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Saint Augustine, one of the greatest intellects in human history and a Catholic apologist par excellence, lived and proselytized during the twilight of the Roman Empire. As his life drew to a close, however, his homeland of Roman Numidia was overrun by an army of marauding Vandals--a barbaric host which had carved a swath through the enervated provinces of Gaul, Spain and Mauritania. By the time the Vandal armies reached Augustine's province of Numidia in about AD 430, the great bishop lay on his deathbed. His city of Hippo Regius was besieged and the remaining Roman forces under Count Boniface...

A suspected San Francisco serial bipper who was arrested, charged and released by a judge without bail allegedly went back to breaking into cars and was twice caught on camera by a YouTuber’s bait-car operation and hit with fart spray just three days after his release. But it wasn’t just the YouTuber’s bait car that attracted the suspect, Charvel Maurice Augustine. That same day, undercover police arrested him on suspicion of separate car break-ins. Augustine is set to stand trial on March 28 for two cases stemming from offenses last July and October. San Francisco is in the grips of...

In Biden's speech, St. Augustine's deep warning about misdirected unity in love of the wrong thing becomes the spiritual equivalent of “c’mon, man.”Yesterday’s remarks from Joe Biden were what we thought they would be: a lot of talk about unity, and a lot of condemnations of other Americans along the way. The unity talk went over just as expected, with Republicans rolling their eyes. Of course there was unity on that dais in Washington, with a thousand of America’s elites — nearly all of them already vaccinated, but wearing masks to send a message — guarded by tens of thousands...

Fratelli Tutti: Francis - Saint Augustin 0-1 It is “very difficult” nowadays to speak of the possibility of a “just war,” Francis writes in his third and longest (45,000 words) encyclical Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All, October 4).In footnote 242, he claims, “Saint Augustine, who forged a concept of ‘just war’ that we no longer uphold in our own day, also said that ‘it is a higher glory still to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war’.”This is true, nevertheless, Augustine's just-war-criteria are objective...

Reason #7: RELIGION Saint Augustine in his Confessions tells us that after many years of wandering in the desert of indecision, it was Cicero who led him to Christ. Cicero’s Hortensius set him on the path to Christian conversion by implanting in him a longing for the immortality of wisdom. The text of Hortensius did not make it to the modern world and thus is probably the most famous lost treatise in world literature. Wouldn’t we all love to read this work that St. Augustine praises so highly? Well, I have read a lot of Cicero and, like most writers,...

Is Christianity a white man’s religion? This may sound absurd, but some individuals lay claim to this belief. Some hold such a position due to the practice of slavery by early antebellum Christians. Slaveholders would often persuade their slaves that being submissive is the Christian thing to do and that their blessings would come in the afterlife. Professor Rasiah S. Sugirtharajah contends that the entire Bible is a colonial work used to subdue natives under the conquest of Christians.However, a simple glimpse at church history quickly portrays a very different tale. African theologians have influenced the church remarkably throughout the...

I address some of the faulty arguments used to claim Islam isn't a false religion. I also explore how we should examine truth claims and compare Islamic growth rates with the popularity of previous heresies.

Perhaps American Christians cannot think clearly about homeland security, borders, and immigration for the same reason Americans cannot think clearly about anything else. As Christians we have rich, intellectually credible traditions and frameworks for ethical reflection at our fingertips, and yet, as Americans, we suffer from a historical amnesia. What we need is a historically-attuned theological framework that can lay the foundation for our debates and political deliberations. Without one, we risk acting in ways that contradict the Gospel that we profess. To jump, as we tend to, from Plato and Aristotle to Locke and Hobbes is to ignore crucial...

White Double TODAY AUGUSTINE, THE GREATEST AND THE HUMBLEST OF THE DOCTORS, is hailed by heaven, where his conversion caused greater joy than that of any other sinner; and celebrated by the Church, who is enlightened by his writings as to the power, the value, and the gratuitousness of divine grace. Since that wonderful, heavenly conversation at Ostia, God had completed his triumph in the son of Monica’s tears and of Ambrose’s holiness. Far away from the great cities where pleasure had seduced him, the former rhetorician now cared only to nourish his soul with the simplicity of the...

