Getting ready to be born–and to give birth
I read today Augustine sermon (Sermon 216; PL 38, 1076-1082) for the competentes, that is, the people who had enrolled their names for baptism during the Easter Vigil. Some things that struck me:
Early on, he calls them contirones mei, my fellow recruits, a nice touch, found elsewhere when he says that he and the members of his congregation are classmates in the same school whose teacher is Christ. A first metaphor for them to consider:
At the auction, the market place, of faith the kingdom of heaven is offered on sale to you. Take a look at it, and put together the resources of your conscience, gather the treasures of your hearts. And yet, you are buying without cost if you recognize the free grace that is being offered to you. You spend nothing, and yet you acquire something great. Don’t hold yourselves cheap if the Creator of all things, your Creator, considers you so dear that everyday he pours out the most precious blood of his own Son for you. You will not be cheap if you distinguish the precious from the cheap, if you serve the Creator, not the creature.
At a later point, he contrasts the two cities:
Take on the world, be reshaped for God. May your Babylonian captivity now disgust you. Look: there is Jerusalem, that heavenly city, cheerfully coming to meet you on the way, and begging you to choose life and to desire to see good days, days like none you have ever had nor ever will have in this world.
The maternal image is picked up still later, but with different resonance:
Hope in God, the entire group of the new people, the people who are being born, the people whom the Lord has made. Strive to be born in healthy condition lest you be aborted and die. See the womb of Mother Church; see how she groans in her labor so that she may give birth to you, bring you out into the light of faith. Don’t by your impatience disturb her maternal womb and narrow the gates through which you must pass. O people, who are being created, praise your God; praise, you who are being created, praise your Lord…. As it is written: Make your father glad by your progress in wisdom, and don’t by your failure sadden your mother (see Prov 10:1; 15-20).
Here, as elsewhere, Mother Church is the Church that will give birth at the baptism of the new believers. They are nearing their birth-day, and she is already groaning as her labor draws near. St. Augustine meant all this very concretely. As he said in another sermon: Individually, we are all children of Mother Church; taken together, we are Mother Church. Do we think of ourselves, together, as about to give birth at the Easter Vigil?
There is a very interesting article on the last stages of preparation for baptism in the time of St. Augustine: http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~james.p.burns/chroma/baptism/merdbapt.html
Thank you for this post, Father Joseph.
Indeed, thanks for the homily and for the link to the article which ends soberly and pertinently:
“Those who passed the scrutiny were a mixed lot. Obviously, many had proved themselves capable during a strenuous Lent. But this was no longer the church of the martyrs; candidates who never would have passed muster in pre-Constantinian times managed to survive the process in the fifth century. Augustine was well aware of the phenomenon. Less worthy people do slip through, he concedes in de fide et operibus.
Through the carelessness of superiors, or by concealed intrusion, people enter the Church who have little intention of leading a Christ-like life. Neglectful catechists fail to detect moral flaws that would disqualify seekers. (de fide et oper. 5.7; 19.35).
What is more, the pages of de Catechizandis Rudibus are chock-full of examples of baptized Christians who lead unholy lives. What can the catechumen or newly baptized Christian do? Associate with the good, whom you will easily find, if you are also such yourself, Augustine admonishes. (de Cat. Rud. 27.55). It was a lesson Augustine preached again and again in the days following Easter baptism.”
The ritual text of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults translates competentes as those who “strive together” but I think as good or better a translation might be those who “strive intensively” during the days of Lent.
Having just returned from North Africa, I am also mindful of how little things change in the marketplace, even today. What sort of deal do we make? Augustine skillfully moves from the commonplace experience, to the question of the value of what we receive in baptism, and to the value in which we ourselves are held by our God. Consider that the competentes would never have heard the words of the Exsultet before that holy night — would Augustine’s words return to them then? I strongly suspect this was his intent.
