December 14 is the feast day of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a mystic, reformer, and one of the greatest poets of Spanish literature’s Golden Age. He was born Juan de Yepes y Alvarez into a “converso” or converted Jewish family. His father died when he was young and he and his two older brothers, along with their mother, moved from village to village in Castilla, suffering from poverty and rejection by both Jews and Christians. At Medina del Campo, from 1559 to 1563, he studied humanities at the Jesuit school. In 1563, he entered the Carmelite Order and in 1564, he studied philosophy at the Colegio San Andres at the University of Salamanca. In 1567, he was ordained a priest and wanted to join the Carthusians, since he felt called to a life of silent contemplation. St. Theresa of Avila convinced him to help her reform the Carmelites instead.

In 1568, he co-founded the Discalced Carmelites ,with St. Teresa of Avila. (The were called discalced because they returned to the custom of walking bare foot.) St. Teresa had a vision for restoring the Carmelite order to its original austerity and seclusion from the world. St. John founded the first Discalced Carmelite monastery at Duruelo in 1569. There was great opposition to the reform within the Carmelite Order. He was imprisoned in Toledo by his superiors for 9 months, from December 1577 to August 1578, when he managed to escape after brutal treatment and privation. His tormentors tried to sway him from his leadership of the reform movement, which had been legitimately authorized. Nevertheless, St. John of the Cross went on with the reform and produced wonderful poetry and treatises on the spiritual life.

It may seem incomprehensible to us today that there could be opposition to such a reform that would return an order to its original vision. However, many of the men and women in convents and monasteries at the time were placed there by their families, especially if they were younger sons and daughters. A position in the Church strengthened the family’s position and avoided the costs and alliances that came with marriages. Making the best of a bad situation, many of these men and women with “enforced” vocations tried to live as comfortable a life as possible. They weren’t called to live lives of austere, silent contemplation and fought the reform.

Just as he had suffered from those opposed to the reform, St. John’s latter years would be marked by suffering from those who embraced the reform but went too far in their austerity. When he opposed and corrected their excesses, they did their best to neutralize his influence. St. John of the Cross died in 1591 after he had been denied adequate medical attention and endured isolation. It seems that much of his maltreatment by both sides was not due entirely to his authorized reform activities. He was a “converso” and considered a renegade and certainly beneath the standing of so-called “pure bloods,” who resented and were shamed by his holiness and learning.

El Greco’s “View of Toledo”

St. John of the Cross was a man of great courage, without bitterness, because his suffering never conquered him. Thomas Merton reflects on the imprisonment of St. John of the Cross in Toledo as an example of the holiness of a saint coming from grappling with the problem of evil. Why do good people suffer? Why do I suffer? His response during his inhuman imprisonment was to write a major part of one of his greatest poems on union with Christ, The Spiritual Canticle. Out of great darkness and suffering came great light and peace.

Stanzas Of The Soul

One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
—ah, the sheer grace!—
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
—ah, the sheer grace!—
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
—him I knew so well—
there in a place where no one appeared.

O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

December 7 is the feast day of St. Ambrose of Milan c. 338-397, who was one of the most prominent bishops in the fourth century.

Pope Benedict XVI aptly summarized the life of St. Ambrose.

On that Good Friday of 397, the open arms of the dying Ambrose expressed his mystical participation in the death and resurrection of Our Lord. This was his last catechesis: Without speaking a word, he spoke with the testimony of life.

Ambrose was not old when he died. He was not even 60, for he was born around 340 in Trier, where his father was prefect of the Gauls. The family was Christian. When his father died, and he was still a boy, his mother brought him to Rome to prepare him for a civil career, giving him a solid rhetorical and juridical education. Around 370, he was sent to govern the provinces of Emilia and Liguria, with headquarters in Milan. It was precisely there where the struggle between orthodox Christians and Arians was seething, especially after the death of Auxentius, the Arian bishop. Ambrose intervened to pacify those of both factions, and his authority was such that, despite the fact that he was nothing more than a simple catechumen, he was acclaimed by the people as bishop of Milan.