As my friend Doug Phillips has pointed out, this year has brought, in the providence of God, a strange confluence of anniversaries. The two men who have had the greatest impact on these United States may well be, on the one hand, Charles Darwin, and on the other John Calvin. Darwin was born two hundred years ago this year, Calvin five hundred years ago. Our perspective on each of these men will serve as a potent bell-weather for our perspectives on a whole host of issues. In the culture wars most of our enemies will celebrate the birth of Darwin...

The megalomania of the 1st-century Roman emperors, epitomized in the lunacy of Caligula and the lechery of Nero, evinces “tormenting the cat” on a global scale. It is little wonder so many eagerly converted to the Christian faith, which promised a king who truly loved and provided for his subjects. Jesus tells his disciples that heaven rejoices at the repentance of a single sinner. Subjects of his kingdom are to be concerned with the most marginalized, honored even for giving them a “cup of cold water.” Jesus elsewhere declares “the last will be first, and the first last”: indeed, the...

On the Necessary Order of Love Msgr. Charles Pope • January 4, 2017 • A reading in the breviary this week from the preaching of St. Augustine offers sound advice on what theologians often call “the order of love.”It is a general obligation that that we must love all our fellow human beings. It is also true that we must love God with our whole heart and mind, above all people and things. Loving all humanity presents problems, though, because we have not met most other people on the planet, nor have we met those who lived and died...

Authorities say Shahroon Augustine entered the Eugene Sawyer Water Purification Plant with a duffle bag, containing a passport from Pakistan. He was charged with trespassing, then vanished. “If our water supply isn’t vigorously protected, we as a society could have real trouble,” says Richard Schak, a former Chicago Police official who launched the criminal justice program at National Louis University. He has studied municipal water systems.

Msgr. Charles Pope 12/30/2015 Augustine and Calvin? Q. I know that St. Augustine wrote about predestination, and that John Calvin wrote about double predestination. Can you explain what they both taught and what the Church says about it? What are some things to think about as we reconcile free will with God’s omniscience? Graham, via e-mail A. Predestination is a proper biblical concept which indicates that God chose us and called us before we were ever made to be His own. It does not deny that we freely chose Him, but it does insist that He first chose us,...

Now I will relate how You set me free from a craving for sexual gratification which fettered me like a tight-drawn chain, and from my enslavement to worldly affairs: I will confess to Your name, O Lord, my helper and my redeemer.[1]Last week we looked at Augustine’s famous maxim that the human soul is restless until it finds its rest and satisfaction in the Triune God. This week, I want to look at Augustine’s own account of coming to that saving rest.While he had been sitting under the Gospel preaching of Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo had the occasion...

October 3, 2014 Restless till We Rest in You by Mike Riccardi Many Christians recognize the name of Augustine of Hippo from his valiant defense of the biblical doctrine of divine sovereignty against the man-centered heresy of the British monk Pelagius. And we know that the Reformers made exceedingly frequent references to Augustine’s work as they fought against the man-centeredness of the Roman Catholic Church. But what many don’t know about Augustine was his consistent emphasis on the centrality of the affections—and particularly joy—in the believer’s life. In fact, he even defined love for God in terms of enjoying...

Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era...

It is hard to read Augustine’s Confessions without understanding human nature better, and particularly our own weaknesses. Writing in the form of a prayerful reflection on his life and a general confession of his faults to God, Augustine carefully describes the course of his life from his birth to his conversion at age 31. Then he concludes his confession with an examination of the current state of his soul. He closes the work by reflecting on the nature and meaning of God’s creation of all things, including man. I have been reading the Confessions again this year. For obvious reasons,...

Christianity began in the East, not the West, yet today Christians in the East are enduring an all-out-assault by Islamic terrorists, while Christians in the West live their lives largely oblivious to it all. This has to change. This is no imaginary persecution; in Syria alone there have been reports of kidnappings, Christian communities intentionally displaced by militants and, worst of all, shootings and beheadings of Christians who refused to convert to Islam. In Egypt radicals have recently destroyed dozens of churches, and the once vibrant Christian population in Iraq has been decimated. Christians in the West should stand up...

For millennia the Catholic Church has consistently opposed unnatural vice. Here is a brief sampling of useful quotes from Saints, Doctors of the Church, Church Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers who condemn homosexual vice in their writings. 1. Athenagoras of Athens (2nd Century) Athenagoras of Athens was a philosopher who converted to Christianity in the second century. He shows that the pagans, who were totally immoral, did not even refrain from sins against nature: "But though such is our character (Oh. why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the...