Although there was no formal deadline, this Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo was supposed to have been the day by which I would have finished an article on the Augustinian Pope Leo XIV.
But he was elected on the day that I was sent to prison, already blessed with severe arthritis, consequent heavy painkiller use, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, anankastic personality disorder, anxious personality disorder, and an Autism Spectrum Disorder, possibly Asperger’s Syndrome.
None of those was helped, either by the general conditions in there, or by my being beaten up by a spicehead, an attack that has, moreover, left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. Hence the lightness of activity on here. And hence the incompleteness of that article.
At least in the meantime, for many years, and possibly still, two of the main sources of traffic to this site were the Wikipedia entries on Saint Augustine in Portuguese and in Slovene, neither of which I can read. This was the reason why, as perhaps it still is. And if you liked that, then you will love this.
Sancte Augustine, ora pro nobis.
Augustine never had a PhD, Oliver Kamm is on the case.
ReplyDeleteEvery accusation is a Confession...
Delete"There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future."
ReplyDeleteSo long as we mean it as Saint Augustine did, and not as reworked by Lord Illingworth.
DeleteWhat an erudite thread this is.
ReplyDeleteWilde read both Saint Augustine and Saint John Henry Newman in prison, and he joined them as a Catholic convert on his deathbed.
DeleteWill Oscar also end up as a Doctor of the Church?
DeleteUnder what title? I had been wondering that about Newman.
DeleteHenry VIII also died a Catholic-albeit in schism with its then leader-and never renounced his Catholic faith.
ReplyDeleteSchism from the Pope is, by definition, renunciation of the Catholic Faith. And vice versa.
DeleteYou know what I mean. He remained doctrinally Catholic including belief in the transubstantiation up to his dying day and never converted to Protestantism. And if staying loyal to the Pope is the sole litmus test of Catholicism, then what does that say about all the debauched, corrupt and evil Popes there have been throughout Church history, particularly pre-Reformation, such as Alexander VI Borgia?
ReplyDeleteThe office, not the man.
DeleteThe two are inseparable when the man uses the office for political purposes (i.e refusing an annulment to Henry VIII because his wife’s nephew Emperor Charles V lobbied against it?).
ReplyDeleteThat was still the Pope's decision to make. Henry's lobbying was also political. He wanted an heir.
DeleteIt was Henry VIII’s Catholic faith that caused him to seek an annulment in the first place as he believed Catherine’s childlessness was a punishment from God for the sin of having married his brother’s wife, and that leaving her was his only way of producing a male heir to carry on the Tudor line.
ReplyDeleteAnd he got his answer.
Delete