The First Modern Man
Someone has called him "The First Modern Man." Both Catholics and Non-Catholic Mainline Churches claim him as their own. Eastern Catholics number him among their "fathers" prompting a scholar to suggest that he be named "Common Father of the East and West." Descartes was flattered when he was told that his "Cogito ergo sum" echoes this man's "Dubito ergo sum."
I am referring to Augustine of Hippo (354-430). And this is a short retelling of his life:
A Mother Through Her Son's Eyes
The following is lifted from Augustine’s Confessions as presented in a Logos Software acknowledged at the end of the page. I have annotated it so that it would be easier to read. The subject of this page is Monica herself, Augustine’s mom. We know her generally as the mother who suffered on account of her son. But that is only a part of the picture. She also had to bear being the wife of a husband who was both unfaithful and violent. Augustine praises her for having lived with his father Patricius without having her face bashed in like the battered wives in their neighborhood who dared question their husbands’ virtues. But I wouldn’t expect the woman of our times to accept Monica’s strategy. Submissiveness, specially to husbands, is not considered a virtue nowadays. Augustine also writes about his mother’s ways towards her mother-in-law and her attitude towards the neighborhood gossips. In the end, Monica won her husband to the Church and her own wayward son.
Peter Brown on the Dolbeau Sermons and Divjak Letters
It is August once more, and for us Augustinians, the month reminds us of Augustine of Hippo. I visited the website of the Order yesterday hoping to find any new materials about Augustine or the Order's spirituality and found this news item about the discovery in Erfurt of six previously unheard of sermons of Augustine. The news report is syndicated from the Tablet dated 5 April 2008 and authored by a certain Christa Pongratz-Lippit. She describes how these manuscripts have come to Erfurt thus
Corruption in the Palace
I have just posted two articles at Res Biblica on the book of Isaiah. The first is on Isaiah 22:15–25, which narrates how Isaiah is instrumental in the demotion of the king’s chancellor Shebnah and how Eliakim takes his place. The second part of this section from Isaiah is the background for the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” mentioned in Matthew 16:19.
Humanae Vitae and the Great Peirasmos
It was I think in the year 1985 when I first heard about “Humanae Vitae”. I was in first year theology then taking up Moral Theology. In one lesson under the section Family and Marriage, the professor, a Spanish Dominican discussing the Church’s teaching on contraception mentioned Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” as a controversial document of the Church. When he discussed the contents of the document, I remember wondering to myself how it was that Humanae Vitae became controversial. Now in its fortieth year, and after I have seen how the teachings in “Humanae Vitae” have been continuously reaffirmed by the Church here in the Philippines in the face of Congress and by Catholics directly involved in two UN Population Congresses (1994 and 1996), I no longer wonder why. The population issue is an issue linked to the world’s natural resources, and when a group decides to have all those resources for themselves, the rest of humanity will have to stop — or be made to stop — from being “fruitful and multiply.”
The Mystical Geek
in Vessels of Clay
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