St. Ambrose had a rare combination of talents. He was a man of deep holiness, a very competent administrator, a diplomat and politician of great skill, a great theologian, and an extraordinary preacher. While his preaching garnered the the respect of his most famous convert when St. Augustine was still a pagan, it was his life that spoke most eloquently.

St. Ambrose used his many talents to combat Arianism, a heresy which taught that Christ was not eternal - that there was a time “when He was not“. It may sound like a minor point but Arianism undermined the core doctrine of Holy Trinity and converted the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into a loose triad. Arianism not only struck at the core of the Nicene Creed, but it was widely supported by the higher clergy and the ruling class of the Empire.

St. Ambrose played a great role in the development of the Christianity we profess today. He also set a very high standard of personal and professional integrity for bishops and all Christians. His selected writings can be found online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

November 15 is the feast of St. Albert the Great (c 1206 - 1280), the German Dominican who not only taught St. Thomas Aquinas, but established the basic pattern for uniting faith and reason that became medieval scholasticism. According to Pope John Paul II, of all the doctors of the Church, St. Albert alone bears the title of “the Great.” In his address at Cologne on November 15, 1980, the seven hundredth anniversary of the saint’s death, Pope John Paul II, in his address on “Science and Faith in the Search for Truth,” beautifully summarized St. Albert the Great’s legacy and the current challenge for Christian scholars to confront a transformed world.

Not only did he shape philosophy and theology for centuries to come, St. Albert the Great, along with Roger Bacon, helped to lay the foundations for experimental science. He is still acclaimed in the history of botany, geography, chemistry, and physics. St. Albert the Great demonstrated the sphericity of the earth - a concept that had been lost with the fall of Greco-Roman civilization. He emphasized the importance of experiments in the study of the natural sciences. In fact, he gave us the distinction between the philosophical and natural sciences that we still use today.

Eleventh century Europe was a time of tremendous change. Towns and cities emerged to challenge the feudal order of the previous centuries. Trade and communication spread across Europe once again. The great mendicant orders - the Franciscans and the Dominicans - re-evangelized Europe and set up centers of learning.

Perhaps what is most interesting in St. Albert the Great was his ability to think critically and teach others how to do it as well. He did not accept the teaching of authorities, whether it was Plato, Aristotle, or St. Augustine, without a critical evaluation. St. Albert the Great did accept the broad boundaries of approved Christian teaching or orthodoxy. He also showed that reason and experimental inquiry were not incompatible with faith. St. Albert the Great acknowledged the transcendence of God and that we as humans could go only so far with our gift of reason and observation until we came to the threshold of revelation. He did not challenge the reality of miracles, but he was more interested in what could be learned from the natural order of things, which is the way God works most of the time.

Paradoxically, many legends developed in later centuries about St. Albert as a sorcerer and magician, which were recounted by such a great philosopher as Hegel. In one legend, St. Thomas Aquinas throws a punch at a talking machine that St. Albert has invented. Because of these accounts, St. Albert the Great has been adopted by the New Age movement.

Although St. Albert the Great was one of the greatest theologians, philosophers, and scientists of the Western tradition, he was also a Dominican provincial superior, bishop, diplomat, administrator, and spiritual director. He wrote the first Summa Theologiae and provided the model for a reasoned exposition and defense of the faith. As much as he was a man of faith, St. Albert the Great was a great believer in the importance of reason and observation.

For those of us who have grown up with the official Catholic Thomism of the 20th century, it can be hard to imagine how radical St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas were for their time. The critical study of Christian, Islamic, Jewish and ancient non-Christian thinkers was based on the notion that truth can be found everywhere. As basic as this might seem to us, it caused a lot of controversy. St. Albert the Great was criticized for not devoting himself to scripture and theology. “How could God be subject to reason?” What we were to believe and think as Christians had all been laid out in the scriptures, the Church Fathers (and Mothers), and the official pronouncements of the Church. Yet, the exigencies of that time of great change required some way to deal with the re-introduction of knowledge, information, and technology that had been lost for centuries.

