For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichæus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you—If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichæus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel;— Again, if you say, You were right in believing the Catholics when they praised the gospel, but wrong in believing their vituperation of Manichæus: do you think me such a fool as to believe or not to believe as you like or dislike, without any reason? It is therefore fairer and safer by far for me, having in one instance put faith in the Catholics, not to go over to you, till, instead of bidding me believe, you make me understand something in the clearest and most open manner. To convince me, then, you must put aside the gospel. If you keep to the gospel, I will keep to those who commanded me to believe the gospel; and, in obedience to them, I will not believe you at all. But if haply you should succeed in finding in the gospel an incontrovertible testimony to the apostleship of Manichæus, you will weaken my regard for the authority of the Catholics who bid me not to believe you; and the effect of that will be, that I shall no longer be able to believe the gospel either, for it was through the Catholics that I got my faith in it; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichæus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you."
-St. Augustine, Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus, 5
So which are you?
All that energy you put into that post could have been put elswhere if you had remembered that no saint and no theologian is authoritative. The Magisterium of the Church is the final arbiter of faith and morals, although any saint or theologian may say the same..
Isn't he the one who said "I would not believe the gospel were it not taught by the Catholic Church?" That used to be someone's tagline here on FR.
Jesus said unto him, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
St. Augustine was a Catholic Bishop and there is no getting around it:
From the Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers:
St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor: How the Mind Becomes capable of grasping the mysteries:
“What must God’s Church (note the visible Church, not an invisible undefined vague “group”) do to comprehend that which it was the first to be given to believe? Let it make its soul capable of receiving what shall be given it. That it may do this, that is, that the soul may become capable, the Lord our God as it were HOLDS HIS PROMISES OUT OF OUR REACH; He does not withdraw them.He so withhodls them that we may stretch ourselves towards them. We strain, and therefore we grow. And so we grow, that we may reach what He promised us. Think of the Apostle stretching forth towards the WITHHELD promises: NOT AS THOUGH I HAD ALREADY ATTAINED, OR WERE ALREADY PERFECT. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself the things that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Jesus Christ. (Phil iii 12-14)”
Clearly St, Augisutine agrees with the Church’s doctrine that the promises are not here already while we “run the race” and we are not perfected yet on earth.
Also - non Catholics do not allow anyone else to interpret scripture for them; this post seems contradictory to non catholic tradition (small t).
Augustine in other writings clearly embraces the sacraments as well, and as I own the complete Sunday sermons I can easily quote them without cherry picking from an internet search; but won’t won’t bore everyone with long winded text when it can be resarched for oneself.
Problem with your article is the premise:No we don’t believe in am unbroken line of doctrine. That is gibberish.
For some reason you seem to have a vendetta against St. Augustine. Can you tell us why?
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