Ever since Iacobus and I discovered St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori’s The History of Heresies & Their Refutation, I’ve done little more with this wonderful work than to make it my own - in that very weak sense of buying it and settling it permanently upon my bookshelf. Moved, however, by a chain of inspiration too random to recount here, I picked it up tonight and began to read the “Author’s Preface”. Though it is only the preface, Liguori gives a succinct defense of the claims of the Catholic Church in the space of a few paragraphs. In support of this task, he adduces several interesting quotations, especially intriguing because of their author.

We all know that protestants like to make much of Augustine - historically they did, and in my experience at Cornell, he remains a favorite among those in no way prepared to countenance the claims of the Church. But we know - if we’ve ever been to St. Peter’s basilica - that Augustine is among the four great doctors who are holding up the Chair of Peter. Despite the magnificent statuary in St. Peter’s, my feeling has often been: let’s hear it from Augustine himself! If he’s the great Catholic doctor, let’s hear him defending the claims of the Church.

Part of the trouble with Augustine is that he wrote so much. Isidore of Seville, I believe, said, “I wish that I could tell you that I’ve read all of Augustine, but if I did, I would be lying.” (Or words to that effect.) For many of us, our acquaintance with Augustine extends no farther than the Confessions. But in the Confessions, we certainly don’t get anything that comes across as explicitly R.C. apologetics. Instead, there’s a lot of talk of Scripture and other things that seem friendly to a protestant view - which is part of the reason why, I suppose, protestants try to cozy up to Augustine.

In Liguori’s preface, though, we find a couple quotations from Augustine which are very unlike Augustine as seen through the eyes of protestants. That’s why I’m writing this post, to make you aware of them, if they should ever come in handy, and perhaps also, this will be their first time on the internet.

The first comes from a sort of poem or psalm that Augustine wrote against the Donatists, Psalmus contra partem Donati. It dates from around the year 393 A.D. This is the portion that Liguori makes use of:

Scitis Catholica quid sit, et quid sit praecisum a vite:
Si qui sunt inter vos cauti, veniant, vivant in radice. . . .
Venite, fratres, si vultis ut inseramini in vite.
Dolor est cum vos videmus praecisos ita jacere.
Numerate sacerdotes vel ab ipsa Petri sede,
Et in ordine illo patrum quis cui successit, videte:
Ipsa est petra, quam non vincunt superbae inferorum portae.
Omnes qui gaudetis de pace, modo verum judicate.

I translate:

You know what is Catholic, and you know what is cut off from the vine:
If any among you are careful, let them come, let them grow from the root . . . .
Come, brethren, if you wish to be grafted upon the vine.
It pains us to see you lying thus cut off.
Or count the priests from the chair of Peter,
And look how one succeeded another in that line of fathers:
That is the rock, which the proud gates of hell do not conquer.
All you who would take joy in peace, first know the truth.

The second quotation comes from the Contra epistolam Manichaei (quam vocant Fundamenti), Chapter 4, #5. This treatise comes from the year 397 A.D., which also may have been the year in which the Confessions were published. Augustine writes:

. . . ut omittam sincerissimam sapientiam . . . quam in Ecclesia esse catholica non creditis; multa sunt alia quae in ejus gremio me justissime teneant. Tenet consensio populorum atque gentium: tenet auctoritas miraculis inchoata, spe nutrita, charitate aucta, vetustate firmata: tenet ab ipsa sede Petri apostoli, cui pascendas oves suas post resurrectionem Dominus commendavit, usque ad praesentem episcopatum successio sacerdotum: tenet postremo ipsum Catholicae nomen, quod non sine causa inter tam multas haereses sic ista Ecclesia sola obtinuit, ut cum omnes haeretici se catholicos dici velint, quaerenti tamen peregrino alicui, ubi ad Catholicam conveniatur, nullus haereticorum vel basilicam suam vel domum audeat ostendere.

I translate:

. . . as I make no mention of that most pure wisdom . . . which you do not believe is in the Catholic Church, there are many other things which may most justly hold me in her maternal embrace. The consensus of nations and races holds me; the Church’s authority, established by miracles, fed by hope, increased by charity, and confirmed by long tradition holds me; the succession of priests from the chair of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord after his resurrection entrusted the feeding of the sheep, up to the present episcopacy; finally, the very name of Catholic holds me, for not without reason, among so many heresies, has this Church alone prevailed, so that although all heretics wish to be called “catholic”, none of the heretics, when asked by a traveler where the Catholics meet, would dare point to his own church or domicile.

Liguori follows this quotation: “for in truth the uninterrupted succession from the Apostles and disciples is characteristic of the Catholic Church, and of no other.”

What I like about Augustine’s discussion of these issues - I’m thinking also of the De fide rerum quae non videntur and the De utilitate credendi - is that the responses he gives to heretics in his own day are very nearly parallel to the types of things we ought to say to heretics in ours.

When I was working on campus at Cornell, in the building of the Freemasons, I was once engaged in conversation by a postman who, the discussion turning to religion, told me that he was a Catholic, although not a Roman Catholic. This is, of course, a very common thing: any serious Anglican will tell you that he is Catholic, although not a Roman Catholic. Likewise for many serious Lutherans and other protestants. But this talk is nonsense, and they know it, deep down. Perhaps it’s a somewhat superficial way of refuting the protestant position, but it is no less true in our day than in Augustine’s: no one is going to point to the local conservative Lutheran church and say, when asked, “Look, that’s where the Catholics meet!”

In thinking about Augustine’s situation, we are also reminded that the phenomenon of “protestantism” is hardly knew. Those heretical sects came and went in Augustine’s day, and we can now see how they’re fast going in ours. Liguori writes: “it is wonderful, and at the same time consoling, to read the end of all those heresies, and behold the bark of the Church, which appeared completely wrecked and sunk through the force of those persecutions, in a little while floating more gloriously and triumphantly than before.”