"Were you being sarcastic or serious? If the former, then I apologize for being too dense to detect it."
Let's say tongue in cheek, half serious (so to speak) and half pulling the Westerners' legs.
And now that I have you all loosened up and bent out of shape, maybe we can discuss the extent to which Augustine of Hippo is a high maintenance guy for Protestants and Catholics alike, the extent to which ECUSA's problems are traceable to him, the extent to which liberalism is traceable to him.
No one would get much profit from such a discussion with me. I have long been a devoted reader of St. Augustine's but have little knowledge or even interest in the whole grace/original sin controversy.
His opinions on same are very important to be sure, but the tendency to wrench him out of 2000 years of tradition is an unfortunate outgrowth of his popularity in Protestant polemics. IMHO, that's the only reason he looks more high maintenance than any other Father. Most Latins including myself don't follow Augustine on the sense-suffering of unbaptized babies in hell, but rather the Greek Fathers and the Scholastics. His allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 is likewise not very popular anymore.
Augustine is the greatest Latin Father. He is not however, the only one, and he is not the Church.
On to what extent he is responsible for ECUSA and modernism, look. Either the modernists are misinterpreting him and/or drawing unwarrented conclusions from his writings, in which case why blame him? Or, he intentionally laid the groundwork for modernism, in which case why is he a saint? You telling me that some idiot couldn't do the same thing with St. Basil or St. John Chrysostom?