"I think that is because there is an aversion to looking too closely at the Fathers, for fear of what could be recognized therein."
I don't think that's what it is. Reading the Fathers is a particularly dangerous thing for Protestants to do if they want to remain Protestants, that's true. When some of them are introduced to the Fathers at seminary by a Protestant preacher, they read and pray and understand and many thereafter enter The Church. In that context they aren't afraid of the Fathers. But when the subject is presented to them as "Catholic", they immediately think "Roman Catholic Church" and that is the hated Whore of Babylon. Immediate rejection and attack. It is a situation for which both the Latin Church and the protestants are to blame. Rome spent centuries anathemizing anyone who wasn't in communion with the Pope of Rome, including other particular churches within The Church. It arrogated to itself the term "Catholic Church" and that worked so well that whenever the term is used in general parlance, everyone takes it to mean the Church of Rome. The Protestants, meanwhile, seem to have defined themselves at base by denying what they think of as being teachings of their bogeyman the Roman Catholic Church, no matter what the teaching is, simply because they think the teaching is quintessentially Roman when in fact it isn't.
Even here on FR, where there has been something of an orthodox witness for some years, most, but by no means all, Protestants still don't make any distinction between their bogeyman and the Pre-Schism Church. Its a real problem, S.
BWA HAHAHAHA
It's broadbrush, strawman arguments like this that keep me from even considering the arguments presented by lay Catholics and Orthodox such as yourself.
I have no problem reading and learning about the Church Fathers. It's their great-great-grandchildren that give me severe problems.