There is no doubt that St. Albert the Great would be fascinated with the social, technological, and theological challenges of the early 21st century. Do we have his same bold faith?

There is a wonderful page of resources and links about St. Albert the Great. It is well worth perusing. For a special treat listen to Austeritate Vitae the special chant for the feast of St. Albert.

St. Jerome (331-420) was a man steeped in classical learning who produced the first Latin translation of the Bible. His feast day is September 30. Leslie J. Hoppe, OFM, in his article on St. Jerome, “The Perils of a Bible Translator,” shows that this vocation is not for the faint of heart.

In the first place, understanding and translating the scriptures requires a secular knowledge of languages, history, and culture that can challenge faith. St. Jerome had a nightmare in which he came before Christ on Judgment Day and was found not to be a Christian but a Ciceronian. (This was a nightmare that became a reality for centuries of Christian students who had to master Classical Ciceronian Latin.)

Sometimes the translator or the Christian scholar finds things that might be better left alone. For example, what if some of the books appear to not be part of the original collection?

Today we often get upset if a translator changes the phrasing of passages which we love. When St. Jerome came out with his translation in the everyday language of the people, enough of them got so upset that there were riots in Tripoli. St. Augustine and other major teachers were very critical.

It is all very modern if it weren’t so ancient.

Portraying St. Jerome with a lion appears to have come from a medieval legend in with the saint pulls the thorn out of the paw of a lion and lives to tell the tale. Even if it is not true, it presents a very good picture of what it means to be a scripture scholar and translator.

Today, October 1, is the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower. This is a picture of her as a child.

As faithful readers will recall, St. Thérèse is one of my favorite saints. I have already written about her (see my post for September 4, 2007, Triumph of the Lowly) and will not go into great detail here. Suffice it to say that in her short 24 years, she gave to the church a great gift, the Little Way. She delighted in the small things of life and determined that her calling was to love God in all His creatures and in all of creation. Although she entered a convent at the age of 15 and died there at 24, her writings have reached beyond the convent walls and touched people great and small since her death from tuberculosis in 1897.

Her Little Way to holiness is one to which all of us are called. It consists of doing the everyday things in “mindful” ways, paying attention and acting in love as we go about our everyday routines.

As she said, “I am a very little soul, who can offer only very little things to the Lord.”

In another place she wrote,”Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.”

As she neared her death, in the midst of a great time of personal spiritual darkness, she assured her sisters, “I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth,” and, ”After my death I will let fall a shower of roses.”

When she overheard two of the other nuns wondering what would ever be said about her at her funeral, since she was so young and had really not done anything of note in her life, she was delighted. She had never wanted to be noticed as any different than the other sisters which whom she lived. Yet within just a few years of her death, her autobiography and other writings were being translated into all the major languages of the world. Her Little Way influenced theologians, popes, bishops, priests, and thousands of others both inside and outside the Church. In recognition of the depth of her contribution to the Church, Pope John Paul II, named her a Doctor of the Church in 1997.

For a more complete biographies, see:

http://therese.kashalinka.com

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=105

http://www.thereseoflisieux.org/

Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino (1542 - 1621), a Jesuit who became a Cardinal and Doctor of the Church, was one of the major figures of the Counter Reformation. St. Robert Bellarmine has influenced Catholic Church positions on Protestantism, church-state relations, and the temporal power of the Church for 500 years.

St. Robert Bellarmine’s major contribution to Catholic theology was his organization and presentation of this large body of knowledge. The motivation was clearly to counter the position of the Protestant reformers. However, his work was part of a larger re-vitalization and reform movement within the Catholic Church. As the Archbishop of Capua, he implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which were to define Catholicism until the later part of the 20th century.

Although the Counter Reformation technically ended with the Thirty Years War in 1648, its general anti-Protestant thrust did not end until Protestants were admitted as observers and non-voting participants in the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1965).

St. Robert Bellarmine’s extensive systematic writing defined a culture and world view which has not been displaced by Vatican II. His writing spells out clear boundaries and centralizes all authority, ultimately, with the Papacy. The limits of what is Catholic and Protestant are clear and all of the reasons as to why the non-Catholic position in any matter is wrong are also abundantly clear.