When Balthasar Fischer, the chairman of the post-conciliar committee that oversaw the revision of the baptismal rite for infants and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, came to the United States in the late 1980s for a visit, he said something about this question of the maternity of the Church.
He said the people who crafted the RCIA were very concerned about this idea of “mother Church” being again experienced through the renewal of baptism. He also said that he himself expected it would require several generations for the impact of the rites to bring such an awareness to fruition. BUT, he also said that he was surprised by how soon indeed it was evident. Wherever the RCIA was practiced with care, he began to see it.
I cannot but agree with his assessment. Everywhere that I’ve worked with the RCIA the sense of care, responsibility, and joy in bringing new life to birth has truly been overwhelming. Sadly, the raw experience of such a gift is not always named or cherished in such a way that it is remembered or held up for what it is for the whole church at large. In short, mystagogy on the experience is often lacking, thus leading to a sad diminishment of the experience into something privatized and individualized. Yet the experience is there.
I have hopes for more mystagogical preaching in the future, as I think we are all still quite early on the trajectory of awareness of the full meaning of baptism.
Rita: Thanks for your comments. There has been, I think, a reluctance to make use of the metaphor of Mother Church, for various reasons, of varying worth, I think. Perhaps it helps to know that in its earliest, patristic usage, it refers to the activity of the local Church in bringing people to birth in Christ and in bringing Christ to birth in them; and this generative activity is carried out by the whole company of believers. Yves Congar had some fine things to say about this.
I would add to your second one that we need to give far more attention to what happens to the newly born after baptism. Jean Raber has talked about this, as I recall: that new Catholics are pretty much left to themselves after the RCIA experience and the solemn rite. The motherhood of the Church is needed just as much then.
Thank you for posting, Fr. K. St. Augustine offers some apt metaphors to dwell on this week.
I attend the vigil every Holy Week and can’t help thinking of Augustine and his son entering the Church together. I find it to be one of the most moving episodes of The Confessions.
In the same sermon, this is how Augustine explains the term “competentes”: “What are the “competentes” other than people who are striving or seeking together? Just as “condocentes, concurrentes, considentes” means people who are teaching together, running together, sitting together, so also the word “competentes” is a compound referring to people who are seeking together and striving after a single thing together. And what is that single thing that you are seeking and desiring but that which a certain courageous man, having cast aside carnal desires and overcome the world’s terrors, cries out? ‘If armies in camp should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear; if a war should break out against me, in this will I be confident.’ And what that is he expresses when he goes on to add: ‘One thing I have sought from the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.’ And to explain the happiness of this region and this dwelling, he says further: ‘That I may see the delight of the Lord and may be sheltered by his temple’ (Ps 26:3-4).”
I’m grateful for these quotations, and particularly for the explication of the way Augustine here gives the metaphor of “Mother Church” a solid and concrete meaning.
I wonder if the reluctance to use the metaphor comes because, paradoxically, the term has been overused by some, so that for many of us over the years it has become no more than a piece of floridity, devoid of any real meaning. Just as the average (and even above-average) American politician can never use the simple term “people,” or “the people,” (as in “people need security,” etc.) but always has to say “the American people,” so too there are preachers who can never use the simple term “church”, but always have to say “Holy Mother Church.” even when in context it makes little sense.
As for Rita Ferrone’s sense that the experience of baptism become “privatized and individualized,” I wonder if this simply reflects the sometimes extreme nature of atomistic individualism too often found in American culture. Do they do it better elsewhere perhaps, where a culture of commonalty might be stronger?
Fr. Komonchak: the earliest usage predates the patristic era if I’m not mistaken, at least the image does. Recall that the second letter of John is addressed to “the elect lady.” If Paul Minear is to be believed, this is an eschatological image of the church, as a mother bearing children.
Nicholas Clifford, re: atomistic individualism, I think you are on target to say this characterizes the American culture, perhaps particularly religious culture, and impedes some of the aims of Christian initiation.
