December 13, 2024

Masterclass Panel: The Case Against Lies: Wisdom from Augustine

What makes a lie bad—its consequences or its very nature? Augustine’s works On Lying (De mendacio) and Against Lying (Contra mendacium) tackle these questions with rigor and clarity. Together, we’ll explore his thought-provoking stance on deception. Webinar sponsored by Villanova University's Augustinian Institute and New City Press.

Watch the recording of the webinar here and check out the new English translations of the lying treatises in New City Press's recent edited volume Morality and Christian Asceticism.

Panelists:

  • James K.A. Smith: Thomas Martin Fellow at the Augustinian Institute, Professor of Philosophy, Calvin University
  • Ian Clausen: Editor of Augustinian Studies, Associate Professor of Teaching, Villanova University
  • Colleen Mitchell: Associate Director of Outreach, Augustinian Institute, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Villanova University
  • Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A.: Professor of Theology, Villanova University, Director of Special Projects, Augustinian Institute
  • James Wetzel: Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, Augustinian Endowed Chair,
    Director of the Augustinian Institute

October 24, 2024

Wisdom from Augustine in an election year

James K.A. Smith on what we can learn from Augustine in our current political moment:

Perhaps what we can learn from him is the importance of politics as a mode of timekeeping, a particular way of inhabiting time. For Augustine, we cannot answer the question “What should we do?” unless we first answer the question “When are we?” Augustine offers a tool kit to help us forge a common life and commonweal in this long meantime of our existence. Some of these tools were picked up centuries later and put to work in the founding conceptions of political liberalism. All of them help us to understand when we are.

Published: The Christian Century

January 9, 2024

Watching Movies with Augustine: On Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon

James K.A. Smith on seeking Christ beyond fraudulent versions of Christianity:

The genius of the movie, I think, is in how not even Ernest knows which love will win out. He is an enigma to himself. Which is another way of saying: I think Martin Scorsese has made an Augustinian film.

Published: Image Journal

November 9, 2023

The Deepening Darkness

Co-authors Carol Gilligan and David A.J. Richards on the darker side of Augustine's legacy:

In our book The Deepening Darkness, in our effort to understand how Christianity became more Roman than Christian once it was elevated to being the established religion of the Roman Empire, we discovered the crucial role played by Augustine of Hippo. From this perspective, we zeroed in on his blaming of Eve for original sin, his turning away from sexual love, his endorsing the use of state power to justify violence against heretics, and above all, his relationship with his mother.

Published: Cambridge University Press

September 27, 2023

The women who made Augustine

David Lloyd Dusenbury recommends Kate Cooper's new book Queens of a Fallen World:

Kate Cooper is beautifully attuned to the fact that it is not only the secrets of Augustine’s beginnings that are shared by a woman in his life, and by his God. (The bishop rhythmically addresses God in that way – ‘my God’, Deus meus.) We know something of the dramatic presences of several women in Augustine’s life – and their still more dramatic absences – because he tells us. Yet Cooper seems to be the first historian to have asked, in a sustained and systematic way, exactly what he tells us – and what, beyond that, we can infer or conjecture.

Source: Engelsberg Ideas

August 31, 2023

America magazine writers who dreamed they saw St. Augustine →

James T. Keane:

For a saint who seems to have been born at the wrong time, Augustine’s name has graced everything from a million schools to the oldest European-established city in what is now the United States to a Bob Dylan song that makes no sense, as well as religious orders and countless other institutes. He has also been the darling of religious and secular scholars alike for his City of God, Confessions and numerous other works, including a large number of homilies only rediscovered in recent decades.

Source: America Magazine

April 28, 2023

Augustine’s African heritage matters →

Tia Noelle Pratt:

 For generations, Africa was continually robbed of its greatest treasures—its people—through the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade while the continent’s natural resources were confiscated or decimated by colonial powers. Yet, throughout all of that time and into the present-day, the church and scholars of theology, philosophy, and literature alike have considered the works of St. Augustine—an African man—as some of the greatest writings ever produced. In order to reconcile the two, St. Augustine’s African identity had to be suppressed by racially coding him as white. We are now in a moment where we can reckon with that long-standing dissonance and pivot away from that coding while affirming St. Augustine’s African identity.

Source: U.S. Catholic

January 30, 2023

An Introduction to the Confessions of Saint Augustine Video Series →

Fr. Arthur Purcaro, OSA:

The journey begins with an introductory video and will be followed weekly by a video meditation on each of the 13 books of St Augustine’s master work: The Confessions.  Join the legion of saints and searchers throughout sixteen centuries who have found, in Augustine, a spiritual companion on the path toward a more personal relationship with Christ.

Source: Augustinian Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova

January 24, 2023

Trusting in the Goodness of God in the Difficult Moments We Cannot Understand →

Fr. Carlos Medina, OSA:

Being a disciple of Christ does not spare us from suffering or responding with difficult emotions, as Jesus himself more than once spoke of taking up one’s cross and following Him. The saints were not happy all the time. As Saint Augustine writes, “the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. Because their love is rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right.” (City of God XIV.9)

Source: Augustinian Spirituality

November 10, 2022

Review of “Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought” →

Aaron Alexander Zubia in The Wall Street Journal:

In “A Commonwealth of Hope” Michael Lamb, a professor of humanities at Wake Forest University, introduces his readers to another Augustine. This Augustine was not a pessimist but a champion of hope. He encouraged his hearers to hope for the well-being of the city. And he possessed an expansive vision of Christians and non-Christians working together to improve their lives on earth. Mr. Lamb’s Augustine shares what we would call a “liberal” vision of a pluralistic society devoted to temporal peace and prosperity.

Source: The Wall Street Journal