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Why dig up writings from the 5th century when you could go to liturgy in a church from the 5th century?

Very true. I just did that this morning. :-)

This is the part that is hard to convey, but one hopes comes across with time: Catholics excel at quoting the Fathers (and are often much better at it than we are), but we breathe them. You are right that scholasticism is precisely the point.

This does not mean that there isn't a place for deep and encyclopedic knowledge of the writings of the Fathers -- there is. But the kind of knowledge of the Fathers that matters is the knowledge that a spiritual father has, knowing how to apply the insights of the Fathers to one's salvation.

I am reminded of the story from the desert fathers in which a very learned man left the world and placed himself under an unlettered monk. When friends expressed surprise, he replied that this monk was fluent in a language of which he himself did not even know the alphabet...