“Everywhere that I’ve worked with the RCIA the sense of care, responsibility, and joy in bringing new life to birth has truly been overwhelming. Sadly, the raw experience of such a gift is not always named or cherished in such a way that it is remembered or held up for what it is for the whole church at large. In short, mystagogy on the experience is often lacking, thus leading to a sad diminishment of the experience into something privatized and individualized. ”
Rita, thank you for this observation (and thank you, Fr.Komonchak, for the Augustine passages). Nicholas and Rita, without disagreeing on your observation about atomistic individualism, I might locate it a bit differently: that we don’t realize the faith communty as a community and context in which we live our entire lives, rather than as a temporary time interval in our schedule, a place where the family pops in for Sunday mass, or the children get dropped off for school or religious ed. We put in our minutes or hours and then go back to “real life”, as though the Christian community were somehow compartmentalized from real life.
I’m certain that it’s a difficult transition to go from the structured and supportive RCIA community to the status of “anonymous-parishioner-at-large”. How to add the sense of structure and support to the already-initiated?
I think that the problem to some degree is that we don’t recognize how much of our sense of the world is mediated to us by our communities and our society and its culture. It has been pointed out that even individualism is a social and cultural construct, one which seems to include in its own identity a neglect of its social and cultural rootedness. What comes first is the familial, the communal, and the social, and it’s from within them and, initially at least, with regard to them, that we come to our sense of self. But the culture is such as to make us think of ourselves in terms of the rugged individual or the lonely (of course) existential hero. \
But Augustine already knew the powerful hold of communal custom over individuals when he said that “the custom of my city was my mother’s womb” (En. in Ps. 138, 18; PL 37, 1795), and when he gave this interpretation to the words of the Psalm: “‘The words of sinners had power over us, but you will pardon our impieties”: “Since we were born on this earth, we encountered sinful people and listened as they talked. If I may explain what I mean….Every human being, wherever he is born, learns the language of that country or area or city and is imbued with its custom and way of life. How could a child born among pagans not worship a stone when his parents have introduced him to that worship? It was from them that he heard his first words; it was that error that he drank in with his mother’s milk; and because they who were speaking were adults, while the one who was learning to speak was an infant, what could the little one do except follow the authority of his elders and consider that to be good which they were praising? Thus when the nations were later converted to Christ, and remembered the impiety they were praising? Thus when the nations were later converted to Christ, and remembered the impiety of their parents, they could say what the prophet Jeremiah had already said: “Truly our parents worshipped a lie, an empty thing that could not help them” (Jer 16:19); Augustine, En. in Ps. 64, 6; PL 36, c. 776-77.
On this view, the womb of the Church, giving birth to the Christian believer, replaces the womb of earlier custom and habit.
new Catholics are pretty much left to themselves after the RCIA experience and the solemn rite.
Is this different from ‘old’ Catholics after their initiation is completed at confirmation? I think that is the principle difficulty with mystagogy, the period after baptism. The newly baptized are assimilated to the community that they have joined, ie they become like the other adults who come together in the way Jim P describes. If we ask more of them, are we really bringing them together with the community?
“Mother Church” is one of the important underdeveloped images of Vatican II imo. One of John XXIII’s encyclicals begins with the image:
Mother and Teacher of all nations—such is the Catholic Church in the mind of her Founder, Jesus Christ; to hold the world in an embrace of love, that men, in every age, should find in her their own completeness in a higher order of living, and their ultimate salvation.
And Lumen Gentium’s last chapter not just that the Church reveres Mary as our Mother, but also as our model for mothering:
The Church indeed, contemplating [Mary's] hidden sanctity, imitating her charity and faithfully fulfilling the Father’s will, by receiving the word of God in faith becomes herself a mother. By her preaching she brings forth to a new and immortal life the sons who are born to her in baptism, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of God.
