it's pretty good but... this just feels like the story I have always wanted and never got.

I just love watching it. And from what I can gather, non Catholics, non Christians, even atheists seem to like this show. And if it can hit everybody, is that not the goal in the end? To be accessible to anybody?

Edited by Patar136 on Mar 26th 2024 at 7:06:57 AM

Vatican is sending diplomats to Vietnam to (re)establish relations.

While the Vietnamese Communist Party has a strict but ambivalent attitude towards most religions, Vietnamese Christians do face some suspicion and hostilities from both the VCP and the general population stemming from their historical support for the French and American invaders as well as the Buddhist Crisis.

Started reading Confessions (or Confessiones, if you wanna get fancy) by St. Augustine.

...I think this is literally the first Catholics-related book I'm ever reading.