There is now a definite nostalgia for the security and limits of the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Catholic world, particularly among priests who have been ordained more recently. Pope Benedict XVI, who attended Vatican II as a theological adviser, has recently announced the revival of the Tridentine Latin Mass. Although the number of Catholics in the United States who support the return of the Latin Mass is only about 2%, there are substantial minority who fear that there has been too much deviation of belief and practice from the standards of the Counter Reformation.

The Vatican II Catholic Church endorsed certain points of the Protestant view that St. Robert Bellarmine and the Tridentine Church opposed. Liturgy in the language of the people, receiving the consecrated wine of communion, emphasizing the role of the laity, and simplifying or eliminating ritual were all opposed by the Council of Trent. To a great extent, Pope John Paul II occasioned the Restorationist movement by silencing dissent, forbidding discussion of the ordination of women, and training priests and appointing bishops who espoused more Tridentine views and devotional practices.

Whether one is a traditionalist or a progressive, the systematic theology of St. Robert Bellarmine forms a core of the identity of the Christian movement’s largest church.

St. John Chrysostom (347 - 407) was born in Antioch and spent his life there until he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople. He received a broad education by non-Christian masters in a city teaming with many diverse religious groups.

John Chrysostom was one of the most eloquent speakers and prodigious writers of his time and has had few equals throughout the centuries of Christianity. He was called”Chrysostomos, or “the golden-mouth” because of his eloquence

Points to Remember and Ponder:

• After Baptism at age 29 he left a promising career as a lawyer and became a monk.
• Throughout his life he spoke truth to power, calling everyone to a more faithful Christian life. He ran afoul of the powerful and wealthy in Antioch and Constantinople and was harrassed and exiled for his efforts by civil and church authorities.
• St. John Chrysostom’s preaching was known for its practical application of scripture to everyday life. Earlier approaches had looked at scripture as more of an allegory pointing to a higher truth. He took it more at face value.
• One of his greatest achievements was the ordering of the liturgy, its music and cycle of readings and prayers. To this day the liturgy of the Orthodox and eastern rite Catholic churches is known as the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and has not been changed significantly.
• St. John Chrysostom worked very hard to differentiate Christians from Jews in Antioch since there was still a very fluid movement between the groups. Some think that this may have set a definite anti-semitic tone in emerging Christianity.
• St. John Chrysostom is regarded as a towering figure in the Eastern and Western branches of the Church. His feast day is September 13 in the West and November 13 in the East. The three major leaders and teachers of the Eastern church: Sts. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, and St. Gregory the Theologian share a common feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs on January 30.

For more information see:

John Chrysostom - Orthodox website

John Chrysostom - Wikipedia

Not too long after Pope John Paul II named St. Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church in 1997, I overheard someone commenting to one of her friends that a specialist in the spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila, was upset by his action. This specialist was very clear about the reasons that Teresa of Avila had received that honor, based on her years of spiritual growth, her reformation of the Carmelite order, and her writings. By contrast, Thérèse of Lisieux, in her short 24 years, had really not contributed anything of substance, certainly not enough to merit such a grand title as Doctor of the Church, a status shared by only 32 other people. Only two other women, Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) and Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) were Doctors of the Church. They had only received this recognition in 1970. (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, in 1967, ventured that women were unlikely to receive this honor because it is linked to the teaching office of the church,”which is limited to males.”)

Marie Françoise Thérèse Martin (1873-1897) became Sr. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face when she took her vows at the Carmelite convent in Lisieux in Normandy, France in 1888. I have been a fan of hers since I was in second grade. I read a children’s biography, Saint Thérèse and the Roses. It was really too hard for me to read easily, but I plowed my way through it and fell in love with her. I returned to the story many times as I grew up and continued to find her attractive. In fact, I chose her as my Confirmation patroness at age 13, long before she was so grand.