Am trying to follow the discussion, but don’t quite understand the points made about “atomistic individualism.” Does the American preoccupation with individualism prevent parishes from becoming communities that reflect the motherhood of the Church? Or that American Catholics who are received through RCIA emphasize their individual relationship with Christ (a very Protestant notion) and fail to see that they are now part of the sacred motherhood of the Church?
Either way, it’s food for thought.
As we speak of birth images, I am reminded that the RCIA leaders often speak of “processing” candidates and catechumens. And that reminds me of nothing so much as the sheep at farm down the road which are artificially inseminated at the same time so that births occur within the space of a few days, and lambs all grow at the same rate so they can be conveniently processed at the meat packers at the same time in the fall.
In the local parish, once you’re “processed,” you are then “new meat” for the Altar Guild, the Fish Frys, and working with CCD, which nobody wants to do.
And yet, how is it that for Raber and my kid–who is a live-wire who does not take direction well–this process has worked? Somehow they have a sense of having been “reborn,” not just “processed.” Certainly they have a sense that they, now, are giving birth to Christ to others.
So why didn’t this work for me? Am I too stubborn? Was I simply not ready to leave my Anglican/Unitarian roots behind? Did I want all the “glitter, but not the guilt”? Did God feel I was unworthy of the grace needed to live as a Catholic? Did I have that grace unknowingly and then throw it away? I guess those are the meditations of any apostate who prays and watches while others receive.
I would say that RCIA needs to help candidates better discern their call Catholics. The program needs to discuss more fully what life as a Catholic might require, what one might have to give up, and what one might gain as a result. This kind of discussion was certainly part of the landscape before my baptism as an Anglican. It was not part of the RCIA “process.”
Apologies in advance that this is not very inspiring and probably kind of a wet blanket. As always, feel free to chastise me here, please, not offline. I continue to hope that all of us who hear in our hearts at the consecration “stand back, this is not for you” will get this figured out some day.
“Through the carelessness of superiors, or by concealed intrusion, people enter the Church who have little intention of leading a Christ-like life. Neglectful catechists fail to detect moral flaws that would disqualify seekers. (de fide et oper. 5.7; 19.35).”
Sounds a little like Donatism here. Or would one say paradox?
Jean, may I suggest it’s too early to say that “this didn’t work” for you? To continue with the metaphor, not all births are easy, and you may still be in the process of being born.
I’m sorry your journey is a struggle. It’s frustrating to see other people do easily what is a struggle for me.
Sorry if this is too personal.
“The newly baptized are assimilated to the community that they have joined, ie they become like the other adults who come together in the way Jim P describes. If we ask more of them, are we really bringing them together with the community?”
Jim McK, it is always needful to strive for an experience of church that is closer to the vision of the gospels and apostolic life than whatever we see around us in a given parish, even if it means creating a certain tension between what is and what could be for those who are newly initiated. Otherwise, we can end up with a least common denominator approach, one which is sociologically adaptive but not evangelical in any true sense.
You raise a complex issue, because the faithful themselves, to be true to the faith, also need to grapple with the tension between the already and the not yet. This is why it’s salutary to speak of “ongoing conversion” (as JP II did, as well as many others) and why the metaphor of journey ought not to be abandoned at font and table, but pursued thereafter to mean the Christian life as it unfolds until we meet God face to face. This is also why Christian initiation is continually relevant to the self-identity of the community of faith.
An essential aspect of Christian initiation’s role in the life of a community is that it is supposed to call the whole community back to first principles, and incite fresh reflection on who we are and what we are becoming. If it doesn’t, we’ve “processed” a few more sheep to be “just like us” and we haven’t answered to the Spirit in the making of disciples. Put another way, if what already is–as good as it may be–sets the limits of our vision, we will never move toward the place God calls us. And that’s the task. That’s the great work of faith for which the riches and mistakes of the past prepare us: to move into the future we don’t yet see, in response to the call of God.
