St. Augustine Comments on the Year 2007

Right now I'm wading through St. Augustine's Confessions. The thing is nearly unreadable as it's stuffed with stylistic praising of God. Every chapter has paragraphs of it. It was written as an autobiography and a morality play to show St. Augustine's life's path from sin to redemption. His story is written in small chunks and is liberally interspersed with prayers, self-flagellation and long passages about the greatness of God.

The story itself is compelling. As a kid, he was a total jerk. He lied, stole, cheated and did nasty things simply for the sake of nasty things. As a young man he lived a life that would be the envy of the Hollywood set today. He would have loved the rap songs in the top 40. He was also extremely intelligent and his parents took great effort to educate him. He dabbled in all kinds of wacky philosophies and heresies. The emptiness he felt in life led him to continue searching for meaning and his intellect and education allowed him to spot the flaws in movements he joined. In the end, he found peace and meaning in Christianity.

I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm still in the lust and debauchery part of the book. For a book on lust and debauchery, it's incredibly tedious and dry.

In any case, there was a passage early in the book that jumped out at me.

Nothing deserves to be despised more than vice; yet I gave in more and more to vice simply in order not to be despised.

In other words, he slept around so others would think he was cool. That was written more than 1500 years ago. Nowadays, we have institutionalized this. For evidence, I present the movie, The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Hollywood hits St. Augustine over the head with a 2x4.
Hollywood, which is a large part of our cultural infrastructure, has produced its own moral orthodoxy. This film was a simple, blunt statement of their theology. It screams at the St. Augustines of today, acting as the enforcer of the libertine lifestyle the real St. Augustine finally escaped. What is missing are the films produced by the older members of Hollywood, the ones who have been through lots of divorces, whose bank accounts are dry and whose kids are train wrecks. Having gone through the fire, you'd think some of them would want to tell a story of redemption.

No such luck. As I get older, I find myself becoming more and more of a puritan for a variety of reasons. St. Augustine appeals to me and the American entertainment industry does not.

Assuming I'm not excommunicated for dumping on poor old St. Augustine, you can find this and other links at this week's Catholic Carnival.

Update: As I went back and re-read the book to find that quote, I began to understand St. Augustine's meter and prose. I'm sure my lack of appreciation of his style lies far more in my eyes than his pen.