When Randy and I were newly-weds, we went to Guadalajara, Mexico to meet his cousins on his father’s side of the family. Randy’s aunt, Tía Dorotea, gave me a copy of Thérèse’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul, in Spanish. Thérèse was also Tía Dorotea’s favorite saint and I learned that in Mexico she is sometimes known as Santa Teresita (St. Little Teresa). I have thought of her as Teresita since that time.

However, I was in graduate school and then had young children and a business to operate with Randy, and I never found time to read my precious gift.

I’d like to say that I have now found and read it, but that would not be true. I know it is in our house somewhere, but like the beads for repairing my favorite moccasins, it is hiding in our resident Black Hole. I’m confident that it will someday escape and I plan to read it with a smile when it does, as I remember Tía Dorotea fondly.

So, I found myself wondering, what was it that made her as important in the life and history of the Church as Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena? I found the answer recently while shopping for a birthday gift at my favorite bookstore. On the shelf was a small book by Patrick Ahern, Auxiliary Bishop of New York, Maurice and Thérèse: The Story of a Love.

In this little book, Bishop Ahern offers a brief biography of Thérèse of Lisieux and an explanation of the general spiritual ambience of the late 19th Century. He then presents a series of letters written by Maurice Bellière to Thérèse of Lisieux and her responses. Maurice Bellière was a seminarian who had written to the Prioress of Carmel in Lisieux requesting that a Sister be chosen to pray especially for his vocation and with whom he could correspond. Thérèse’s sister Pauline was prioress at the time and she chose Thérèse to be the one who would respond to him.

Thérèse was passing through the last 18 months of her life, dying of tuberculosis. She was holding on by sheer force of will to her belief in God and her trust that her life of faith had not been that of a fool. It was a time of deep spiritual darkness for her, yet she offered sound advice, great encouragement and deep love to Maurice in her letters.

I couldn’t send the book to its new owner until I read it all myself! And through this book, I came to understand the great gift my Teresita gave to the Church, a path out of the darkness of Jansenism back into the light of trust in a loving God.

During the late 19th Century, an heretical approach to spirituality called Jansenism was still widely influential in popular spirituality, especially in France. The fundamental idea of Jansenism, which began in the mid-1600s, was that humans are not able to resisting any deep longing of the soul or any pleasure, whether towards good or evil. The only hope of salvation rested on God’s intervention in a person’s life, steering the person directly to choose the good. This understanding denied the existence and role of free will as a foundation of the relationship between God and humans. It was a system of predestination in which no one could have any certainty that he or she had been chosen (predestined) for salvation.

As a result, it tended to be a spirituality leading to uncompromising firmness or rigidity regarding beliefs and stern, strict religious practices. There was no role allowed for the heart or for feelings in worship. The infallibility of Church teachings was denied. Humans were seen as inherently bad and unworthy of God’s love or forgiveness. Frequent reception of Communion was discouraged because people are so unworthy to receive such a great gift.

Jansenism persisted for the next several centuries, especially in France. It was formally outlawed in 1712, but many Jansenist ideas and practices continued. St. Pius X, who had read Thérèse’s autobiography, was elected Pope in 1903. He tried to counter Jansenism by lowering the age for First Communion to 7 and by encouraging frequent Communion. Yet even into the mid-20th century when I was a girl, the remnants of Jansenism popped up in popular spirituality and even in the pulpit.

The “Little Way” of Thérèse of Lisieux, again opened the door to the Good News of Jesus, that God is a loving Father (a Parent) to us. While it is true that we are weak and we sin all too easily and frequently, God’s Love still reaches out to us and forgives.

The essence of the Little Way is the idea that most of us are not called to heroic degrees of self giving and sacrifice in our lives. Most of us are not called to leadership roles in the community. Few are called to celibacy. Even fewer are called to the heroic witness of martyrdom. But all of us are called to holiness (sainthood).

In her own words, “Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.”

Teresita understood, as did the great St. Teresa of Avila, that God is found even in the cooking pots of the kitchen — in the daily routines of cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening and praying of her community.