The catechumens themselves change the equation, you see, even on the most basic level, if we have a communal sense at all. Like new children in a family, they are surprise packages. As much as they may resemble their “parents,” they are not just like them. They will change the family. This is a threat, of course, to the established family dynamic. And part of the reason for a catechumenate is to moderate that threat, and negotiate the challenge of integrating new members who are unlike the ones we already have. It does not aim at snuffing out the threat, only at moderating it, so that the clash is not too costly and confusing. But what atomistic individualism does is precisely to snuff it out. The full form of religious individualism is as good as saying “Whoever you are, whatever your past has been, whatever your present concerns and needs and commitments, it doesn’t matter because we will not have to deal with you. You are not our problem.”
Recognize this? It’s what Jim P described above in the one-hour-a-week drop off mentality, and the compartmentalization of religion into the private sphere that is so detached as to wall off the very people whom we claim to regard as sisters and brothers. And yes, it’s what many of the faithful experience unless they have an extraordinarily caring parish or a lay community of some sort or perhaps a large family and friendship network to fall back on. If you press the question back to why is this a strong feature of American culture, I think you don’t have far to go before you see how it facilitates markets and industry. And I don’t mean to dump on individualism, by the way. Some individualism is good and productive of virtue. But it’s not all good, and if there isn’t a counterbalance to it, it can undermine the living out of the gospel. So, yes, this may be the way parishes do arrange their lives, for better or worse. But we should initiate people into these parishes in such a way that they can see that the good news asks for more. They may be the leaven that parish has to bring about new things in God’s time.
“the one-hour-a-week drop off mentality, and the compartmentalization of religion into the private sphere that is so detached as to wall off the very people whom we claim to regard as sisters and brothers. And yes, it’s what many of the faithful experience unless they have an extraordinarily caring parish or a lay community of some sort or perhaps a large family and friendship network to fall back on.”
FWIW – my experience in the various faith communities I’ve been involved in over the years is that there is a core of people – in a large parish like ours, it is several hundred people strong – who do, to some degree, realize this vision of the extraordinarily caring and ussupportive parish. But then the majority of people are not part of this circle. They’re in “drop-off” mode. So we have varying degrees of realizing the vision within the same community.
How to widen the core circle? How to invite into the circle the newly initiated? What barriers exist to keep out other people? Those are some of the challenges we’re trying to figure out.
I don’t think the term Mother Church rings true to many Catholics (new or not-so-new) because they don’t experience her as motherly. Masculine authoritarian pervades almost every experience that the average person has of the church. Count me among those.
I’m sure that is one of the reasons many Catholics don’t resonate with the image of the Church as Mother, but they often make the mistake that the Church’s birthing, mothering, role in our becoming Christians is either identified with, or mainly ascribed to, the actions of the hierarchy. The ordained certainly have their role, especially in the sacraments, but it is the whole Church that is the matrix (another maternal image) of Christian faith, and the baptismal font is said to be the womb of the Church, not the hierarchy.
My parish probably reflects the norm nationwide when it comes to the day-to-day operation of parishes, i.e., that many parishes would not exist, or at least not function well, without the varied and dedicated service that women provide in such ministries as RCIA, CCD, parish councils, choirs, liturgy committees, etc. I think the role of women in the Church needs to be looked at anew, but even in this time of constraint on the role of women, it would be a foolish pastor who did not recognize the important and essential work women have been doing in the Church and who did not seek their counsel in the running of a parish and the nurturing of its spiritual life.
Some historians claim that Augustine introduced mediocrity into the church or at least canonized the concept. They say that because Augustine stressed that, despite the quote I alluded to above that the candidates have to be carefully screened, that we should not exclude anyone but let God sift the wheat from the chaff at judgement time. This view certainly prevails where most of the Christian world support their churches but ignore the core of the gospel.
