Saint Augustine and sense goods

The Doctor in Trauma

      One of the problems that Converts to the Catholic Faith have is that they bring their personal hang-ups with them into the Church. If they are of an intelligent nature, the views on the themes they expound upon are affected by these personal limitations.

           In his "Confessions", Saint Augustine says some very wonderful things concerning the mercy and goodness of God, the power and marvel of grace, the shortness of time and length of eternity, the psychological concept of memory, etc. The work manifests the intelligence, wisdom and greatness of this North African saint. On the other hand, when he begins to despise and attack our normal and common sense goods, he is really betraying the emotional traumas and conflicts of his soul that he bears from the past. The obsessions and fearful repressions that he suffers from push him to a very ridiculous point of reasoning and paranoia. He perceives danger in everything, even in the very sense act of feeling. His fearful scrupulosity has him consider sinful very normal commonplace experiences, like the pleasure had in eating, drinking or listening to a gentle melody. His insanity has him conclude that one must repress the very pleasure that accompanies a meal or work of art.

        What St. Augustine is doing is really denying his very humanity. He despises any corporal sensation and would wish to have been born an angel. How did he come to such an absurd conclusion? It is due to fear and cowardice. Though Saint Augustine acquired the virtues he sought for and attained sanctity, it seems that he would have preferred not to. The following example will explain what I mean. If someone invites me to a chess game, and I perceive that it will be difficult to win, I can try to get out of the match by speaking evil of the game and despising it. The difficulty to winning the match incentivizes me to refuse and resist the challenge and run away in a cowardly manner. If Saint Augustine despised sense goods and feelings, it was because he could not deal with the possible temptations tied to them (to gluttony, lust, etc). So he went for the most foolish and bizarre solution, which was to despise these legitimate goods created by God.

      In this sense, Saint Augustine was a disaster for the Church. He reinforced the idea of the body-mind-spirit conflict and rejection of legitimate sense goods. We must remember that Luther was an Augustinian monk and therefore was further confused by the ideas of Augustine. The Protestant idea of corruption in nature had its origins and connections via Saint Jerome--Saint Augustine--Luther. This is the real "Da Vinci" code of our modern social mess.

Father Anthony Mellace