Bishop Ahern notes that her greatest fear in facing death was that death might truly be the end of everything. That her life might go out like an extinguished candle and all have been in vain. Her second greatest fear was the death by suffocation that tuberculosis often causes. However, when the time came, she simply stopped breathing, with a smile of peaceful delight on her face, and moved into her new life, all fear and doubt obviously left behind her. Her final words were, “My God, I love you.”

John Paul II, in Divini Amoris Scientia (The Science of Divine Love), the decree that gave Marie Françoise Thérèse Martin the title, Doctor of the Church, noted that she gave us a foundation for spirituality that was innocent, open, hopeful, and trusting. Church authorities also noted that Thérèse was ahead of her time. Thérèse stressed the importance of reading Scripture and using it as a basis for prayer and meditation. She promoted the importance of studying the Scriptures in their original languages. These views would set theology and spirituality on a whole new course when they were advocated in 1943 by Pope Pius XII, in Divino Afflante Spiritu (Inspired by the Divine Spirit).

Thérèse Martin’s little book and her Little Way also influenced Pope John XXIII who convened the Second Vatican Council. Her autobiography influenced most of the movers and shakers of the early 20th Century in the Church and those insights shine through the Council documents and reforms.

Thank you, Bishop Ahern for your wonderful little book.

August 28th. is the feast day of Aurelius Augustinus Bishop of Hippo.

St. Augustine (354 to 430) was one of my boyhood heroes. I read Louis de Wohl’s biography of the saint, The Restless Flame. As a German writer in the 1920’s and 1930’s, de Wohl was immensely successful as a writer of thrillers and he brought this sense of action to his religious historical novels written in English after World War II. I was introduced to Augustine as a man of great learning and action, a man who moved mountains and changed the course of oceans of thought and action.

Later, when I read his Confessions and the City of God in Latin, I met a more complex man, very much at odds with mid-twentieth century psychology. Yes, Augustine was a giant of Western thought, but he was also a major force for movements and institutions that had been blown apart with the end of the modern era when World War II left Christendom in smoke and ashes.

The alliance of empire and church, the oneness of truth that allowed for state violence to save those in rebellious error, the primacy of celibacy, and the utterly fallen nature of humans conceived in original sin are significant positions which post-modern thinkers judge to have been more harmful than helpful.

The development of history as a critical discipline in the 19th century blossomed in the 20th with the tools of science, linguistics, and anthropology. The political, human, and moral catastrophes of saturation bombing, genocide, and nuclear weapons have led to a profound soul searching about what brought us to this point. Needless to say, many of Augustine’s positions came under fire by revisionists.

John J. O’Donnell, in Augustine: A New Biography, presents Augustine as a man of his time, with more warts and wrinkles than a halo. The dreaded heresies Augustine defeated, Donatism and Pelagianism, come in for a revisionist appraisal of their good points. David Hunter, in his review of O’Donnell’s book in America magazine, takes the author to task.

“This Augustine will surprise many readers. The following section headings, although taken from a single chapter, characterize the tone that prevails throughout the whole book: “Augustine the Self-Promoter,” “Augustine the Social Climber,” “Augustine the Troublemaker.” O’Donnell’s Augustine never seems to have outgrown his youthful aggressions and ambitions: “When writing about his first book in the Confessions, he reproached himself for his worldly ambition, even as, with the Confessions, he was carrying out an ecclesiastical version of the same social climbing.” O’Donnell duly documents Augustine’s later associations with powerful Roman generals as evidence of his subject’s lifelong attraction to power.”

O’Donnell has tremendous crediblity as the author of a three volume commentary on the Confessions of St. Augustine. However, his critics excoriate his portrayal of Augustine as less than saintly.

St. Augustine will rise again after this bout of historical criticism because the positive aspects of his legacy, his passionate devotion to Christ, his attempts to build a theology on scripture, the constitution of the human being as being body and soul, and the power of love, will, and memory will all come to the fore once again. From time to time St. Augustine may suffer from our ambivalence, but he is the pivotal ancestor that believers and non-believers in the post-modern world cannot deny.

Take a look at O’Donnell’s profile on the Georgetown University website and select some of the reviews. It’s an eye opener.