What Rita described above is beautiful. But where are these Catholic Christians who prize their life in community of the church , the people of God, over everything else? I suspect they succumbed to mediocrity and are the main reason people like Jean are repelled when they get to know them.
Btw, Rita and JAK, you can come to my parish anytime to talk to us about initiation.
“But where are these Catholic Christians who prize their life in community of the church , the people of God, over everything else?”
Bill – at our parish at least, a good place to look is in the pews at daily mass.
Thanks Jim,
Tell me the details. Like are they admitting the poor and the downtrodden to their houses, leaving them some of their inheritance, feeding and clothing them, paying for their medical care……..
HI, Bill – most of them are seniors, a good umber of them widows and widowers. They *are* among the poor and downtrodden. I’m sure they do all the things you mention and many others. They perform a million concrete acts of love and support for one another, from comforting one another to helping one another financially to visiting each other in the hospital.
Alle Vostra Salute!!
Bill, I don’t believe I ever belonged in the Church in the first place, and that is likely through my own fault and poor discernment. The local parish could have helped me become a better friend to Catholicism, but ought, ultimately, to have weeded me out.
On the other hand, had I not gone to through RCIA, it’s doubtful Raber and would have or would have agreed to have the boy baptized in the Church.
Morever, when the boy got cold feet a few weeks ago about confirmation, I was the one who had to spend hours helping him think through it. (The rite is online, and nobody had bothered to review this with the kids, if you can believe it. The CCD ladies were more concerned about whether the kids would sit, how they would process in and out, where they would stand, and what would happen to them if they stepped a toe out of line and made them look bad in front of the bishop.)
And, yes, he did go through confirmation, and it was a fine day for us all.
But when Unitarian/Anglicans make better Catholic catechists than Catholics, there’s a cautionary tale there somewhere.
However, I’m sure, given the fine things that Rita, William, Jim, and Father Komonchak have said here, that our parish is the exception than the rule.
There was mediocrity in the Church long before Augustine; see, e.g., Rev 3:15-16. That Augustine was content with mediocrity, much less “canonized” it, is refuted by almost every sermon he preached, and hundreds of them survive. He accepted the fact that the Church on earth contains both good and evil people (who can deny it?), but spent his life urging the good not to be complacent and the evil to convert. The most interesting work in Augustine-studies over the last decade or so has been the study of his sermons, long overlooked in favor of his major and famous works.
My colleague, Paul Kolbet, has just published a hefty book and, though the price is a bit high, it is a wonderful study of Augustine: “Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal” (Notre Dame).
Then what do these words from Augustine’s letter to Pelagius mean? “A
man of good works who acts from the faith which works through love, who
indulges his incontinence within the decent bounds of marriage, who both exacts
and renders the debt of the flesh and sleeps with his wife–though only with
his wife!–and does so not only for the sake of bringing forth offspring, but
even for sheer pleasure….who will put up with wrongs done to him with less
than complete patience, but burn with angry desire for revenge…who guards
what he possesses and gives alms, though not very generously, who does not
take another’s goods but defends his own in a court of law–ecclesiastical not
civil.(such a man) on account of his right faith in
God…,acknowledging his own ignominy and giving the glory to God,” ‘such a man’,
Markus adds, ‘will depart this life and and be received into the company of
the saints destined to remain with Christ.’
This letter to Pelagius clearly condones mediocrity. Here Augustine describes the opposite of what a follower of Christ should be and then writes he will be received into the company of the saints. If this letter does not condone mediocrity nothing does. Sure there are the other letters. But human nature latches on to the lowest denominator which Augustine if offering here.
Marcus and O’Donnel both make this point about Augustine encouraging mediocrity. Augustine said and many in the church made it gospel.
it is always needful to strive for an experience of church that is closer to the vision of the gospels and apostolic life than whatever we see around us in a given parish
Rita, this is indeed a complex subject.
