Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5
Enjoyability: 5 of 5
I'm really learning to enjoy Mike Aquilina's writings, and I've yet to read anything of his that I don't like. He's very faithful, very thorough, and very consistent. His strong suit seems to be research and the faithful study of Catholic History, and that's just what this book is as well.
This time, the topic of study is the mass. What did the mass look like to christians of the first few centuries after Christ, and what was its structure like? What did those Christians believe about the mass? How was it perceived by the rest of the world?
These are all topics of this book, and it covers them quite fairly, including exerpts from some of the best historical sources on this topic. What surprised me, though, was that the book contains exerpts, not only from Catholic sources, revealing what the mass was really like, but also from pagan, heretical and secular sources, each attempting to paint the mass as what they wanted it to be. Heretics wanted the mass to be something they had thought up and designed, and the secular authorities wanted it to be an atrocity, so they'd have an excuse to arrest its adherents, who refused to pay worship to caesar. It's easy to see why these writings were condemned as incorrect by the church when they were written. Their motives are like glass.
At first, in fact, I was a bit taken aback by Mike's choice to include quotes from those sources; not really sure what he was planning or why, but he puts the quotes in their appropriate context, and that's enough for me. Far from being unfaithful to the church, the re-presenting of these quotes helps us to get into the minds of those roman empire folks and see just how they saw Christianity from the start.
Though I scratched my head once or twice, I really liked this book, and I would definitely read Mike's work again. He's a fine, faithful and competent author in his field, and I feel he's really helped my understanding of liturgical history.
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