St Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria; Confessor and Doctor of the Church

The story of St. Athanasius is instructive in many areas, an important one for those seeking to understand the warp and weave of life in the Church as well as the mystery of the Church, in its shadows and light.

As the Universalis entry for today says:

Athanasius's passion for the truth seems tactless to many of us today, to the point where some Catholic devotional works even express embarrassment over it. This is grotesque. Before we congratulate ourselves on being more gentle and civilised than Athanasius and his contemporaries, we should look at the lack of charity that characterizes academic controversies today (from string theory to global warming) and the way that some of the participants are willing to use any weapon that comes to hand, from legal persecution to accusations of madness to actual assault. The matters in dispute with the Arians were more important than any of these scientific questions. They were vital to the very nature of Christianity, and, as Cardinal Newman put it, the trouble was that at that time the laity tended to be champions of orthodoxy while their bishops (seduced by closeness to imperial power) tended not to be. The further trouble (adds Chadwick) is that the whole thing became tangled up with matters of power, organization and authority, and with cultural differences between East and West. Athanasius was accused of treason and murder, embezzlement and sacrilege. In the fight against him, any weapon would do.

Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, defender of orthodoxy against Arianism, was banished five times. These paragraphs are dense, but give a succinct summary.

Read the entire post at Amy Welborn's