What initiates should see in a given parish is people striving “for an experience of church that is closer to the vision of the gospels and apostolic life.” For the most part, this is what has drawn them to the initiation process.* I hesitate to place my own idea of the apostolic life above the parishes, since I am part of the parish. When I catechize, I express what I have learned in the parishes I’ve known, with the hope that every person will learn more in and from the parish. Always, the parish is the context for understanding the apostolic life, and understanding anything from beyond the parish.
In a certain sense, this is what I see in the image of the Church as mother. I cannot see telling a child not to be like the mother that is raising him, or to strive to live a life that is not present in the mother he loves. I hope the parish feels the demand of love and that every now member makes the whole parish “want to be a better person.” That is hard, but it is part of giving birth, this clueless male imagines.
If the members of the parish choose to limit contact with the Church to an hour every Sunday, and someone is called to join that community, there is probably a reason for that limitation and that call. My goal is to show how these express a relationship with the love of God, so that the neophytes and the old-timers can walk together.
I wish I could do it better. And that I had thought about this a few weeks ago so I could have shared it with those who will join us on Saturday night. I hope all will pray for those who will share in the Eucharist this Easter, especially those who will do so for the first time.
*Jean, try pronouncing process with a long o, like procession, rather than like meat-processing. it is a little too facile, but is start toward a better understanding.
Bill, St Augustine is referring to a man who has resisted temptation, which is the mark of sanctity. Maybe it would be better to not desire pleasure or revenge or possessions, but God grants salvation to those who are filled with human desires. A partial victory over many strong temptations may make a greater saint than a full victory over paltry ones.
(There is nothing quite like spending my evening defending mediocrity)
Jim,
Then why do you? That teaching of Augustine haunts us to this day. The hierarchy stresses more than anyone that above all you must be inside the church and loyal to Rome. That is why Maciel and other criminals were not condemned until the Vatican had no way out. As long as you are in the church you are excused. Your approval of revenge, at the very least you tie it to salvation, furthers this fallacy. Here are the words of that Augustine scholar O’Donnell:
O’Donnell quoting the same letter to the Pelagians
comments: “The ordinary man, Augustine, is sure will go to heaven, because he
goes to the right church and has the right faith.” O’Donnell further states
that Augustine is saying that “other men just like this one but who happen to
find themselves in church buildings of which Augustine disapproves will not
be treated so kindly.” Pg 270 Augustine a Biography.
This is why the bishops are now attacking the media and everyone else. Catholic has to be defended before the Christian virtues. The church abandoned Augustine on predestination and infant baptism. It needs to disavow him on this one.
Jim McK, I sincerely apologize to you and everyone here for posting my stories of personal doubt and failure at a time that is joyful for the faithful. It was self-indulgent and disrupted the discussion.
Bill: We have been over this before. Marcus does indeed speak of Augustine’s “defence of Christian mediocrity,” but in the chapter so entitled, he does not speak of his encouraging but of his “tolerating” mediocrity, and this as an antidote to Pelagius’ “perfectionism,” as if on earth was already achieved the state of being “without spot or wrinkle” that Augustine thought would be true only of the Church in glory. Augustine was not holding mediocrity up as the Christian ideal, far from it, and I encourage you to read his sermons and see whether the single paragraph you cite should really be taken to characterize his pastoral attitude toward his people.
As for O’Donnell, so far from criticizing Augustine for the paragraph you quote speaks of it as written on one of Augustine’s “best days” and as holding out “for the place in Christianity of the normal, concupiscent, imperfect Christian” (p. 269). One normal, concupiscent, imperfect Christian I know is grateful that he has a place in the Church.
Two biblical quotes underlay Augustine’s response to the perfectionist Donatists and Pelagians. The first was 1 Jn 1:8: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” The other was the petition in the Lord’s prayer, which Christians are to pray everyday: “Forgive us our debts.” If we have debts that daily need to be forgiven, the Church cannot be “without spot or wrinkle.”
