Here is an online library of the Fathers:
ccel.org/fathers.html
I am not certain off the top of my head, but I shall endeavour to find out - the corpus of Patristic writings is massive (some 450 large volumes in the PL and PG the last time I checked, and those don’t include any of the later Fathers, and most have never been translated in to English: the “PL” is
Patrologia Latina, “PG” is
Graeca, meaning “Greek/Latin Patristics/Patrology”, “Greek/Latin Sayings of the Fathers”, or “Sayings of the Greek/Latin Fathers”). Such a volume of material is not easily searchable, I don’t own it all in print, the website doesn’t have a search functionality, and the concepts were rarely spoken of using modern theological terminology by many of the Fathers, except for those Fathers who invented the terminology (examples that are never used by the Fathers, or are used in a way alien to our understanding, include Trinity, Hypostasis, Ousia, Persona, Homoousios, Homoios, Homoiousios, and Substantia - elementary concepts necessary to Christianity itself - let alone Purgatory, Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity - so, one has to read “thematically”, per se, one can’t just search for a phrase in a database, as there was no standardized terminology). Also, make sure you note that some of the Fathers held many positions on many subjects, some of which are heretical (i.e. Origen’s subordinationist concept of the “Trinity”, Cyril’s strictly unitary conception of Christ which led to monophysitism): just because as Father said something, doesn’t make it necessarily true, or the fullest expression of that truth (i.e. Origen lived in a time before the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the full and true orthodox understanding of the Trinity were discovered).
So, if you wish, look through the library, and I will as well (as the subject is interesting to me, as well), but don’t expect it to be a quick, cut-and-dry procedure: even finding something as broad as the Father’s differing conceptions on the Incarnation of Christ is no small task.
I’m in central Ohio as well. Don’t leave the holy Mother Church for the anti-Western, anti-intellectual, hyper-mystical Orthodox tradition (which curses St Thomas Aquinas himself, the pillar and foundation of the reconciliation of faith and philosophy, religion and empirical truth, and the basis for retaining rational faith - as opposed to unsupported and blind faith - in the midst of modernity), not to mention its Islamic-influenced practice (and fear of any progress or change; that, the anti-Westernism, the anti-intellectualism, and the style and form of prayer, the self-hypnotic “hesychasm”, are those things most influenced by Islam, and the latter by Sufism, respectively) since the Great Schism: Orthodoxy claims to have not changed, but it has held the equivalent of ecumenical councils, even though they don’t call them ecumenical councils, like the Hesychast Councils, which have changed important doctrines and made them incompatible, such as the essence-energies distinction of Palamas (essentially duplicating the Trinity in order to legitimize the hallucinations of mystics practising the auto-suggestion Christian dhikr hesychasm) as the most egregious example.
The Orthodox also teach the perpetual virginity, the immaculate conception, and purgatory, although they don’t call them by the same names (i.e. aeiparthenos instead of “perpetual virginity”, and an undefined purgatory that nonetheless exists, as it’s believed that the soul undergoes a period of purification after death, etc.)
If you need the evidences (for that of Rome over the Orthodox), just ask. If the Roman Rite seems to be too liberal for you, or too untraditional, you can look at the Eastern Catholic Church, such as the Melkite Greek Catholic Church or the Maronite Church.
I left Orthodoxy as well (for many and more reasons) and have struggled with the seeming liberalism of the American hierarchy at times, as best exemplified in that compendium of heresy and
odium fidei, the New American Bible. Don’t leave the truth because some of it’s representatives are inadequate, sinful, rebellious, or untruthful. I don’t deny that the Orthodox have valid orders, and can be saved (if they think that they truly carry out the original mission of Christ, which the historical evidences militate against), but believe Orthodoxy, like young-earth creationism and fundamentalist Protestantism, to be death to the intellectual faculties, to reasoned and informed - as opposed to blind - faith, and to the philosophical and theological progress and deepening understanding of truly and uniquely Christian doctrine as espoused by all twenty-one ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church, and advancement of the spiritual life within defined bounds and dogma, and death to harmony with other intellectual activity. Catholicism is compatible with modern learning in other fields, philosophy, physics, biology, etc.; Orthodoxy is not.
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