I do not believe that these sad truths about our condition as Christians are in any way at all an encouragement to mediocrity.
Bill, I defend mediocrity because some misidentify virtue as mediocrity. Haw can approval of a man “who will put up with wrongs done to him with less than complete patience, but burn with angry desire for revenge” be construed as a support for revenge? It is hope for the person who is not perfect, not an indulgence of his unruly desires and anger.
It seems a stretch to portray Augustine’s attack on Pelagianism as meaning salvation belongs only to those who do a particular deed like belonging to the right Church. That simple of a summation is probably a distortion, in my possibly ignorant position. The ‘right church’ is probably seen as a foretaste of heaven and support for the tempted not to sin, but I would have to look at the texts. Again, I fear without an executive order specifying the interpretation to be used, we would probably continue to disagree.
Jean, I have always found your posts inspiring and a gift, so no apology is needed. I do not share all of your beliefs — I believe you have been a member of the Church since your baptism, even if you have not found a church with whom you belong.
There are plenty of arguments and concerns in the -, especially over terminology. I agree with your objection to “process”, and am a bit tickled by its relation to “process”, which fits more with the pilgrim church image I prefer. So I am grateful to you for the chance to find meaning that can transform and delight.
Tolerating it may still be considered encouraging it. At any rate both are quite reprehensible. Tolerataing that someone burns with revenge, any eye for an eye? Further, both Marcus and O’Donnel make a big deal of this. So do I. There is a high level of mediocrity in the church, in all segments. Augustine let a lot of people off the hook. Just a cursory look at Catholic moral theology shows how moralists seek a way out. Augustine, by all accounts the most influential since the Middle ages has a lot to do with it.
So tell us, Bill, if we don’t tolerate the imperfect among us (we, of course, being the already perfect), what is you alternative? Expulsion? Excommunication” Ostracizing? That’s what the Donatists did, and what the Puritans did to Hester Prynne. There is a huge difference between tolerating and encouraging, and if you’d read Augustine’s sermons, you’ll see that he never encougated any of his people to remain mediocre Christians. He just knew that we are on a journey, and none of us has arrived yet at a state of perfection such that we don’t have to pray, “Forgive us our debts,” and he urged his people to keep on the path even if they’re limping along.
Unfortunately, Joe, we know too little about the Donatists like other heretics as the only writings we have of them consists of orthodox opponents characterizations. But i think we can say with certainty that the Donatists at least objected to the Rape of the church by the Emperors. That era characterized by the Fathers of the Church began the “Decline of Christianity.” As far as the works of Augustine I used to quote him daily if not hourly. He knew how to write and many of his sermons were masterpieces. Nevertheless, on the whole he is problematic.
Limping is very different than burning with revenge and anger which Jesus made a point of saying it was just as bad as murder.
Augustine is a complex person who courted the favor of the emperor and his minions. In addition he canonized the assault and murder of other Christians. He is vastly overrated.
In fact, Bill, the Donatists were the first to appeal to the Emperors, and we know enough about them for W.H.C. Frend to have written a splendid book about them, some hundreds of pages long.
As for anger and desire for revenge, in his sermons, you find constant references to the need for Christians to forgive and to seek reconiliation with their enemies. In fact, it is the chief, almost the only, theme of his Lenten sermons, as I indicated a couple of weeks ago. Commentators point to the persistent culture of revenge, still not unknown in the Mediterranean, that he was opposing.
One of his constant themes is that doing something “corpore” and not “corde” was not sufficient; and he urged that people learn to obey God’s will not like slaves, but out of the freedom of love, like sons and daughters.
The paragraph you quote is unfortunate, I think, too; but it’s not right to try to sum Augustine by this one paragraph and to neglect the far more frequent and far more constant thenes he emphasized in other writings. And do bear in mind that there are far more manuscript copies of his sermons than there are of that work against the letters of the Pelagians. Which is significant in terms of measuring influence.